[quote=bearishgurl]I am surrounded by boomers and beyond who are living simple lives and are seemingly not in danger of going under, EVER. The vast majority own paid-off residences. Many own 15-30 year-old vehicles but have longtime friends and/or family members who own service garages. They have military and ALL KINDS of other public and private pensions and thus have money to travel to see grandkids and for pleasure (within the US).
Re: MY pension is not in danger of being cut because I do not have an “enhanced” pension (which was offered to existing employees after my tenure). The formulas are such in the enhanced program as to give these employees 2-3 times my monthly pension for the same highest-year salary and same years of service as I have. Much more is/was withdrawn out of these employees’ paychecks for their pension contribution than was mine but their monthly pension amounts are/will be MUCH greater, out of proportion to their contributions.
This was a grave mistake which was made by your elected officials at the time.
The pensioners in these later tiers will be the ones to suffer cuts, if any have to be made and/or their healthcare allowances (currently added to monthly pension checks, but NOT guaranteed) will be revoked …. The earlier tiers with much lower-paid pensioners will NOT be affected, nor will their healthcare allowances.
There are much fewer pensioners in my retirement tier who even use the health plans offered by the retirement assn as their primary carrier as most are eligible for Medicare. Many use the (much cheaper) plans offered by the Assn for Medicare Parts B and D.[/quote]
BG, I don’t understand your pension details well enough. But just to say this…It wasn’t clear to me what employee contributions mattered or not. My understanding of what the issue is is that an employer is suppose to put pension contributions (whether it is from the employee’s contribution or the employer’s contribution) into a pension fund and set it aside. The problem is that a lot of times that didn’t/doesn’t happen…The company/government raided the fund and spent it, thinking it would contribute what was supposedly owed to the pension fund later…..That is what the pension shortfall is about…Money that was suppose to go to the employee (regardless of the source of where it came from) but otherwise diverted and/or borrowed against. Now that there is a budget problem, there’s an IOU to the pension fund, and unresolved that hole is going to affect everyone who is expecting a payment.
