When your child turns 22 or gets married before that age, they will be automatically dropped from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHB), even if they are in school. If they don’t have a job with health benefits, they will either have to obtain their own insurance or you can enroll them under Temporary Continuation of Coverage (TCC).
We all know gas prices are at historical highs, but is there anything one can do about it? Conventional wisdom says that you can save money by using premium fuel, filling up in the morning, or using additives, but unfortunately all of them are largely untrue. However, there are a few things you can do to save some money when topping off.
It’s not a new form of applied science, rather a new name for an old profession - conning people out of their hard earned money. From hard experience, understanding scams is part of careful financial planning — both my wife and I were both taken at a young age. The lastest scams are ingenious in their use of modern technology.
FEDERALDaily reports that on May 7th, the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee recommended a 3.9% raise (cost of living adjustment) for members of the armed services. In most years, civilian federal worker salary increases follow the same formula, although not without a fight.
Curiously, the most recent measurement of year to year inflation by the Labor Department is also 3.9%.
Recent common wisdom is that only the foolish or the desperate would buy a house — while the answer a year ago was heck, yes, buy one! Neither answer is very helpful, so it might be worthwhile to lay all the cards on the table and come up with some rational reasons for deciding whether to buy a house or not.
I was talking to a friend who was eligible to enroll in the Thrift Saving Plan (TSP) which is the federal equivalent to a 401(k) retirement savings plans many companies provide. To my shock, he wasn’t enrolled. When I told him he was leaving free money on the table, it got his attention. So if you are one of the roughly 10% of federal employees that don’t contribute or the additional 20% who don’t contribute at least 5% of your salary, read on.
For federal workers, this month is a 3 payday month instead of the normal 2. If you haven’t set aside your “extra” payment yet, what are you going to do with it? I have to admit that whenever I get an extra pay period, I go to Best Buy and look longingly at the flat screen TVs and the laptops. But I (or my wife) usually stops to figure out how much it’s going to cost us in the long run. For example, if I had an extra $1000 and put it in the stock market, I’d have about $30,000 in 30 years if the stock market keeps up its average 12% post World War II return. That makes for a lot of laptops in the future if I can keep myself from buying one in the present!
Planning for retirement is one of the toughest financial tasks anyone can attempt. Nobody has a magic crystal ball that sees 10, 20, 30, or more years in the future. A trusted financial adviser can help for a fee. Fortunately, there are retirement calculators on the web that you can use for free, some very good:
My wife had to sell the house she kept for her mom in one of the toughest real estate markets in the nation. We learned through experience several techniques to sell a house in a buyer’s market:
Or paternity benefits? The answer is no — it’s one of the few places the federal government lags behind industry, at least for white collar professionals. However, you can piece together a maternity leave using a few approaches:
