Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:36     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Yet in Covid I was walked out door at start, kid in college. Three kids, oldest in college and stay at home mom wife and a mortgage,

Took me three years and two months to get back to old level of job. So shocked people can’t make it a two weeks.

Feds are allowed to work other jobs, why aren’t they working? Are they just sitting home? I was doing other jobs while out of work


I also call bullshit. What is stopping you?

i'm not allowed to work another job unless cleared by ethics first. i'm not actually sure if those folks are working; and of course if they are, they are working without pay and with no ability to seek other employment themselves.


Bull shit. You can’t uber, taskrabbit, dog walking, baby sitting, door dash?

You cannot without getting clearance from the ethics office. Most of whom are also shut down. Why are ignoramuses posting here?
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:31     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I am a GS 15. If we get swhutdown I won't be able to pay my $800.00 student loans next month. I have no kids but forget the Infe3rtility treatments... I won't have any kids if Congress keeps this up. My husbands salary will cover mortgage and whatnot. We have savings but I also resent using them because of tea party nonsense.


This feels circular to me. The career federal employees come across as intensely political and 99% behind Obama, which makes the Tea Party types even happier to shut down the Government. I don't know when this stops, but I think some recognition on the part of federal employees that they also work for people with whom they disagree politically is part of the equation.


I worked for DoD. Politically, my agency was like the country- pretty evenly divided, with maybe a little leaning to the right. We did have plenty of TEA party types. They didn’t hide their disdain for big government and the DC “swamp.” This was ironic on so many levels. Bureaucracy and waste was only the “other” agencies.

They looked down on everything in the name of taxes. Without taxes, how could Uncle Sam pay their triple dipping salary? I met so many GG14s, with military retirement and often military disability.

I believe retired military are entitled to every benefit they earned. What got me, was often “disability” was actually retired soldiers, sailors and airmen getting a little sedentary, getting a little heavy and had nothing to do with their years of being a desk jockey in the military. I knew retired military who got 100% disability for being overweight and the ailments that come with it- high blood pressure, bad knees, sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes. That they get the same disability as a soldier who was sent to the battlefield and saw killings, lost friends, maybe lost limbs, doesn’t seem fair.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:30     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I'm not being smug. I'm genuinely confused how people taking home five to eight thousand a month, have no kids, have no major medical expenses, and have paid off most or all of their student loans cannot save enough for a one month emergency fund.

I am a gs 13. After paying for the best health insurance and putting sevenpercent into my 401k, I take home 4400 a month. I spend two thousand on housing, and otherwise spend between six hundred to 1400 a month (300 student loan payment). I save at least a thousand a month without even trying hard.


That's a helluva long list of qualifiers. I'll bet you your right index finger that most people in this area have one or more of those extraoridinarily common expenses.

You are being smug. You know perfectly well you're being smug.


I am not talking about all government employees, or all well paid ones. I am talking about my friends and some of my coworkers, who fit the description above.


I guarantee you do not know the intricate details of all of your friends and coworkers. $300/month is a very low student loan payment -- mine was $1100/month and I graduated almost 20 years ago. There are people your age and your wage who routinely send money to help their parents and siblings who are not as well off. If your coworkers have a therapist, you wouldn't know about it, and wouldn't realize that most don't take insurance so that's a significant out-of-pocket expense. The list goes on.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:29     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
I feel a big part of this shutdown is a push to get employees who can’t take any more of this to leave.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:21     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Yet in Covid I was walked out door at start, kid in college. Three kids, oldest in college and stay at home mom wife and a mortgage,

Took me three years and two months to get back to old level of job. So shocked people can’t make it a two weeks.

Feds are allowed to work other jobs, why aren’t they working? Are they just sitting home? I was doing other jobs while out of work


i'm not allowed to work another job unless cleared by ethics first. i'm not actually sure if those folks are working; and of course if they are, they are working without pay and with no ability to seek other employment themselves.


Bull shit. You can’t uber, taskrabbit, dog walking, baby sitting, door dash?


My agency pre-approved dog walking before the shutdown. Everything else requires approval.
Not a lot of dogs getting walked right now - we had a walker because I was in the office, and have had to cancel him during shutdown. But I'm supposed to try to steal his remaining business?

I could probably get approval to drive Uber, but Uber doesn't want me in my scruffy (but paid off) 2010 car.


And getting approval would require having ethics and an HR department that hasn't been gutted by DOGE or furloughed. So near impossible to get approval for right now.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:21     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:Op here. People are missing my point!

I am talking about people who have paid off their loans to the point of being down to the low interest government loans (people in their late 30s etc), have no kids or sick parents to take care of, and no major health issues.

And yes, I do go out and live life. I go to free museums and openings and other events. I go to dinner and order water and an appetizer or cheap entree. I go to hh and stop after one drink. I don't have a car. I have health issues but they are not hugely expensive.


People live way beyond their means. They don’t think ahead and they have no sound financial back up plan for shutdowns. Shutdowns and this shut down shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. People who don’t plan ahead are not very smart.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 09:17     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:As week 3 continues, this thread has officially AGED LIKE MILK


Considering it was a zombie thread from the 2013 shut down, that tracks.


Good catch!
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:49     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:Oh and if we use our emergency savings then what happens if there is an emergency? We are both working without pay. It is very stressful there is no end in sight. So as mentioned several times in this thread stop worrying about other peoples’ money and have some compassion. There is no end in sight. Shocker most people don’t work for free and have indefinite savings, even those smug ones in the private sector. For what it’s worth in 2013 my student loans were $900 a month. Paid off now and replaced by tuition and college savings and medical bills.


The bolded. We have an emergency savings. I'm pretty scared to burn through it. DH (non fed) could lose his job, I could lose my fed job after sitting here unpaid, we could have an urgent home repair or medical issue, my ill parents out of state could need me to fly out. Those are the emergencies we saved for, not this manufactured nonsense.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:46     Subject: Re:Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
It's too bad we do not teach financial literacy in high school.

Our economy has basically relied upon people spending money as OP describes...

Also, a lot of people say "I can't afford" X when they really can. They just do not want to pay for whatever the thing is.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:44     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Yet in Covid I was walked out door at start, kid in college. Three kids, oldest in college and stay at home mom wife and a mortgage,

Took me three years and two months to get back to old level of job. So shocked people can’t make it a two weeks.

Feds are allowed to work other jobs, why aren’t they working? Are they just sitting home? I was doing other jobs while out of work


i'm not allowed to work another job unless cleared by ethics first. i'm not actually sure if those folks are working; and of course if they are, they are working without pay and with no ability to seek other employment themselves.


Bull shit. You can’t uber, taskrabbit, dog walking, baby sitting, door dash?


My agency pre-approved dog walking before the shutdown. Everything else requires approval.
Not a lot of dogs getting walked right now - we had a walker because I was in the office, and have had to cancel him during shutdown. But I'm supposed to try to steal his remaining business?

I could probably get approval to drive Uber, but Uber doesn't want me in my scruffy (but paid off) 2010 car.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:37     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:I am a fed, so is my husband, we have enough to live perfectly comfortably for years, I have too much in cash.

None of the bozos cheering this on would admire me- they probably think we are overpaid fat cats instead of risk averse people who worked hard to get here.


Isn't this the rub? If you don't have a ton of savings in the bank, you're wasting money. If you have enough to save, you're overpaid.

I'm in the aforementioned category of fed with young kids and teacher spouse. I curse my risk aversion lately since it feels like chasing stability got me nowhere. The only good choice it forced me into was not moving out of our tiny starter TH when we could afford to last year - I was worried Trump would be elected and start firing feds. And here we are. Still can't support the family on teacher income if I lose my job, but the mortgage is 1/3 of what it would be had we moved a year ago.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:18     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:As week 3 continues, this thread has officially AGED LIKE MILK


Considering it was a zombie thread from the 2013 shut down, that tracks.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:07     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
As week 3 continues, this thread has officially AGED LIKE MILK
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 08:07     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
Anonymous wrote:I am a single mom GS-12 and I have three months of savings. Not that this is how I was planning on spending it....


OP: single well paid people without kids blah blah
Single mom jumps in.
Anonymous
Post 10/15/2025 07:51     Subject: Well paid government employees who can't afford a one or two week shutdown
I am a fed, so is my husband, we have enough to live perfectly comfortably for years, I have too much in cash.

None of the bozos cheering this on would admire me- they probably think we are overpaid fat cats instead of risk averse people who worked hard to get here.