The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
Hmmm… This furlough thing may not be the disaster initially envisioned. Instead of requiring people to take a day a week, as was our first impression, HR (always a fount of accuracy…) is saying they expect employees to take one unpaid day per paycheck.
- For faculty working and paid on a 12-month appointment,this furlough program will beginJan. 30, 2009(pay period 1.26.09
So I called the state’s General Accounting Office, by some miracle reaching the woman who manages RASL, the state benefit whereby employees get paid a portion of their hourly wage for each hour of accrued sick leave they’ve accumulated. You could hear her hair rising off her head to stand straight on end as I described the story I’d been told: that a layoff means you lose all your RASL.
Nay. Nay verily. She told me that was absolutely, positively not true.
Termination, as it develops, is separate from retirement. You may be canned for any reason ranging from budget-driven layoffs to being caught with your fingers in the till while screwing little boys. That is irrelevant to retirement. Retiring is a different process. To get your RASL, all you have to do is arrange to start your retirement within 14 days after your last day on the job.
Layoffs, she declared in every way she could think of, do not, do not, do not affect your earned retirement benefit.
Thank God!
Nice, eh? This factoid came to me first through the rumor mill, which you would expect to be inaccurate. But then it was confirmed by HR! There’s where the strategy to declare fake retirement plans was actually hatched.
Now all I have to do is perch up here like a sitting duck and wait to be laid off. At least I don’t have to cook up any schemes to make it look like I intend to retire when I most certainly do not.
Not that I wouldn’t like to.
Wow! I just figured out what the furlough means to my budget. My hourly pay is about $30 an hour: that’s $240 a day. If they make me take one unpaid day a week for the next 12 weeks, that’s a gross pay cut of $480 per paycheck or $960 a month. My net biweekly pay will drop from $1,537 to $1,215. That is less than my reduced budget for nonmonthly recurring bills (i.e., it’s less than I spend on groceries, household and yard products, gasoline, and nonrecurring bills such as the vet or the plumber).
It’s less than I would earn if I retired, took Social Security and 4% of my savings after the Investment House mortgage, freelanced, and taught two sections of freshman comp at a community college.
Now, there are some mitigating circumstances here.
First, that retirement net income doesn’t reflect the astonishing cost of Medicare, which, by the time you pay for Part D (the required prescription insurance that drops you into a “doughnut hole” if you get sick enough to really need a lot of medications) and the supplemental insurance needed to pick up the slack, comes to around $300 a month. Right now I pay $26 a month for a plan that covers everything, including the Mayo Clinic and prescriptions, with $10 or $20 copays. Because I’m not yet at Medicare age, if I quit now I’d have to take COBRA, which will cost $475 a month.
Second, the fact is that today we get our so-called “extra” biweekly paycheck. It can be prorated out over the next twelve weeks to help cover the shortfall. It means I won’t be able to use it as part of my emergency savings in case of layoff—which, frankly, I believe is a near certainty. However, it will help.
And third, we can claim unemployment for each furloughed day. That will be a HUGE hassle: you apparently have to fill out all the forms and jump through the hoops for every single claim. So it may not be worth the trouble. But it’s there.
Any way you look at it, the “golden years” of my life are going to be pretty gray. You can see from the above that the amount I will have to live on under the best of circumstances—working two part-time jobs—will be very limited. When I reach the age when I can no longer work, which won’t be many more years from now, I will be living in poverty. Even after we sell the Investment House and I can use the full 4% drawdown from my life savings, the numbers look like this:
I can’t even begin to imagine how I will live on that, with $300 (or, by then, more) taken out for Medicare.
Well, one good thing about this furlough business: starting today, I’m going to get some practice at living on it.
Well, I found out about it from NPR news first, while driving home through the interminable rush-hour traffic: every Great Desert University employee is to be furloughed between now and the end of the fiscal year, June 30. When I raced in the house and pulled up my e-mail, yea verily, there was a message from Our Beloved President, outlining the plan to balance the university’s budget on its employees’ backs.
Administrators are being zapped for 15 days—that’s three weekswith no pay! Classified staff, which would include my associate editor, who earns less than she was earning as a graduate research assistant, get off with a mere ten days. And everyone else—that would be moi—will face 12 no-pay days.
Apparently we’re being allowed to string it out over the rest of the fiscal year; 17 1/2 weeks. The particular configuration of the furloughs, though, depends on one’s supervisor’s whim. So, for me, if they allow me to to take off one day a week, that would cut my pay by two days for each paycheck—$480—between now and the end of the fiscal year. Assuming, of course, that I last for the rest of the fiscal year.
Think of that: a $480 pay cut. Thank you so much, Georgie Porgie and all your doctrinaire ideologue puppeteers!
We can, we’re told, claim unemployment insurance for the unpaid days. Unemployment in Arizona is pretty piddling—a tiny fraction of what you earn. And it’s such a hassle to claim it that if you have any other source of income to fall back on, it’s hardly worth bothering.
Our bread-and-butter client just e-mailed asking if we’ll take on not one but two new projects. You betcha, sister!
The 162nd Festival of Frugality is online at Gather Little by Little. Funny’s post on the perqs of pinching penniesmade editor’s pick! ?Let’s hope I don’t have to use those pennies anytime soon in a forced early retirement. Money Theory has one of the nicest essays I’ve seen on how frugality can lead to contentment and even fun. Military Finance Network revisits the issue of whether one should invest savings or use them to pay off loans. And Wenchy Poo has some creative money-saving ideas.
The Make It from Scratch Carnival celebrates its 100th edition at Stephanie’s Make It from Scratch site. Funny’s post on the low-budget landscaping project appears here.Jason explains why it’s better to buy a whole chicken and butcher it yourself than to buy precut chicken parts. Check out Grandmother Wren’s clever and easy idea for making an easel and paint box for the little one’s artwork! And I was highly entertained by Timbuk2 Mom’s tale of her experiments with DIY dishwasher detergent. She’s braver than I am!
The Carnival of Money Stories is up at The Sun’s Financial Diary, where Funny’s rant about our legislators’ attack on the state’s educational system appears. Darwin’s Finance reports on 3.99% mortgage rates being offered by Toll Brothers. At Living Almost Large, you can join the conversation about why you’re saving for retirement. Harvesting Dollars contemplates (with horror!) the cost of independent health insurance.
Great carnivals, all. Be sure to visit each and check out the other excellent posts!
Elevated blood pressure can be a sign of stress, among other things. When I had my little stress attack a while back, my blood pressure was so alarmingly high that the doctors suspected a heart condition; if I so much as lifted my head off the pillow, it went even higher. After the episode passed, the blood pressure numbers went back to normal. But it was scary there, for a few hours. Whenever I go into a doctor’s office, it’s often a little high, especially if I’m not sitting in a chair with my legs uncrossed and my feet flat on the floor. This phenomenon—blood pressure that rises when you go into a doctor’s office—is called “white coat syndrome.”
A week or so ago, GLBL reported at Gather Little by Little that an incident of white coat syndrome led him to buy a blood pressure monitor and keep tabs on himself for a while. This revealed that his blood pressure was higher while he was at work than over the weekend, at home. He put it down to stress.
The work environment can be very stressful, even if you’re not in a high-tension job such as police work, emergency medical or fire services,journalism,or teaching. Certainly one of the elements that led up to my episode—one of the petals of the Poison Poppy, as I call them—was workplace stress, largely resulting from friction with a subordinate. After great effort, I discovered a number of fairly easy strategies to reduce stress, which really comes at you from all directions, not just from the workplace. Here are ten of the best:
1. Reduce caffeine intake
Substitute other satisfying drinks. Some varieties of soda pop are caffeine-free: Sprite, 7-Up, ginger ale, and many brands of root beer. Read the label to be sure. Fruit juices can be combined with soda water or tonic water to make DIY pop, which IMHO tastes better than the canned stuff. Green tea is said to contain less caffeine than black. Sometimes just cutting back the amount of caffeine you take in helps: decaf coffee and tea are not caffeine-free, but substituting them for high-test may help bring down your blood pressure and lower your stress level.
If you go off caffeine cold turkey, you’ll get a headache that may be fairly bracing, but it will pass in a day or two. You can avoid or minimize this by tapering off instead of quitting abruptly. The fact that eliminating caffeine can make you sick should tell you something.
2. Try to de-stress your commute.
Leave earlier so you have plenty of time to get to your destination. Driving in the slow lane reduces the number of people tailgating and jerking around you—you tend to see more of that obnoxious behavior when you’re driving faster in the middle and outside lanes.
Do not listen to the stürm und drang on the news and yak shows. Avoid stations that carry advertising, which also can be stress-inducing and annoying. If your local airwaves don’t carry stations that broadcast the kind of music you enjoy, free of advertising, then get yourself an iPod or MP3 player and bring your own entertainment. Make it something soothing.
Learn some alternate routes to and from the workplace. If you see the freeway backing up, get off and proceed on the surface streets for a while.
3. Keep a low profile at work, and leave work at the office
Refrain from arguing with coworkers or bosses. Let the BS slide off your back like water off a duck’s feathers.
Do your job well and quietly.
Keep coworkers’ and customers’ oddities in the perspective of the large picture. How exactly will their ridiculous behavior change the course of world history?
Don’t bring work home. Make your private time exactly that: your time. And do not work more hours than you are paid to work. If you’re expected to do so, maybe it’s time to find a new employer or a new line of work.
4. Leave the office during lunch hour
Never work through lunch. If you are brownbagging, go outside or to a coffeehouse where you are allowed to eat your own food if you buy a beverage. If you must stay on the premises to eat, take some time to go for a walk. If your company offers a workout room, use it over the lunch hour. Or, if you hate gyms as much as I do and you have an office, close the door and do some yoga during breaks or lunchtime.
5. Learn to meditate.
Use break time or lunch-hour time for brief periods of meditation. Prayer is a form of meditation. If you are religious, spend a few moments at your desk in quiet prayer.
6. Reduce alcohol intake.
Restrict wine, beer, and other potables to one drink a day, max. Alcohol pushes up your blood pressure and interferes with your sleep. If you’ve been in the habit of having a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, you may find you sleep better if you have water instead. Treat yourself to wine on the weekends and on special days only. Nope…for this purpose, every day is not a special day!
7. Find a form of exercise that you enjoy and do it every day.
Walking the dog is exercise. Climbing three flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator is exercise. Bicycling is exercise. Roller-skating is exercise. Gardening is exercise. You don’t have to spend half the day at these activities or exert yourself to the point of exhaustion. A half-hour of walking goes a long way toward lowering your blood pressure and brightening your outlook.
8. Turn off the television.
The constant flow of violence and disturbing imagery flowing out of our TV sets inundates us with stress, if only on a subliminal level. I find I sleep much better if I don’t watch the idiot box at night.
9. Develop a strategy to pay off debt, create a budget, and keep your financial books up to date.
Money worries form a huge part of the stress we all suffer. Getting a grip on these issues, although it won’t instantly solve your financial problems, will at least help you to feel more control of things. And this will ease your stress.
10. Join a group, totally unrelated to your job, that will get you out of the house and into the company of other people. Examples: church, hiking or bicycling group, pet fanciers’ club, hobbyists’ club, Habitat for Humanity, or some other service group.
Try it! You’ll like it!