April 4, 2007
or, in my case, half drown me. Usually, I bring a water bottle because I remember to drink water more often, and it’s less wasteful than using, and tossing, a cup a day. Something about a water cup just doesn’t register on my “drink me” radar. Unfortunately, I forgot my water bottle today.
Coworker offered to make me a cuppa hot chocolate right after I’d filled up my 12 oz cup with cold water. Torn, I decided to down the water so that I could get in on the hot choc action without wasting another cup. Apparently, coworker didn’t believe that I’d do that and started laughing at me when she realized that I was really drinking all my water in one go. Of course, that started me laughing and I nearly drowned myself.
All to save the office/environment another wasted cup. Go Mother Earth!
April 3, 2007
I feel vaguely dirty.
I stumbled across my coworker’s blog address while looking for her friend’s website (on which she sells pretty pretty bags, but that’s for another post). I promptly typed in the address and checked it out.
Her most recent post was about her discovery that one of our coworker’s pending layoff, and her feelings about the matter. I discovered that everyone’s impressions to the contrary, she actually doesn’t like him or having to talk to him. (There are peculiarities about him that puts everyone off, rather Miltonish.) These are all things that no one overtly discusses in the office, probably because it smacks of gossip and seems mean-hearted.
Let’s be clear here: she posted the address with her picture online, on her friend’s public webpage. There didn’t seem to be any attempts at anonymity, and she’d mentioned before that she had a blog, in utter contrast to my blog which is cloaked in secrecy and positively drips of shadows and daggers. However, it’s not like she mentioned “I have a blog …. which you can/should check out.” So, I feel kind of dirty.
March 25, 2007
A couple years ago, the university I work for conducted a survey of the staff about their satisfaction with the existing retirement plans and what they wanted to see change. The current plans are split between the exempt and non-exempt staff.
Currently, exempt staff are required to contribute 5% pretax monthly earnings, and the university contributes an additional 10%. Employees are vested immediately.
Non-exempt staff, however, have the university contribute 2.2% of their salary to a plan they are not vested in until they’ve been with the university for 5 years. The types of compensation used to calculate the 2.2% amount was limited, and there was a preset pension plan. Their lame excuse was that, in previous years, the exempt plan was available to all staff but since the non-exempt employees didn’t bother to participate, they were given the stepchild’s version of a retirement plan. No choices, no control, and no matching. Boy, they really taught us a lesson! No wonder the non-exempt employees “believed that the features of the Faculty and Exempt Staff Retirement Plan were more advantageous” and “have asked to be included in the defined contribution plan and have sometimes gone to extraordinary lengths to try to qualify.”
The only way to actively contribute to a retirement plan through work, and reduce taxable income, was to use the Supplemental Retirement Plan, which I did, to contribute to a 403(b) without the benefit of matching.
They’ve finally decided to make some changes, and starting in July of this year, all staff will be automatically enrolled in a new program at the highest contribution level of 5%. The employees will be able to reduce their contribution rates if they wish, and the university will reduce their match correspondingly: Employee 4%, University 9%; Employee 3%, University 8%, and so on. But, if the employees choose not to participate at all, the university will still contribute 5%. AND your contributions will vest immediately. You literally cannot lose with this plan. (I think.)
The previous contributions made on our behalf will be frozen, but we’ll still retain access to those benefits if we stay at the university for 5 years. And, we can continue to contribute to our existing Supplemental Plans, so long as we adjust the amounts to make sure that we don’t exceed the IRS limits of contribution.
Now, that is awesome!!
March 24, 2007
See? This is why I don’t carry cash. I had an emergency twenty in my wallet a week or two ago, and one thing led to another (a cup of soup, splitting a bag of fruit with a coworker, paying for parking …) until that fat twenty finally melted into five piddly ones. Luckily I still have those five dollars, and a few quarters, to cover parking when I meet up with an former high school teacher for lunch today!
March 19, 2007
Pledges have been trickling in from colleagues and my train folks. How cool! That’s an important lesson: if it’s for a good cause and you have a relationship with the people you work with, it can’t hurt to let them know what you’re up to.
New Donations: $195 online, 80 offline
Subtotal: $375
Pending: $80 offline to collect, $80 Employer Matching Gifts.
Training: Off day
I’m not sure how the Employer Matching works exactly but some companies will match donations that their employees make. The matching gifts I’ve seen on my tracking list shows that the matches are 100%! That’s a great way to make your charitable giving dollars go farther.
March 18, 2007
I have awesome friends. Three of them have already donated and thoroughly inspired my morning workout.
Goal: $3000
New Donations: $100
Training: 500 steps (of various heights)
This is going to be so fun!
March 17, 2007
BoyDucky called at lunchtime today to invite me to join him at a climbing fundraiser for the American Lung Association. We’re climbing to the top of 555 California in San Francisco: a whopping 52 flights of stairs!! I don’t know why 1200 steps sounded perfectly fine over the phone but, uh, that’s a LOT OF STAIRS. Still, it’s kind of exciting. This is all new to me: the fundraising, the pre-training, the whole bit. There’s definitely gotta be some training involved because crapping out on the tenth flight would be incredibly embarrassing.
Climbers are encouraged to create a website where their sponsors can donate money as well, and I considered making that available to my blog readers. If anyone’s interested, email me at (myname)@yahoo.com and I’ll make that information available to you!
Participants are raising funds for:
American Lung Association research, education and advocacy programs in the areas of:
- Asthma
- Clean Air and Climate Change
- Tobacco Control and Secondhand Smoke
- Emphysema and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
- Lung Cancer
- Tuberculosis