Yep. You guess it. It’s the…
Friday Fab Five!
Time to take a look back at the past week and highlight some of the best of the best.
The Most Commented Blog of the Week goes to none other than Rebecca Schreiber‘s blog post Investing TSP Money and Other Retirement Tricks. Whether you are a young, recent government hire, mid-level professional, or a senior exec just about to walk out the door, retirement and investing is more than likely on your mind. But where do you start? Rebecca offers some expert (literally, she’s a certified financial planner) advice to help you get started and calm some of your fears. Be sure to read “the why” section, and check out all the comments after the post.
How To Create a Retirement Portfolio:
1. Determine how long you expect to let the money sit and grow between now and retirement (so far away…)
2. If you already have a retirement account, consider the last time you sold your investments and use this “bad news gauge” to determine your risk tolerance.
3. Determine how much time you want to spend pouring over investment information. For less time pick passive investments like index funds – for more time pick actively-managed funds like mutual funds and active ETFs. Pick 5 to 7 different options to create a diversified portfolio.
4. Apply the template portfolio to all of your retirement accounts as best you can.
-Rebecca Schreiber
The Top Forum this week goes unequivocally to Megan Price‘s discussion on the Next Gen group, Create the Agenda (I’m serious!) for NGG11, and in case you couldn’t tell, yes, she is serious. For those not in the know, NGG11 stands for the Next Generation of Government (Summit) 2011 coming up this July 28th and 29th right here in Washington DC. What won this discussion the top spot this week is the 4+ pages of responses just this week! So check it out, browse the suggestions already produced, and add your own. This is your conference! Here are the questions Megan wants readers to consider:
What sessions would you like to see taking place? What speakers?
What training do you feel you need to be a better public servant?
Any other comments or suggestions on how to make Next Gen 2011 awesome?
-Megan Price
The Most Active Group award goes to the Knowledge Management Group. This group is always a great resource for those both directly and indirectly involved with knowldege management, but they’ve seen a spike in membership and wall posts this week which really sets them apart. So what got people going? How about this single, little question, “Knowledge sharing through story telling. Agree? Disagree?” So what do you think? Head on over and add your two cents, or start a new discussion. Knowledge managers are also all about knowledge sharing.
Our Quote of the Week comes to us, in true Friday fashion, from Charlie Kufs. His expert, and sage observation comes in response to a potentially controversial Daily Dose on tenure vs. talent promotions (Forget the Review: Just Give Me My Raise Already!). The only problem was that because his comment reached readers first, it had everyone LOL and ROFL that no one could get to the nitty-gritty of the subject. We’ll let you be the judge.
Having served time in both private and public sectors, I think all promotions are based on tenure, talent, attractiveness, height, friendships, and who is shtupping who. -Charlie Kufs
And finally, Rockstar of the Week goes to Jule IRS Recruiter. Yes, it’s that time of year again, and for those who haven’t even begun your taxes yet…let’s just say you should probably make fast friends with Julie. Julie the IRS Recruiter has been quite active on the site recently, and has posted a number of blog posts which have all seen their fair share of traffic because of their usefulness and great content. So if you’ve always wanted the insider scoop on what goes on behind those big walls of paper and forms at the IRS, let Julie assure you, it’s probably not what you’re thinking. It’s so much cooler! Don’t believe me? Add her as a friend, and then check out her most recent blog posts (these are just from this month!):
Happy Friday, GovLoopers! Stay Awesome.
I learned to write in governmentese from the Government Printing Office (G.P.O.) Style Manual. It said to avoid confusion always spell out a phrase first, and then put its abbreviation in paraenthases, such as United States (U.S.). As you can see merely saying US could convey a different meaning. Different acronnyms mean different things to different organizations and people. Because you NGGs are much more ?IT? savvy than we senior employees, you are having a valueable impact on the way government does business. It helps me to understand what you are discussing if use a as common a language as possible.