Pension plans are a real pain to manage.

Post #387,357 by a6l6e6x 3/7/14 6:28:54 PM Reply	Pension plans are a real pain to manage. When the stock market tanks, companies are required (by ERISA) to kick in extra funds to maintain minimum required pension fund assets. When the pension fund investments do great, the company can slack off with their contributions to the pension fund. So, the company never quite knows what its pension expenses will be. They do supposedly have professionals managing the pension fund. On the other hand, if the company goes tits-up and no longer makes contributions, the pension you were promised goes to hell. These "defined benefit" plans all of a sudden are "defined unless something bad happened" plans. And you know that no one goes to jail when pension promises are broken. Ask TWA pilots what happened to their pensions. 401-K, and such (e.g. Keough) plan expenses are much more predictable as they relate to payroll and the stupidity level of employees who do not take advantage of employer matching contributions. That's why they call them "defined contribution" plans. The employee decides how the contributions are invested. Unfortunately, many employees are not that savvy with their choices. And, employers don't often provide the very best choices to begin with. But, the employee does make the investment choices and the company has no way to take that money back. Pension plans usually have a vesting period, say 5 years. If for some you reason haven't worked long enough, you get zip! So, do you want a bird in the hand or two in the bush? Alex ÂThere is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.Â -- Isaac Asimov
Post #387,381 by mmoffitt 3/8/14 11:25:36 PM Reply	Governments should be in charge of pensions. They can always print money if/when they need it. "The market" just cannot compete with Social Security. (Winning the lottery - i.e. buying MSFT in the first week and holding it until 2000 doesn't count. There aren't many of those.) Take a family member I know, for instance. He argued with me about "always paying the max" and that he'd never get his back. Until I showed him the max tables for every year from the time he was born until he retired. He got everything back + interest that he and his company paid into it, adjusted for current dollars, in less than five years. And that doesn't count the 0.5 times his take that his spouse gets who never earned enough to qualify on her own. That five year period ended twenty-three years ago and there is still a 2 trillion dollar surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund. Like paying for healthcare, retirement planning is better done at the government level.
Post #387,383 by Ashton 3/8/14 11:52:22 PM Reply	Unless, say in some future electoral tragedy, President Palin (or fill-in personal nightmare) happens. But aside from that Gotcha: good plan. Thus unlikely under Vullturism, as we see daily. The 98% appear to be forced towards a digital choice: 'revolution'/ 'change' so incremental as to be laughable to the Plutocracy, as it drives relentlessly to serfdom. But not for the actual Governors. (And we never Warn our kids about the Unicorns in their civics indoctrinations, so they get a late start in repairing.) I no solutions, but have tools useful in building barricades. And recipe for phlogiston. Get it Over: sooner? or a bit later? Indecision kills (more.)
Post #387,390 by boxley 3/9/14 12:11:08 PM Reply	agreed Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep

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