Life Insurance Options - Retirement Planning - Pay & Benefits ...

Last week, we looked at basic coverage options under the Federal Employees Group Life Insurance program. This week, as promised, we?ll go over optional coverage.

FEGLI offers three types of additional coverage:

• Option A (standard optional insurance) has a $10,000 value.
• Option B (additional optional insurance) equals one to five times your annual basic pay (after rounding up to the next $1,000).
• Option C (family optional insurance) provides coverage for your spouse and eligible children. Again, you can choose one to five multiples of coverage. Each multiple is equal to $5,000 (up to a $25,000 maximum) for your spouse and $2,500 (up to a $12,500 maximum) for each eligible child.

Let?s look at each option, and how it relates to your retirement.

Option A

You can keep Option A as you move into retirement as long as you?ve been enrolled for the last five years of your federal career and are retiring on an immediate annuity. After you retire and are older than 65, Option A is free, but the $10,000 benefit will reduce by 2 percent per month until it reaches $2,500. Option A was implemented in 1968, when $10,000 was considered a lot more life insurance coverage than it is today. Its value hasn?t changed in 44 years.

Option B

The value of Option B is based on multiples of your basic pay, up to five times your salary. The amount you carry into retirement is based on your pay rate on your last day of employment and the number of multiples that you?ve had in effect for the last five years of your career. You must retire on an immediate retirement to maintain your insurance.

When you retire, you will be able to choose no reduction or full reduction for each multiple of Option B coverage. So, for example, if you had five multiples of coverage, you could opt to have three with no reduction after you retire and the other two with full reduction. Full reduction means those multiples will be free after you retire and are older than 65, but the value of the coverage will reduce by 2 percent per month for 50 months, at which time the coverage will end. You can cancel or reduce the number of multiples of your life insurance at any time.

Option B starts to become a noticeable withholding from your salary when you reach 50. Then the price increases from 8 cents per $1,000 of coverage biweekly to 13 cents. So, for example, if you have five multiples of $50,000 worth of Option B coverage, at age 49 you would be paying $20 every other week. At 50, the price would increase to $32.50. At 55, the same amount of coverage would cost $57.50 biweekly. There will be additional increases every five years until you turn 80.

Some federal employees have replaced Option B with private life insurance. You may find cheaper rates -- sometimes significantly cheaper -- but there are a few things to know before you cancel Option B:

• To purchase life insurance you must be insurable. Be sure that you will be able to pass the medical underwriting if you are contemplating buying a private life insurance policy.
• FEGLI floats with your salary, so every time you get a pay increase due to a promotion, step increase or basic pay adjustment, the amount of your basic coverage as well as Option B will increase at the same rate.
• FEGLI pays your beneficiary no matter the cause of death -- unless your death was caused by your beneficiary.
• If you are willing to pay the premiums, then you can get Option B for the rest of your life, but it does get very expensive later in life.

Here are some companies that your co-workers have used to purchase life insurance other than FEGLI:

Option C

Option C is for spouses and eligible family members. Here?s a link to the rules on who qualifies.

The amount of Option C you carry into retirement is based on the number of multiples you?ve had in effect for the last five years of your career. You must retire on an immediate annuityto maintain your insurance. As with Option B, when you retire, you will be able to choose no reduction or full reduction for each multiple of Option C. If you choose full reduction, those multiples will be free after you retire and are over 65, but the value of the coverage will reduce by 2 percent per month for 50 months, at which time the coverage will end. And you can cancel or reduce the number of multiples of your life insurance at any time.

From ages 45 to 49, Option C costs 63 cents per multiple of coverage biweekly. From ages 50 to 54, it goes up to 94 cents every other week. There are additional increases every five years.

The Future

FEGLI rates can go up, and they can go down. There have been 16 rate adjustments in the program?s 58-year history. Open enrollment periods (during which no underwriting is required) have been infrequent. The most recent was in 2004. The one before that was in 1999.

As a federal employee, you always can use form SF 2822 and get a physical to apply for insurance coverage. If the Office of Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance approves your request, then you are automatically enrolled in basic coverage. If you want optional insurance, you can enroll in Option A or Option B within 60 days of the date of OFEGLI's approval.

You can enroll in Basic, Option A, Option B, and Option C (or increase your current Option B or Option C coverage) upon marriage, divorce, death of a spouse or acquisition of eligible children, within 60 days after such qualifying life events. You need to fill out form SF 2817 and submit it to your human resources office within 60 calendar days after the date of the event.

You also can increase your FEGLI coverage if you are deployed as a civilian in support of a contingency operation, within 60 days of being notified that you have been designated as an emergency essential employee. Here are the details.

One last thing: Be sure to maintain your beneficiary designation for FEGLI throughout your career and into retirement. Marriage, divorce, death, or the birth of a child can cause you to want to change your designation.

Source: http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/retirement-planning/2012/02/life-insurance-options/41081/

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Increase Your Energy Levels With These Nutrition Tips | New Health ...

New Health And Fitness.Org - Health Information You Can Use

The human body is a magnificent thing. It can do amazing feats of athletic activity and sustain and heal from damage and foreign invaders. In order to do these things, the human body requires proper nutrition. For information on how to obtain proper nutrition, read this article.

Switching from white bread to wheat bread is good because it will cut down on the amount of sugar that your body will need to process. It is also a good idea to see if you can find light wheat bread because it will save you even more calories and fat.

You may be thinking that substituting sugar for some other kind of sugary substance may be a good thing. While these don?t have any direct affects to your weight, they are proven to have other damaging consequences including cancer and could possibly increase your level of hungry by not having your daily need of sugar.

Make sure when you are buying bread that you purchase something that says ?whole wheat? and not simply ?seven grain? or otherwise. Whole wheat bread is great for you because it is a complex carbohydrate, meaning your body expends energy to process it and it doesn?t rapidly get absorbed by the bloodstream. However, unless bread packaging specifically says ?whole wheat,? you may not be choosing the right bread.

Remove fatty foods from your diet. Overconsumption of fats can cause an accumulation of toxins within the body because your liver isn?t able to necessarily process all the fats in food. Eating vegetables and fruits can help to purge your body of the fatty toxins as they?re mainly composed of clean sugars and fibers which can be great for flushing toxins out of the body.

It is not all about counting points or counting calories. It is all about controlling your insulin levels and eating food that is good for you. If you follow a diet of nutrient-dense food, you are sure to have much more success in maintaining a healthy weight.

Limit processed foods. Prepackaged meals and processed foods often contain unhealthy chemicals to retain freshness and are loaded with extra fat and refined sugars to make them taste good. These types of foods are not nutritious and can actually be harmful to your body, so should be eaten only in moderation.

Eating the right foods is great, however, if you are not processing it properly, much of its value is wasted. Make it a point to be more active in your daily routine. Adding a few steps here and there will add up over the week. This increased activity prompts your body to process more efficiently out of need. Also incorporate short walks after every meal to facilitate digestion.

Hopefully you can start forming some healthy habits by applying the sensible steps you learned here towards being more nutritious. The biggest thing about nutrition is that you have to stay consistent if you want to achieve meaningful results, so make sure you apply these tips as much as you can.

Get a blendtec coupon and save cash. Be energized with a organic energy.

Source: http://newhealthandfitness.org/2012/02/02/increase-your-energy-levels-with-these-nutrition-tips/

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Estrogen and Fibromyalgia Syndrome ... - New Health and Fitness

New Health And Fitness.Org - Health Information You Can Use

Fibromyalgia syndrome affects about 5 million people in the U.S. today. Eighty to ninety percent of them are women. Most women are diagnosed between the ages of 40 and 55 years? which raises an interesting question. This age range coincides with the onset of menopause in most women! Could there be a link between estrogen and fibromyalgia that could lead to a new treatment for this debilitating disease?

A recent study of the estrogen and fibromyalgia phenomenon has indicated that administering estrogen replacement therapy to patients with fibromyalgia, does not reduce pain. And you need to keep in mind that there is a risk in long-term use of estrogen, including breast cancer and cardiovascular problems. However, there seem to be some positive effects in treating the other symptoms of fibromyalgia like fatigue, sleep and mood disorders (anxiety and depression).

Estrogen and fibromyalgia together play a significant role in the severity of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), where women with fibromyalgia experience more serious symptoms including back pain, abdominal cramps, insomnia and headaches. Women with issues of estrogen and fibromyalgia are also far more likely to have dysmenorrhea and breast cysts along with their PMS? and women with fibromyalgia have more severe pregnancy symptoms as well as an increased level of pain, fatigue, and muscle stiffness. During their menstrual cycle, these women will also be more likely to experience emotional distress and mental fog and confusion, than women who don?t have fibromyalgia.

Estrogen Dominance and Fibromyalgia

The estrogen and fibromyalgia connection can be more symptomatic in cases of estrogen dominance. In pre-menopausal women, estrogen dominance is a condition in which the body?s estrogen level is not in balance with progesterone. It doesn?t matter if the level of estrogen in the body is low, normal or high? there isn?t enough progesterone to create a natural balance. What can cause this imbalance? We get extra estrogen from a great many outside sources which include: birth-control pills, commercially-fed cattle and poultry, from our health and beauty products (absorbed through the skin), from our body-fat (in obesity, fat converts to estrogen), caffeinated drinks like coffee (which stimulates the body to produce estrogen) and stress from adrenal gland fatigue? to name a few.

Some symptoms of estrogen dominance (more details and symptoms can be found online through the Natural Progesterone Advisory) which can mimic other diseases like fibromyalgia, diabetes and hypothyroidism, are:

Brain fog
Cold feet and hands
Depression and anxiety
Chronic fatigue
Migraines and headaches
Decreased sex drive and Infertility
Cervical dysplasia
Dry eye syndrome
Body fat increase around the mid-section
Insomnia
Water retention
Memory loss
Increased irritability
Thyroid conditions
Irregular menstrual cycle and PMS

This is not to say that estrogen dominance only mimics fibromyalgia. A person with estrogen issues may also be suffering with fibromyalgia as well. But the estrogen and fibromyalgia connection makes these conditions much more difficult for doctors to diagnose. Treatment for estrogen dominance is usually synthetic progestin. However, there is a problem with side-effects, many of which can be at least as miserable as fibromyalgia and include joint and muscle pain, weight gain, bloating, fatigue, depression, and so on.

Only your physician can determine the best treatment approach for a dominant estrogen and fibromyalgia patient-condition. The trick, it seems, is to find a balance in the estrogen and fibromyalgia symptom treatments.

For the patient, make sure that you keep records on the symptoms of estrogen and fibromyalgia, and results of prescribed treatments, to help your doctor make the best medication decisions for your specific condition. And to support whatever treatment your doctor recommends for your estrogen and fibromyalgia connection, you can benefit from:

A fibromyalgia exercise program
Maintaining a healthy weight
Beginning a nutritional program to rebuild your body from the inside out.

Because fibromyalgia is an autoimmune disease, there is a need to strengthen your body at the cellular level where the damage by your immune system is being done? as recognized by the AMA. For more information on natural treatment of fibromyalgia symptoms, contact me now by clicking on one of the links below.
Carol Ryland is the President of a successful health and wellness business, dedicated to educating and mentoring individuals in the natural treatment of illnesses. Writer of many articles on fibromyalgia and related topics, she is a fibromyalgia survivor with a deep personal understanding of the syndrome and its devastating effects.

Whether you?re looking to play videos, download videos from the web, or you want to convert the format of a video, RealPlayer Free Download is sure to meet your needs. Try the latest version (v.15.0) of the Basic Player for free.

Source: http://newhealthandfitness.org/2012/02/01/estrogen-and-fibromyalgia-syndrome-connection-what-do-women-need-to-know/

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Drilling opposition takes right turn (Politico)

A long-term ?jobs bill? funded by oil drilling: For a conservative, what?s not to love?

Plenty, it turns out. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling has been a conservative dream for years ? but using it to pay for transportation wasn?t part of the plan.

Continue Reading

Conservative policy watchers aren?t thrilled that House Republicans are moving swiftly on a sweeping transportation funding bill that will include billions of dollars in funding derived from expanded energy production.

The drilling provisions are intended to lure Republican support for a bill that doesn?t cut spending, a stated goal of many rank-and-file conservatives.

?One of the problems you have in Washington, is you take really bad legislation, which the highway bill is, and you put a sweetener in it,? said Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham. ?That?s what?s going on here.?

Erich Zimmermann, senior policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, is also wary of the combination.

?The primary issue we have is the speculative nature of the future revenues we could expect. The fact is the [Highway] Trust Fund is going broke now, and the House bill would spend money now,? Zimmermann said. ?Simply because a lease is offered doesn?t mean it will be purchased, and just because it?s purchased doesn?t mean that drilling will occur right away. From our point of view, this is not a responsible budget approach.?

Combining drilling and transportation has resulted in some strange bedfellows. Zimmermann?s remarks came during a conference call that included the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Reason Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, all of which oppose funding transportation with drilling.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a well-known supporter of domestic energy production, said the House shouldn?t be using drilling to pay for highways. ?You can?t very well use revenues you don?t have,? he said last week.

Number-crunchers back Inhofe?s view.

In November, West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, distributed a 2008 Congressional Budget Office report, which showed that Outer Continental Shelf drilling receipts would have totaled about $2 billion over a nine-year period, far short of the expected funding gap for the highway bill.

A letter from Senate Finance Committee Republicans in November suggested ways to help the Senate fill its own funding gap of nearly $13 billion. But even those rosier CBO estimates cited by the Republicans projected only about $5.2 billion from more drilling in Alaska and OCS over 10 years.

And there have been rumblings among conservatives that by using energy production for funding, the gas tax will be unhitched from infrastructure funding, which will later require more aid from the general fund. Taxpayers have bailed out the Highway Trust Fund three times, to the tune of $35 billion over the past few years.

Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said it would be disastrous to end the ?user pays? concept that has dominated transportation financing since the conception of the interstate highway system in the 1950s.

According to Scribner, the current mix of funds ? dominated by the gasoline tax ? is superior for four reasons: It?s fair, it?s proportional to road use, it provides predictable funding levels, and it offers an important positive signal to investors.

Though Heritage supports an eventual move to a devolution model that would give states more transportation power, Needham said that for now ?highway spending is paid for out of the trust fund, and money should go into that based on the gas tax.? That was the way Congress worked until recently, Needham said, until ?they totally blew that up in 2005 with the last highway bill, which was one of the reasons that people got sick of the Republican Congress.?

Needham also suggested House leaders are rushing the bill: ?As more and more people get educated about this, there are members who are starting to raise eyebrows. That?s one of the reasons this is moving so quickly.?

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/politico_rss/rss_politico_mostpop/http___www_politico_com_news_stories0112_72235_html/44373904/SIG=11mq72187/*http%3A//www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72235.html

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Peru Camping Tours and Hike Excursion | Free Travel Articles ...

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Source: http://www.travel-direct.net/travel-and-leisure/peru-camping-tours-and-hike-excursion/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=peru-camping-tours-and-hike-excursion

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Mark Axelrod: "Spanish Is a Language of the Ghetto"; or, Newt y Yo

It's amazing how things get taken out of context especially in the "lamestream media." Allegedly, Newt Gingrich allegedly said that "Spanish is a language of the ghetto." What people don't know is that it wasn't Newt who said that, but Newt. You see, what people don't know about Newt is that Newt has been a longtime admirer of the work of the Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges and one of his most favorite short stories of the maestro is "Borges y yo" or "Borges and I." Yes, he's been quiet about that, but if one goes back to his Tulane days and has access to the library books he checked out during his tenure there one would find evidence that, in fact, Newt was a closet Borgesian.

Now, the Borges story explores the basic notion of the self and begins: "The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor."

You see, just as there are two Borgeses, there are two Newts (this latter newt should not be confused with the newt one reads in a Julio Cort?zar short story, "Axolotl" which is an entirely different newt, but not necessarily a different newt). We all see the public Newt, the Newt that insulted Ronald Reagan, the Newt who was fined for his unethical congressional behavior, the Newt that's a Washington insider, the Newt who asked his second wife for an open marriage with his third, the Newt who took money from Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac ad astra.

But that's only Newt, there's also the Newt that is known by itself, the one that questions things about the public self, the one that weeps over the death of his mother. So, you see the Newt that called Spanish "the language of the ghetto" was not said by Newt, but by Newt. The Newt who said those things is not the Newt who knows that the Spanish of Cervantes is not the Spanish of the ghetto or the Spanish of Neruda is not the Spanish of the ghetto or the Spanish of Borges is not the Spanish of the ghetto. The Newt who knows those things admires Latinos and feels compassion for whatever plights they may have to deal with. Likewise, the Newt that rails against Saul Alinsky as being a Jewish socialist or about Obama as being a Kenyan socialist, is quite candidly anti-Semitic and racist, but the other Newt is not. That's the Newt who loves Israel and takes Shedon Adelson's Jewish contributions to support his race to the White House or the Newt who wrote so lovingly about education in the Belgian Congo.

No, just as Borges was also Borges, Newt is also Newt and one only needs to read that chapter of his PhD dissertation titled, "Pierre Mentiroso, Author of the Quixote" to get a true understanding of who Newt actually is. Happy reading.

?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-axelrod/spanish-is-a-language-of-_b_1237500.html

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Experts: US ill-prepared for oil spill off Cuba

MIAMI (AP) ? The U.S. is not ready to handle an oil spill if drilling off the Cuban coast should go awry but can be better prepared with monitoring systems and other basic steps, experts told government officials Monday.

The comments at a congressional subcommittee hearing in the Miami Beach suburb of Sunny Isles come more than a week after a huge oil rig leased by Spanish energy giant Repsol YPF arrived in Cuban waters to begin drilling a deep water exploratory well.

Similar development is expected off the Bahamas next year, but decades of tense relations between the U.S. and Cuba makes cooperation in protecting the Florida Straits particularly tricky. With memories of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico still fresh, state and federal officials fear even the perception of any oil flowing toward Florida beaches could devastate an economy that claims about $57 billion from tourism.

Florida International University Professor John Proni told officials to be proactive. He is leading a consortium of researchers on U.S. readiness to handle any spill.

"For the last few years, my colleagues and I have been visiting Washington to say the best time to start preparing for an oil spill is before it happens," Proni told leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in a hotel-turned-hearing room overlooking turquoise waters. Proni said he has seen little action from officials in Washington, though they responded positively.

U.S. officials have turned attention to preventing future spills since the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by the energy company BP exploded in April 2010, causing the well to blow out and unleashing millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude washed up on pristine shoreline, soiled wildlife and left a region dependent on tourist dollars scrambling to rebuild its image.

Coast Guard officials said Monday they didn't know if drilling off Cuba had begun.

Experts testified current estimates have surface oil ? in event of any spill off Cuba ? moving up to 3 mph due to the Gulfstream, but that the fast-moving current would make it difficult for any crude quickly crossing the Florida Straits.

Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, commander of the Coast Guard region that covers the Florida Straits, said a likely scenario would have oil spreading and reaching U.S. waters in six to 10 days.

Proni said he wants a system that can monitor changes in underwater sounds to immediately alert U.S. officials to a spill or other unusual activity. He also wants the U.S. to invest in developing better computer models to predict oil movement and to assess the existing ecosystem and the type of oil Cuba possesses. That way, experts can better pinpoint any possible damage and find out if it came from Cuban wells.

Proni said the fast-moving water would make it difficult to burn the oil or strain it, as was done to halt the spread of the Deepwater Horizon spill. He added that more research is needed on the risks of using chemicals that break down the oil into tiny droplets.

Baumgartner said his agency has been working on a response plan. The Coast Guard and private response teams have been granted the required visas under the U.S. embargo to work with the Cuban government and its partners should a problem arise. Since March 2011, the agency has been working with Repsol, and U.S. officials inspected the rig earlier this month.

The rig was given a good bill of health. Asked Monday about the rig's readiness, though, the U.S. Department of Interior's regional director for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Lars Herbst said inspectors found some minor problems with the safety systems that would have kept it from being allowed to drill in U.S. waters. He said it was unclear whether repairs had been made.

Jackie Savitz a senior scientist with the nonprofit Oceana, who attended the hearing, said she was glad lawmakers were so concerned but hoped they would express similar interest in offshore drilling in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, where many rigs are already drilling for oil.

U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of three South Florida Cuban-American lawmakers who attended the hearing, said the concerns over Cuba's oil exploration were particularly pressing because of the political context and hopes the Obama administration would quickly respond to the consortium's concerns. But he agreed Proni's proposals could be applied to the Gulf of Mexico too.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has authored a bill that would sanction those who help Cuba develop its oil reserves.

"We can't stop Repsol from drilling now, but we can act to deter future leaders to avoid the Castro brothers becoming the oil tycoons of the Caribbean," she told the committee.

Fellow South Floridian U.S. Rep. David Rivera wants to expand the 1990 Oil Pollution Act to fully cover companies operating in foreign waters, in the event oil reaches U.S. territory to ensure they repay the U.S. government for any cleanup costs for spills.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-30-Cuba-Oil%20Drilling/id-191736322a494ab5a6896a5477d0db45

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