Lazy Man and Money

Another Government Shut Down Starts to Hit Home

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Every few years, it seems like it’s another time to talk about how the government shut down affects our life. It started in 2011 and I wrote about it next when it happened in 2013.

A government shut down is a weird situation for most families of government workers.

We have a weird situation put on top of a weird situation.

My wife is active duty, but she has a position that is generally held by government worker. Because she’s active duty she has to work even when the government shuts down. At the same time, there’s often no guarantee if she’s going to get paid. Finally, she’s often becomes the division leader as the highest ranking official.

Everything’s generally confusing when there’s a government shut down. You’d think there would be a solid plan in place because it seems to happen often enough. Nope. It’s not easier that this happens over the weekend when most people aren’t work anyway. The most confusing of all is that my wife’s special case slips through the cracks.

There are so many questions. Are troops getting paid? (It seems like they might not be.) Does my wife count as being part of those troops? (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.) Is the office building going to be open or is she going to drive 2 hours to a locked door? Will the shutdown be over in a couple of hours or we plan for the long haul? (Who knows.) Can Tom Brady fix this? (Probably. Who would doubt his ability?)

So far it looks like my wife is still going to be paid. That’s a big one for us, because she’s the breadwinner. We found out that she won’t be the division leader this time, which is fine by me. (I don’t want to get into why she isn’t, but I feel it is a little controversial.)

It’s a very confusing time (Did I use the word “confusing” before? It’s confusing. Confusing.) However, it does seem like we are starting to get some answers. I know that a lot of people have had enough with politics, so I’m trying to put those thoughts aside. I will say that I spent much more time than I would like to reading all the updates and bickering. I should be focusing my attention to other tasks, but I can’t seem to help it.

I realize that this article is a little light on the “money” and high on the “politics”, but government shutdowns can be a real personal finance situation for us and we can’t be alone there. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll get to a real investing article. Let’s hope it doesn’t blow up on me like my recent GE article.

Government Shutdown = Emergency Fund Win!

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If you’ve been able to tear yourself away from the Breaking Bad hype, you’ve probably heard something about a looming government shutdown tonight. As regular readers know, I try not to get into politics. I’m not going to go into the details of why and how the government shutdown may happen. There are a number of news outlets who are better informed on the topic if you are interested.

Today, I want to write about the government shutdown’s impact on one family – mine.

I realize that most people aren’t directly impacted by a shutdown and much of this talk about the government shutdown may amount to jibber jabber in their mind. After all, do we really care if some people are going to lose their iPhones?

For our family a prolonged government shutdown is more financially dangerous . My wife’s military status means she has to work to pick up the slack from the government workers who are prohibited from working in a shutdown. Because the government can’t pay people in a shutdown, she’ll get IOUs from the government.

The result of the situation is more work paired with no spendable paycheck. I joke about the IOUs and call them illiquid, non-interest bearing treasury bonds. However, it’s not a joking matter, especially for families that don’t have a sizable emergency fund.

The hope is that any shutdown will be short-lived and military won’t have piles of IOUs stack up from the government. I wouldn’t put the odds of a prolonged government shutdown as high, but there’s always a risk.

Of more immediate impact for us is that military leave gets cancelled. Any travel plans are cancelled and you are left on your own to take the financial loss. We have airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rental reservations, and dog boarding reservations and that leads to scrambling to find out what the penalty is to cancel. So far every organization has been sympathetic, except for United Airlines. They want to be sticklers about the cancellation policy and take $200 out of each ticket to reschedule for another time.

In many posts in the past, I’ve written about various military benefits that we receive. Our situation is still decidedly in the plus column. Nonetheless, there’s always the threat of a looming emergency. That’s we are we this week. It should get interesting.

Update: Well this post has become much more meaningless. It seems that Obama signed a bill to ensure that the military still gets paid (no IOUs). It also turns out that there is a law on the books that if granted leave is rescinded the government has to reimburse for losses… which is enough to stop them from rescinding leave. Getting new leave granted though, that’s a different story.

P.S. I don’t watch Breaking Bad, but I think I’m going to try to marathon it in a couple of months while the wife is on maternity leave.