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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greatplains_guy who wrote (65418)	6/1/2013 11:51:59 PM
From: ManyMoose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Federal Employees have a Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) which is comparable to a 401k, I suppose. It consists of three different investment vehicles, all of which are modeled after mutual funds. The three are 1) A money market fund; 2) a bond fund; and 3) a stock fund. FERS (Federal Employees Retirement System) employees get matching funds for their contribution, the amount of which, within limits, is voluntary. Social Security is the other component of retirement for FERS employees. When FERS was instituted, CSRS (Civil Service Retirement System) employees had the option of switching to FERS or staying with CSRS. Because of the investment component of the new system FERS employees had the potential of doing much better or much worse than CSRS employees. It was the old risk-reward concept. My analysis said I would break even unless the investment climate changed. Right after that we got into the Clinton Bubble, so for a while I was behind. After the crash I was ahead. I'm not sure how it would have worked out for me long term if I had switched.. For obvious reasons the government could not take money out of the bond or stock funds, but they did 'borrow' from the money market fund to cover operating costs until it was decided to furlough everybody for two weeks. The furlough was a joke too. We were told we would not be paid for not working, which seems reasonable. Everybody sort of hunkered down and made up their minds to survive. We did not receive pay on schedule for that period, but later it was restored in full, as was the 'borrowed' TSP money market funds. While I'm glad I didn't take the financial hit as a furloughed employee, as a tax payer I am more or less outraged at what went on during that period. It just ain't right. But that was true of a lot of stuff that went on back then. Bad as it was, nothing compares to what is going on now. Federal employees now appear to be getting paid more than private sector employees for comparable work, plus they have more job security. I became a federal employee because I wanted the life that my profession offered, not for the pay. I traded higher pay I would have got in the private sector for the security in a government job, and that's the way it should be. I'm glad I'm retired, and to be perfectly frank I'm happy to have the lowest retirement check possible for a retiree of my rank and step within rank. That's because of the difference between the COLA (Cost of Living Allowance) I got for working in Alaska, and Locality Pay which is determined by the cost of similar labor in the local market where one is employed. The COLA was necessary in order to attract qualified employees to places like Alaska where the cost of living was materially higher than it was in the Lower 48. Long story short, people with COLA didn't get Locality Pay. COLA did not accrue to retirement benefits but Locality Pay does. It's complicated, and to my way of thinking it's an inexcusable artifact of the inefficiency of government programs.