Although my company has been around for a while, it became another corporate poker chip in the game of "business line poker." The more they try to do good by the employees, the more they make mistakes in doing so.
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The first example of trying to do the right thing was a pre Thanksgiving pot luck lunch to help build team morale. But asking people to spend time and money to help with this event was a big mistake. Many of these low wage employees don't have any excess money to spend on this event, nor do they have the time to do the cooking in advance. So after a few days, management started putting up signs saying that the pot luck lunch was cancelled.
Next came the mandatory attendance for the new 401k plan. Although its provides for a better match for employee contributions (50% of an employee's contribution up to 3% of the employee's salary for the pay period), the company chosen to provide the funds is a high expense fund provider. The old plan put money into Vanguard funds. The new plan uses Fidelity. Needless to say, when the only choices are Lifecycle Target Date plans, the fund management company effectively double dips into the load pool. To make things worse, the company match isn't fully vested until one has been there for 3 years. I plan to be retired by then. So it makes more sense for me to open up a Roth IRA with Vanguard.
As I would describe things at the office - two steps forward and one step back.
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After I left the office, I went to a meetup of the FTF's in Fairfield, CT. Although it took over an hour to drive there, it was worth the drive to be having dinner with friendly faces again. No, it's not like the group I used to attend in the Hudson Valley - I'll take whatever camaraderie I can get these days. But I can't help but think that I would have been in a better position 3 years ago in the Hudson Valley, had I known to deal with issues with the ex-girlfriend and with my former cruise partner at that time.
But I'm not going to dwell upon the past. I've talked about it more than enough, and I'm doing better than I should be doing after last year's disasters. And that's something to be grateful for.
