Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have taken two vacations since covid--a family reunion at the beach and a family wedding. We are upper middle class by income (300 plus) and live modestly (low mortgage, old paid off car) and we can't seem to ever afford it. We have fairly good savings but something always happens: fridge dies or water heater dies.

Do you not plan for those "something always happens"? Seriously with a low mortgage and paid off car, what are you spending your $$ on? If you own a home, you should always have a "home EF" for appliances and home repairs. It's no shock that after 6-7 years, a water heater will die, or after 20 years you might need a new roof, etc. So most people budget for that and save yearly for the future. Especially at $300K+ and no car and low mortgage.

Braces for the kids that's more complex than standard $5,500
unexpected medical conditions, i needed physical therapy after working at a toxic place that mandates 11-14 hr/work days.
comp/bonus being less, I was paid 50% of my target low range. I left said company but that's super rare in my industry.
Pet medical needs, the healthy cat I adopted in year 2008 is getting sick and past the insurance coverage age (15 years old for cats).

Anonymous wrote:We have taken two vacations since covid--a family reunion at the beach and a family wedding. We are upper middle class by income (300 plus) and live modestly (low mortgage, old paid off car) and we can't seem to ever afford it. We have fairly good savings but something always happens: fridge dies or water heater dies.

Do you not plan for those "something always happens"? Seriously with a low mortgage and paid off car, what are you spending your $$ on? If you own a home, you should always have a "home EF" for appliances and home repairs. It's no shock that after 6-7 years, a water heater will die, or after 20 years you might need a new roof, etc. So most people budget for that and save yearly for the future. Especially at $300K+ and no car and low mortgage.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now that my dual Fed family is prohibited from teleworking, we are very short on leave. We are booking two trips while schools are closed, but can't afford the time off to all travel together. Each of us will take the kids to visit our parents while the other stays home and reports to the office.

This is why RTO was necessary.

Why? I read this as they were short on leave bc they have to take an entire day off for home repairs or days when schools are closed rather than teleworking, assuming kids don’t need constant supervision.
And don’t even pretend private sector don’t telework when kids are home from school. Every single one I know does that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:50% of americans have less than $500 in their savings account. Most americans can't afford to vacation.

Did you know that 85% of statistics like this are totally fabricated?

You didn't even bother to look it up did you.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/how-much-money-americans-have-in-savings.html#:~:text=How%20much%20money%20Americans%20have%20in%20their%20savings%20accounts,half%20have%20less%20than%20$500&text=Nearly%20half%20of%20Americans%20have,re%20able%20to%20build%20one.

You linked to an article referencing a 1,000 people survey put forth by a for-profit company that is in the business of encouraging people to save more.

That’s exactly what pp was referencing about bad data.

took 3 weeks off this summer consecutively. It’s the most time I’ve ever taken off outside of giving birth (before paid maternity leave, so doesn’t count, and wasn’t actually a break anyway). And I only did it because of RTO. Otherwise, I would have worked at least 50% of that time from my parents’ house or our extended family home, like I did for the previous 18 years. In stead, they got no work out of me and I unplugged entirely for 3 weeks.

Same, but two weeks. I think what some commenters aren’t getting is that many of us feds got up early and worked for 4-5 hours while on vacation - not that we pretended to be working while on vacation, necessitating RTO to keep us honest.

This was my first time unplugging and taking an actual vacation since maternity leave 16 years ago. I’m still catching up on the work I missed and am late on everything but oh well, I’m not the one who fired people and instituted a hiring freeze and decided half the staff can do the same amount of work. When I was teleworking I worked all hours, but now with RTO - they get 8 hours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now that my dual Fed family is prohibited from teleworking, we are very short on leave. We are booking two trips while schools are closed, but can't afford the time off to all travel together. Each of us will take the kids to visit our parents while the other stays home and reports to the office.

This is why RTO was necessary.

A lot of fed workers abused WFH. If weren’t for them shamelessly slacking off for years, most of us are still doing some kind of hybrid schedule.

Anonymous wrote:Now that my dual Fed family is prohibited from teleworking, we are very short on leave. We are booking two trips while schools are closed, but can't afford the time off to all travel together. Each of us will take the kids to visit our parents while the other stays home and reports to the office.

This is why RTO was necessary.

If you have kids, taking a vacation becomes a lot harder, especially when they're young. PTO gets eaten up with sick days for them, followed by sick days for you, random school days off, and then dealing with the major holidays (which if you're hosting are not vacations).

Add to that, it takes a couple days to truly decompress, and by the time you have its almost time to go back to work. Usually to a mountain of work that has piled up while you were away. Its depressing.

Last year I took 2.5 weeks off near Xmas and it glorious.

Anonymous wrote:We have taken two vacations since covid--a family reunion at the beach and a family wedding. We are upper middle class by income (300 plus) and live modestly (low mortgage, old paid off car) and we can't seem to ever afford it. We have fairly good savings but something always happens: fridge dies or water heater dies.

This makes no sense.