401Ks and IRAs are the way to go IMHO.
Multi-employer translates into union, a fact disguised by this “writer.”
I read a long red-flag article about this murky looting of peoples retirement funds, including IRAs.
I don’t have a fund or IRAs so didn’t really get it.
The long and short was that in the dead of night, again, congress is changing the rules about when and how and at what age retirees can draw out their money.
July 12 was the date, and the title of the story was “Congress is Coming for Your IRA”.
I like lump sum 401Ks. After I retired I saw my lump sum increase significantly thanks to a healthy stock market. Income based pension plans would only seem wise if one is not comfortable managing investments.
If you contribute 200 or more per month for the last five years into the ‘drop’ plan and your salary I s 60 thousand a year upon retirement you get one million in lump sum payout. I do not comprehend the math. Firefighters, police and most state and federal workers are the ones this is benefiting. Bankruptcy seems the only way out. Insolvency. If it’s a ponzi scheme it’s not sustainable.
401Ks and IRAs will probably be used to bail out pensions, especially in marx-o-crat run cities. The prediction is that you (and I) will receive gov’t bonds in replacement of a certain pecentage of your funds.
Mostly agree, but not all pensions were "pie in the sky". Much of the blame is on the bureaucrats and politicians who underfunded the pension funds and the corrupt unions who effective sabotaged them by allowing spiking and concurrent disability, allowing folks to sell back vacation and sick time, work massive overtime, double dipping, and get fake promotions for their final year to end up getting 50%-100% more than they should.
Defined benefit (pension) plans need to die, for everyone. Convert them all to defined contribution, aka 401K.
Look forward to a dozen big municipal bankruptcies causing most pension plans to implode...
How the hell are they going broke? The stock market is going through the roof. The people doing the investing should be put in jail for theft.
At least they aren’t talking about making FRAUD Illegal again, because that kind of fix would be devastating for their campaign fund raising.
THE ONLY legislation in this area should do one of two things.
If the PBGC is going to remain in existence, then (1) the law needs to mandate that any pension plan desiring to remain eligible for possible help from the PBGC has ten years to improve the funds managed to drastically lower their underfunded conditions, or lose eligibility for PBGC assistance, and (2) all funds now eligible to receive PBGC assistance must close to new members any funds that are defined benefit funds, establishing only defined contribution plans for new members, and (3) the PBGC has to be required by law to raise it’s premiums on the covered plans, constantly, to match the underfunded risk the plans demonstrate, to the point that the PBGC cannot itself be underfunded at any time.
Or, the PBGC has to be closed, returning any funds it has as rebates to the plans it got premium payments from, and those plans can then go out on the private market to get underfunded plan risk insurance on their own.
There is much wrong with the pension plans involved.
But the PBGC has been wrongly run also. It has not been (maybe not empowered to be) a strict enough policeman/insurance plan for the pension plans it has agreed to assume an insured risk of covering for underfunded conditions. A strictly private, non-governmental insurer would have refused their insurance to plans that were continually poorly run, and charged higher premiums all along.
As to the pensioners, while I have SOME sympathy for them, some of them received promises (benefit expectations) that they never should have been promised. Some of the promises were actuarially irresponsible, some were made with rosy unrealistic expectations, and many were made by decisions of persons who would no longer be left holding the bag when their promises collapsed against reality. It’s only too bad that laws don’t make it so that you are never released from the fiduciary responsibility for financial mistakes you make with other persons money, even after you’ve left the official seat of that responsibility but the consequences of your decisions have not yet played out. If there were such laws, the officers and board members, past and present, of many public and private pension funds could be locked up for “professional malpractice”.
These are all arguments for ALL “pension contributions”, by employers and employees, to be paid on behalf of the employee into a private retirement/[pension system of the employee’s own choosing, and that such deposits be allowed to be moved to a different plan, without penalty, anytime the individual is unhappy with how the funds are being managed. However, the only type of plan such contributions should be allowed to be paid into are either a mere “retirement investment account” mandated to be held until a certain retirement age, or a private not-for-profit defined contribution pension plan. Anything else well make bogus promises not to be believed, or expensive at someone else’s expense.