If you are reading this, upright and not on life support, it means you made it through 2018. It was a crazy on-the-job year for members of the federal family. It included many serious legislative threats to your retirement plan, as well as efforts to make it much easier and quicker to fire civil servants deemed a “problem” by their political bosses. Oh, and there were those three shutdowns.

The federal workforce was under heavy political attack, but what else is new. The Democrats captured the House big-time in the midterm elections while the more fed-friendly Senate solidified its Republican majority. A lot of turnover occurred at Cabinet and sub-cabinet levels meaning many of you have new or relatively new bosses to break in and show the ropes. I wish you a lot of luck with that.

Your Thrift Savings Plan, after coasting for more than a decade in a record-long bull market, took a beating in December. Whether it’s a long overdue correction or a long predicted (by some) new version of the Great Recession is to be determined.

The bottom line is we here at Federal News Network wish you well.  Stick with us and we’ll stick by you. Happy New Year!

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Amelia Brust

New Years Day 2017 saw the most cars stolen of any other major holiday that year – 2,469 vehicles — while New Year’s Eve was the eighth most popular holiday for car theft that year with 1,962 vehicles stolen.

Source: National Insurance Crime Bureau

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