I understand that this is not guaranteed and it's certainly not to make light of a situation that puts a lot of our government employees in difficult financial spots... but don't they tend to approve back pay for the time furloughed?
I remember in one of the most recent government shutdowns my buddies were civilian Engineers for the military who had ~1-2 weeks? furloughed, and then it was approved that they'd be paid for the time they weren't at work.
... I was a little jealous actually, free paid vacation. Hah!
Of course I'm aware that's not a sure thing and they could just as easily say "eh we're not paying you too bad sorry!"
Yeah, last time there was a gov't shutdown the federal employees were given back pay, which at the time annoyed me since I was working as a contractor and continued to work while they were furloughed.
eh. I don't really care unless it drags on for more than a month because then I'd have to start moving some money around. We're a single income household, but have savings to get us through for a few months of no pay.
The most unfortunate thing for me is that I am one of the folks that still 'gets' to go to work. I'd be ecstatic to get a few weeks of unpaid time off and even more ecstatic to get a few weeks off of work and then get back pay.
Yeah, I'd be happy with getting some unpaid time off as well and obviously even happier if I'm paid for that time later. In any event, I'm not worried.
I just want to point out that for those Feds who are furloughed, they are explicitly forbidden from leaving their duty station (in terms of the general city, etc) or from doing any work on Federal projects, even if they want to. So it's not like they can go haring off on an out of town vacation for a couple weeks, unless they are sure they can do it undetected, or race back to their duty station within a short enough time (a few hours).
Also, the work doesn't stop even though they are forbidden from working. So many, especially among the upper level researchers, just go on working from home on things that are not easily 'detectable' so as not to get too far behind or screw over all their non-Federal collaborators. My husband actually had to sneak into his own friggin office in the middle of the night to get some work-related stuff so that he could keep working (against orders) at home. It's just so unbelievably frustrating. I'm surprised to see some Feds thinking of it as a vacation. It sure didn't feel like a vacation to my husband.
Last furlough was incredibly disruptive for us, since it fell right before some annual out-of-country research work. Quite a few people (non Feds, including me) had spent lots of money on this project and needed my husband to be at the field site, and he couldn't come down. So for several weeks, we all twiddled our thumbs and tried to find other things to do while he absolutely RAGED at home.
In some ways, though, we were lucky that the furlough fell a few days before we were due to leave. So he never went in the first place. If the fulough had started a few days later, when my husband was already AT the field site, he would have had to turn around and fly straight home. Efficient, right? And good for mental health.
Anyway, in terms of preparing? This year, we scheduled field work to fall outside the window of risk. Also, my husband will make sure all the necessary work materials he needs are at HOME with copies on his home computer, so he doesn't have to risk the wrath of the higher ups for :gasp: continuing to do his job while not being paid. Other than that, we'll dip into some extra cash in savings accounts, or rely on credit cards temporarily, if we need to.