I completely agree with the original poster's quandary and question. Based on my company's practices, you're lucky to get a raise that close to inflation. Ours is about half that, and when I first started about 3 years ago there was no such thing as a raise. I'm now in a position where I'm evaluating my options for how I could earn more money, and the easiest way seems to be to find another place to work. I wish I could think of a great reason why my current employer should increase my salary by about 20K when I'm currently doing the same work for less than that. Sorry, it was more of a commiseration than an idea for you.

I enjoyed seeing this thread, because I recently struggled with this question and polled various people in my office on their email organization technique. Nothing was satisfying or logical. I used to just delete everything I didn't want and leave unfinished items in my inbox, but that wasn't working, especially when you need to CYA. My current system which I'm still not thrilled with is to have a few folders for large projects, and I organize the rest in archives by month sent/received. Using Outlook I can make a "power search" that searches all my folders for the current year. Prompted by an earlier thread, I might try making a few more saved searches that are filtered on specific words. Alan