Left wing protests

[avvidclif]

Easy I'm sure you've looked at it but wife got a surprise when she retired. After 29 yrs into TRS (non SS paying district) she found out her pension cancelled any SS benefits. Although she had the necessary quarters paid in prior to TRS. Mine was only cut in half due to private pension plan from municipality (no SS).

 

[easy rider]

Easy I'm sure you've looked at it but wife got a surprise when she retired. After 29 yrs into TRS (non SS paying district) she found out her pension cancelled any SS benefits. Although she had the necessary quarters paid in prior to TRS. Mine was only cut in half due to private pension plan from municipality (no SS).

I plan on retiring after 10 years of teaching, so it won't be a substantial amount. With my Navy cumulative I'm not sure exactly how much SS will cover, but after all these years of paying into it I hope it's enough to keep me off food stamps.

I have lowered my standards of living, so I'm pretty sure I'll get by.

 

[satx78247]

To All,


I seriously doubt that any person who is now on SS will have their payments cut-off BUT those who are NOT retired have considerable reason to worry.

yours,m satx

 

[avvidclif]

I plan on retiring after 10 years of teaching, so it won't be a substantial amount. With my Navy cumulative I'm not sure exactly how much SS will cover, but after all these years of paying into it I hope it's enough to keep me off food stamps.

I have lowered my standards of living, so I'm pretty sure I'll get by.

The hardest part about TRS is no raises, no COLA's. And their current medical insurance stinks. OTOH waking up in the morning and not owing anybody anything cuts way down on living expenses. Just groceries, utilities, and house and auto insurance leaves play money.

 

[easy rider]

Mainly depends on ones style of living I guess. My days of keeping up with the Jones's are behind me.

 

[LOCKHART]

Well, Austin44, I DO live on SS alone. I raised 7 children and never HAD any extra money to put back. In fact, from 1970 to 1975, I lived in an old ranch house south of Buda, and for those five years I fed my family on mostly what I could kill off the 1500 acres behind that old farm house. Don't assume that ALL people have extra money they can put back. And no, all those kids weren't mine biologically, but I married their mother, helped raise them, and got them to be productive members of society.

 

[TheMailMan]

It is a self funded pension and you will never get all of your money back, let alone any appreciation.

And for the privilege of collecting my self-funded pension, 100% of it is included in my taxable income so I gotta give part of it back!

That's funny. I've been collecting since 2015 and I've received far more than I paid in.

 

[LOCKHART]

Well, I've been on SS for 7 years, and I'm sure as hell not CLOSE to getting what I've paid in! When did you start to work? Five years before you retired??

 

[AustinN4]

That's funny. I've been collecting since 2015 and I've received far more than I paid in.

In just 3 years? Must not have been paying in very long. I paid in for around 55 years.

 

[AustinN4]

Well, Austin44, I DO live on SS alone. I raised 7 children and never HAD any extra money to put back. In fact, from 1970 to 1975, I lived in an old ranch house south of Buda, and for those five years I fed my family on mostly what I could kill off the 1500 acres behind that old farm house. Don't assume that ALL people have extra money they can put back. And no, all those kids weren't mine biologically, but I married their mother, helped raise them, and got them to be productive members of society.

No not everyone does, but if they do, they would be foolish to excessively spend rather than invest it for future retirement. I don't know how you managed to do what you did, but congratulations none the less. I doubt I could have.

 

[LOCKHART]

Same here, Austin44. And thank you!

 

[TheMailMan]

I worked for 36 years. Going on what SS says I've paid in my break even point was right at 33 months.

You can go to the SS website to see how much you've paid in.

That's based on what I paid in. If I take the total including what my employers paid in then the break even point is 67 months.

I'm getting social security disability. Sadly, that removed the 15 years of my life, before normal retirement age, where I would be earning much more money. If that was the case it would take a lot longer for me to break even.

 

[benenglish]

I'll never collect SS. I was hired into the Civil Service Retirement System 2 months before it closed at the end of 1982.

It was replaced by the Federal Employee Retirement System, a 3-part plan that consists of a tiny pension, Social Security, and the federal version of a 401K (called the Thrift Savings Plan). It might be a little better than straight SS but that's debatable. I'm glad I stuck with the Civil Service so I've never really done the numbers.

As an aside - Shortly after I went to work, management started a gigantic push to get all Civil Service employees to convert to FERS. There were indoctrination meetings, financial consultants, and overwhelming management pressure to abandon Civil Service.

I was a new employee and had been there less than a year when the pressure started. I had, however, figured out just enough about the way the place worked to understand that anything management wanted me to do that badly had to be bad for me. I refused to switch. I can remember at my retirement several folks who hired on at the same time I did who lamented that they had fallen for the sales pitch and switched out of Civil Service. They thought I was prescient or financially gifted.

I wasn't. I just knew in my gut that management was made up of a bunch of jerks. My gut told me that if they so desperately wanted me to do something it was surely bad for me. I listened to my gut. That was one of the few times in my life that my instincts turned out right.

 

[TheMailMan]

Good for you Ben.

I had to take a disability retirement under FERS. With 20 years of service I got under $1k a month. Out of that came health insurance. That was almost a $400 bite.

Thankfully I was able to suspend the health insurance. It was to cover my wife for the most part since I use the VA. Once I was able to get her under ChampVA I could suspend the other. I had to purchase a supplement for the ChampVA until she turned 65. Now she's Medicares problem.

Sadly my retirement stool has three legs, VA disability compensation, OPM disability and Social Security. Basically I'm sucking hard at that Government tit.

 

[benenglish]

With 20 years of service I got under $1k a month. Out of that came health insurance. That was almost a $400 bite.

I hope things work out for you. The incredibly small pension that comes with FERS is irritating but it's supposed to be compensated for by SS and the TSP. I'm glad you have other income sources.

There are always outlier cases such as yours. Sometimes even the weirdest employment arcs work out for both the employee and the government. Here's an example -

(I've told this before on TGT but the last time was ~4 years ago so maybe some newer members will not remember. In any event, I'll try to be brief.)

One employee who hired on at the same time as me was a problem. She seemed OK for a while but became more and more erratic. She didn't get along with others. Eventually, she became openly threatening. She carried a big kitchen knife in her purse and she'd show it to people who irritated her and ask "Do you want to see your blood on the floor?" If you didn't irritate her, she'd show you the knife anyway and tell you how she had a plan to take care of the people who gave her trouble.

Despite jokes to the contrary, there are lines that, when crossed, make it pretty easy to fire a federal employee. Complaints were made and there was a very brief investigation. She was hauled in, along with her union rep, and notified that she was to be fired. The meeting was supposed to be a formality. There was no way she could justify the things she had said and done.

Her reply was simple. To paraphrase - "You can't fire me for a pre-existing medical condition. You hired me this way. You're stuck with me this way."

As it turns out, this was past her one-year probationary period and her background check had not been done. She was so low-level that she was a low priority. Her application paperwork was perfect. She had been completely forthcoming about having been involuntarily committed to psychiatric confinement for many problems, some of them violent. She was insane but we had hired her anyway. Essentially, she was hired by correspondence into a job anybody could do so nobody bothered to actually read her entire application. I guess stuff like that happens when you're trying to hire ~2000 people in less than 2 months.

Long story short, she couldn't be easily fired for a properly disclosed and documented pre-existing medical condition. The process would have been long, messy, and contentious. Rather than a protracted battle, management just wanted her gone.

There are nooks and crannies in civil service retirement law that rarely get used. In this case, she was put on administrative leave and barred from the premises until the lawyers could crawl through some of those nooks and figure out what to do. Eventually, she was given a 100% disability retirement. (To be fair, yes, she definitely was 100% disabled from being able to do any work that put her in contact with other humans.) Since she had worked for such a brief time, her pension was next to nothing; it was just enough to cover her health insurance.

Something tells me that having her health insurance paid for the rest of her life was all she ever wanted, anyway.

 

[TheMailMan]

Thanks Ben.

We had some of those "problem" people in my unit. One was a female Native Alaskan. She couldn't deliver in six hours what anyone else could deliver in 30 minutes. She was observed several times taking 2 hour "naps" in her vehicle.

I was a member of the district safety team and we were doing driver observation. I watched her drive through three four way stop signs without even slowing down or turning her head. She was talking on her cell phone at the time. I fully expected her to be terminated over this behavior. The Postal Service is death on driving offenses. But because of what she was they couldn't or wouldn't fire her over this.

Instead she was transferred into a clerk position. They made her a window clerk which she absolutely hated. Too much management around for her. About two weeks later they counted her stamp stock and money and she was over $5k short.

That got her fired. She fought it tooth and nail. The Union, as they are required to do, "helped". But they too wanted her gone.

She was fired with cause at 19 years, 10 months and 14 days of service. That made it so she couldn't collect her pension. Not to mention she had to pay back the Postal Service the $5k.

 

[benenglish]

She was fired with cause at 19 years, 10 months and 14 days of service. That made it so she couldn't collect her pension. Not to mention she had to pay back the Postal Service the $5k.

Blowing your pension to steal $5K is insane but I've seen it before. I saw an officer walked out in cuffs for something similar. I saw a counter worker walked out in cuffs for selling sensitive information to a private investigator. Mercy, those things are stupid; you will get caught.

Look, in my opinion I am way too susceptible to the lure of instant gratification. But on my worst day, I couldn't throw away a career and pension for $5K. I don't understand people who do such things.

 

[easy rider]

This makes me laugh, not that I think it's untrue, but because I know all too well that it's not only hard to fire a federal employee, but also affirmative action through EEO is very big in the government. I too have seen people moved to made up positions because they couldn't work with others. I have also seen white males reprimanded harder for less infractions than females. Even promotions to remove the distraction.

I'm not against anyone getting a position, no matter sex or race, that they deserve, but "merit promotion" as it's called, is a joke. I detested the politics of it all, even as a supervisor it was hard to be fair at times.

 

[easy rider]

As far as applications go, and I've talked about this in another thread, they don't read an application, they score it. Key words are looked at, and then maybe how it's used in context. The people that score these applications rarely have any training in the job they are scoring these applications for. Also military experience has a score too, disabilities that are recognized while in service or were attributed to the service score the highest. I knew of one person that had a scalp condition that wasn't attributed to his duties, but because it was identified while in service, got a disability score on his application. So it comes as no surprise that things would be overlooked on an application.

 

[benenglish]

...they don't read an application, they score it.

True. However, when background investigations are done, the entire package is supposed to be read by a human being.

Hell, they interviewed a sampling of my high school teachers, junior high teachers, and former neighbors for one of my background investigations and that was almost a decade after I'd left my home town. The fact that a little of that effort wasn't directed in a timely manner toward the crazy lady is regrettable.