Fixed income(?)

IBWino said:
I think many pension plans give a choice at the time of retirement for COLA or non-COLA, with a lower payout for the COLA option (this is how my wife's plan is set up). I wouldn't be surprised if many/most select the non-COLA option to get the higher initial payout.
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Most folks just pick the highest dollar amount (non-COLA) and take the 50% percentage survivor option, because they are not very astute. I even met a guy that took "lifetime income only" on a non-COLA pension at retirement even though he had a bout of prostate cancer 3 years before, he was 5 years older than his wife and she did not work......:( So, somtimes it's about an educated choice........;)
 
IBWino said:
I think many pension plans give a choice at the time of retirement for COLA or non-COLA, with a lower payout for the COLA option (this is how my wife's plan is set up). I wouldn't be surprised if many/most select the non-COLA option to get the higher initial payout.
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Interesting.... I have never seen a plan with an option to go COLA or not...

Something else to add to the poll...
 
HawkeyeNFO said:
I wish officers did have to take promotion exams sometimes. If I am so lucky as to be promoted, will I not not still be on a "fixed" income after my promotion?
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Instead of going to all the expense of administering an exam system to determine the "best qualified", BUPERS just sends everyone on IAs during their shore duty. The ones who stay on active duty must be the best qualified!

In the submarine force it wasn't the promotions that counted but rather the qualifications and screenings... failure to qualify as an Engineer Officer would surely halt any further promotions, and failure to screen as XO or CO was also a clear signal to the selection board.

I had a CO who checked the selection statistics/percentages for promotion from E-1 to E-8 vs O-1 to O-5. Guess which one was easier.

I guess the real-world answer is that you're on a fixed income until the next annual pay raise, the next two-year longevity bump, the next raise in flight pay/sub pay, or the next bonus contract.

HawkeyeNFO said:
Also, as an officer, I can get in big trouble if I go work at another job. Now, rental property.......
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I think the chain of command might question your financial responsibility if your after-hours career includes "Would you like fries with that?" But there wouldn't be any issue with teaching classes at a local university or online, or tutoring, or blogging for bucks. I had two JOs at a shore technical training command whose 1995 business was assembling PCs and configuring them for dial-up Internet access.

donheff said:
I like the term "Old Age Pensioner" to ward off parasites. Speaking of which, has anyone heard anything from OAP? I enjoyed some of his posts.
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He and all his alternate identities were banned six or seven times before he got bored and stopped posting.

I think he's given up on his blogging, too.
 
Nords said:
BUPERS just sends everyone on IAs during their shore duty. The ones who stay on active duty must be the best qualified!
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Hi Nords! The latest on IAs is that they are going away. The Navy didn't really decide to stop them, it was the fact that the demand from the Army and Marines has dried up, and more importantly, the funding that the Navy was receiving for them.

In the meantime, budget cuts are looming, and the talk is that 2 carriers and their affiliated strike groups and air wings will get cut also. The Reserves are also being looked at for budget cuts. My squadron is rumored to be getting decommissioned in FY-13
 
Though I will soon join the ranks of the retired, I must admit that many retired people throw out the usual cliches whenever their economic needs are threatened. The 'fixed income' ruse is one of them. Fixed income means no COLA, no means to increase the income and does not apply to many seniors today.

When you compare the lives of many seniors to children who live near or below the poverty level, one wonders what is going on. I know of seniors with 26 foot motor homes who complain if their ultra cheap National Park pass is threatened. Give me a break!
 
Chuckanut said:
The 'fixed income' ruse is one of them.
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No ruse. The expression 'fixed income' originally meant income which does not change from year to year, but that is not quite what it means these days. Expressions do change their meaning. A person on a fixed income is, typically, a pensioner whose income and other financial resources are not sufficient to provide for extraordinary expenses.
 
Chuckanut said:
..........When you compare the lives of many seniors to children who live near or below the poverty level, one wonders what is going on. I know of seniors with 26 foot motor homes who complain if their ultra cheap National Park pass is threatened..........
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And those kids better stay the he11 off my lawn.
 
Texas Proud said:
I just picked one... yours was last :greetings10:

But you did mention that most increase over time, when in fact I don't think it is most... that would be interesting to see how many people who are collecting a pension has then COLA adjusted and who does not... and which are gvmt jobs and which are not... poll anyone:confused:
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Actually, what I said was
When inflation is significant and when employed people, in general, are seeing income rise much faster than retired people (thus retired people are suffering the effects of inflation more) then retired people complain of "fixed income" vs rising prices. Their income is not absolutely "fixed," but is likely rising more slowly than employed people.
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I don't think there are too many people whose incomes are absolutely fixed over long periods of time. But I'm confident most retired folks have a much slower rate of increase than working folks. And I suppose there are probably a few retired folks who go year after year with exactly the same income.

My point is that "fixed income" is a relative term today not meant to imply zero income growth but rather a level of income growth (might be zero but not necessarily) than would cause them suffer from inflation over time much more than employed people
 
HawkeyeNFO said:
Hi Nords! The latest on IAs is that they are going away. The Navy didn't really decide to stop them, it was the fact that the demand from the Army and Marines has dried up, and more importantly, the funding that the Navy was receiving for them.
In the meantime, budget cuts are looming, and the talk is that 2 carriers and their affiliated strike groups and air wings will get cut also. The Reserves are also being looked at for budget cuts. My squadron is rumored to be getting decommissioned in FY-13
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Thanks for the update. I'm sure your community spent more than its fair share of time helping with air control and contact management, but from my side of the waterline the Navy guys hit the hardest have been in the supply and maintenance (logistics) communities. Army may be paying Navy to send a bunch of shore-duty JOs to the desert, but Navy's paying for it in the retention statistics.

I think IAs happened because Navy was worried about being left on the sidelines and out of the budget talks. Nobody in Congress gives a rat's ass about all those years of SOUTHERN WATCH, or operations like DESERT FOX, when you can put boots on the ground.

When I was at SUBPAC I saw how the requirements debate was framed. We don't "need" 11 or 13 or 19 carriers as much as we have to have that many platforms in commission (underway or workups or refueling overhauls) to meet all those sorties and mission days laid out by NCA. If NCA can whack the mission days by 25% (or whatever the number turns out to be) then we can whack back the number of platforms. Heaven forbid that C5F has a few months a year with just an amphib ESG instead of a full-on carrier battle group.

The "advantage" of drawing down the military another 10-20% below 2001 levels would be that the government would have to actually develop a foreign policy. It's always been cheaper to engage with the other guy and to supply foreign aid than it's been to go break things & kill people. I'd much rather see the military "waste" its time with COBRA GOLD and BALIKITAN and the rest of the PACOM exercise schedule than to have to take over for the State Dept's failures.

But, yeah, you might want to think about what you're going to be doing with your subspecialty codes... or get that Master Training Specialist designation?
 
chemist said:
Fixed it for you. It is when people edit someone else's post to make a point.
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Actually, it’s when a member quotes another member's post, crosses out one word and replaces it with another. Like this"
chemist said:
Fixed it for you. It is when people [-]edit[/-] cross out a word in someone else's post to make a point.
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There. Fixed it.

youbet said:
Oh, so that's what that obnoxious tactic is called........
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Editing a post is not an obnoxious tactic but it is a necessary burden to correct posts that need moderation because they violate community rules.
 
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