By Nicholas Hamner
Investment Advisor Representative & Director of Marketing
[email protected]
Kyle and I spent the latter half of last week in Chicago for a boot camp on federal employee benefits. We flew in Wednesday and left on Friday. The flights were easy, but the education was tougher. We learned about the program through word-of-mouth last year, and both Kyle and I had to submit to a detailed and thorough screening process before we could even begin training. From January through last week, Kyle and I have been studying, participating in virtual study sessions, and then finally attending last week’s boot camp. It seemed like overkill going in until we got into the first week of the curriculum, and it has been like drinking from a firehose ever since. But we’re good, we’re ready, and the ability to work fluidly with federal employees to understand and capitalize on their benefits should be a nice addition to our already robust service offerings.
The whole learning process has raised the ever-present question, though. How can the government take something so easy and make it so complicated? How did we go from “build a retirement system for these workers” to a disjointed network of long-winded, non-acronym abbreviations like CSRS, FERS, FEHB, FEGLI, and FLTCIP, with sliding scales, weird “tests”, and an ever-growing list of qualifying ages and years?
We arrived too early on Wednesday, so we took the extra time and explored what we could of the city. We took the El to the Willis Tower, grabbed an Italian Beef sandwich at a place called Luke’s (which was low key one of the better meals of the trip if not the best meal of the trip), and caught a Cubs game at Wrigley. Did you know Wrigley lets you bring in outside food and has a doughnut shop right across the street from the right field entrance gate? Now you do!
One thing that took us both by surprise was how (relatively) nice the El—and by extension, Chicago’s entire public transportation network—was compared to Philadelphia’s. If you look at the maps, both cities’ transit networks are set up in similar ways, with tentacle-like arms extending from a central loop wrapping downtown before stretching out into the outer regions of the city and suburbs. But the comparisons stop there. If you’re familiar at all with SEPTA stations—be they regional rail, Broad Street Line, Market Frankford El, trolley, or the old Norristown High Speed Line/current Metro—Chicago’s are so different. They’re not particularly designed any better, but Chicago’s stations are well lit, they’re generally free of trash, the tile and paint are in good shape, and there seems to be fewer people residing in or relieving themselves on them.
As someone who grew up in an area with no public transportation and who still sees trains as a sort of amusement ride, I appreciated the better upkeep and dug into why there was such a stark difference. And it was obvious. I didn’t really have to do the research. In fact, I did do the research, realized it was just a bunch of numbers packed into a nearly unintelligible paragraph, and deleted it. Also, for what it’s worth, neither city makes it particularly easy to pull numbers just on rail service.
Long story short—SEPTA is running more miles of track, servicing more stations, and accommodating more daily riders with fewer vehicles and less funding. About $300 million a year less. What’s interesting about all of this is that Chicago’s transit is funded largely by fare revenue while SEPTA’s largest fund source is state funds. Looking at fares, however, something doesn’t make sense. A day pass in Chicago is $5 while a day pass in Philadelphia is $13. So Chicago is somehow footing a nicer transit system with a larger portion of its larger budget coming from fewer riders paying less money…
Like I said before, how can governments take something so easy and make it so complicated?
But don’t let my little diatribe on public transit funding (which I know was an engaging read!) take away from the more important fact that Franklin Retirement Solutions is now better situated to help federal employees unravel their benefits. Important if you are or someone you know is a Fed with questions.