Inflation is eating into everyone's paycheck—including ours in the public sector. When COLAs don’t keep up and side hustles start sounding practical, you know something’s off.
How are you navigating financial pressure while working a full-time federal job?

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I started doing some contract work. It doesn't seem like leadership will fix what's going on so I've had to find new ways.

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I'm lucky enough to be in a 2 income household where my husband works in industry so we haven't been hit the hardest. But I feel awful for people working in gov jobs as their only income, it's such a bad time to be employed by the government.

I'm not sure exactly how we do it. I do know we have downsized a lot and my wife cut off any extra expenses and well as doing at home as many things as we can. It has been hard though.

I have friends in private too, and they are facing a lot of the same. COLAs aren’t the norm, and wages in general are just stagnant or dropping compared to the price of everything out there. We’ve been scaling way back and just focusing on basics for now.

Budgeting exhaustively and working as many side jobs as I can in my spare time. I've been dog sitting and tutoring, although the latter has obviously stopped now that school is out for summer. It's been enough to allow me to get by, but the long term forecast looks bleak. I'm probably going to need to transition out of government if I ever want to be able to afford a home.

Public sector pay is good. If one works in this sectors they should be very grateful.

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