You should always be careful what you wish for. I am happy that I got promoted, but it is expensive. Because of the peculiarities of the Iraq package, my promotion is costing me almost $300 a pay period.
Yes, I get paid that much less AFTER being promoted. It is worse because I am figuring based on the pay w/o the raise that (almost) all Federal workers got in January. So the bottom line is that I take get almost $300 less than I did BEFORE the promotion took effect and probably around $400 less than I would have if I got the usual raise w/o a promotion.
Luckily the Senate was unusually dilatory about confirmng our promotions, so I didn’t get the big kick until three months after my promotion was announced.
I get paid the big bucks anyway and I know complaining will do no good, but I have to grumble. Over the course of a year, that is a significant pay cut.
All in all, I prefer the promotion for the honor of making it to Senior FS and the promise of better things to come, but nobody can ever accuse DoS of enhancing morale of its guys in the field. We got a cable just a couple of days ago saying that we would no longer get Business Class on flights more than 14 hours, as we did when I came over. It is hard for a medium tall oldish guy to sit in an economy class seat for more than 14 hours, but …
Maybe that retirement plan was not such a bad idea after all. Anybody got a job for an ex-PRT leader and part time forester?
Just kidding.