COLA Cup Runneth Over

Bad news, good news and bad news on the inflation front.

The first bad news item is this: Inflation jumped 0.5 percent for the month of July. The higher cost of living is primarily the result of the ripple effect (on food and other items) because of the high price of oil.

The good news is that federal and postal retirees under the old CSRS retirement system, retired military people and folks who get Social Security payments are now due a January, 2009 cost of living adjustment (COLA) of 6.2 percent. Last month the 2009 COLA had hit the 5.7 percent level.

The second round of bad news involves retired Americans who don’t get a federal or military retirement benefit. Most of them don’t qualify for any kind of pension from their former employer. Of those that do get a pension, the rise in living costs has no effect on that benefit. The overwhelming majority of those pensions were frozen at the time of retirement.

So just how much will the January federal-military-Social Security COLA be? The answer is – it depends. It depends on how much living costs rise (or not) this month and again in September. The COLA is based on the change in the Consumer Price Index from the third quarter of the current year (2008) over the CPI level for the third quarter of the previous year. In this case 2007.

That means if the CPI holds steady for August and September the COLA payment will be 6.2 percent. If the CPI goes up either or both months the COLA will increase accordingly.

If the CPI should decline (don’t hold your breath) the COLA will be adjusted according. Meaning it could, in theory, be less than 6.2 percent. But there would still be an increase.

If you would like to run the numbers for yourself, check out this explanation from the National Active and Retired Federal Employees website. It also gives the projected COLA increase for employees retired under the FECA program.

January Pay Raise

While the retiree COLA is on automatic pilot, the amount of the January federal pay raise is still up in the air, subject to action by Congress and the White House. For an update on the federal pay raise, and how it might look on a city-by-city basis, click here.

Talk Like The Boss

One of the rules of business (and the government?) is to dress for success. As in: dress like the boss (if you can afford it and if he/she is a member of the Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club), or at least for the next level or job you want.

But there may be another way. That is to talk like the boss.

Consider this comment from a DoT employee:

We had an administrator (who) frequently said he’d “tee up the discussion” by introducing a topic for that meeting. I believe he was a golfer, so that may have been the source of the metaphor. Soon, everyone of a certain grade or higher was “teeing up” topics all over the place. I guarantee only 5 percent of the speakers actually played golf, understood the reference, and more frequently than not, completely misused the metaphor. As a golfer, I found it most annoying every time I heard it. That administrator is no longer around, and fortunately the overly used metaphor retired with him. But if you listen very carefully, you can still hear topics being teed up somewhere. Pam

Good thing the big boss wasn’t a rugby player fan or, worse yet, hadn’t grown up on a stud farm!

Nearly Useless Factoid

How high is too high? According to the High Heel Shoe Museum, if you can’t stand up straight in your heels without bending your knees, then you need to switch to a lower heel.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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