Benefits And Benefits Of Pension Pensions

As you approach age of 60, it’s time to take benefit of your life long hard work in terms of pension benefits. First, you need to decide at what age you would like to begin your CPP pension benefits. As this decision will impact your total pension benefits for the rest of your life, caution is advised. This article will help you to understand when the best age is to being your Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits.

As we become older, issues with our health begin to take affect and finding ways to fund for that care is becoming even more difficult. In the article “Some Elders Must Take Drastic Measures to Obtain Long-term Care”, national magazine journalist Mary A. Fischer (2011) states that many Americans must face demeaning and disempowering choices in order to qualify for Medicaid or Medicare—federal funded health insurance programs— such as refusing to pay for a spouses institutionalization, divorce, and spending down assets. The author argues that these choices leave the healthy spouse with decreased funds to plan for their own retirement expense (Fisher, 2011). Working in the health care field for 4 years, along with my family’s own personal experiences I can relate to this article, since I have seen a variety of ways that federal funded health insurances have been unable to meet the expectations and demands of its beneficiaries.

They continued to deficiency employees declining to make responsible pension payment. That combined with the national financial downfall, causes Chicago’s pension debt to balloon into a full blown financial crunch. The difficulties in Chicago have only gotten worse; even as the city’s long-range economy has become better. In Houston, the city’s healthy economic position has helped to pad the punch of substandard pension funding decision thus far, but surroundings are changing. The decrease in the oil markets along with the property tax revenue cap could quickly enlarge the city’s pension predicament and outcome in much like the one in Chicago. In order to stay from dire consequences, leaders must immediately take action to fundamentally reform Houston’s pension systems so that they are impartial and maintainable for both employees and taxpayers. City official must access local management over the city’s pension systems in order to negotiate changes directly with workers and enact those changes locally. In addition, they must fully fund the pension system pay off the debt in 20 years or less; and make the projections, historical data and financial news publicly available. Retirement plans for public workers in the U.S of America face serious challenges. These pension plans are greater extent expensively, underfunded, and retention of the most talented public servants and create

July 19, 2013, marked the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history when the city of Detroit, Michigan, filed for bankruptcy protection. Detroit was in such dire fiscal straits that emergency manager Kevyn Orr described it as “the Olympics of restructuring.” This bankruptcy filing can be considered the most high-profile case of the many recent bankruptcy filings across the country, and with such notoriety the Detroit bankruptcy became a highly politicized affair with different political sides typically blaming the other side for Detroit’s problems. Understanding the true causes that forced Detroit to file chapter 9 bankruptcy is critical to preventing future municipalities from enduring the same sort of pain that Detroit faced in

On August 17, 2006 the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (the Act) was signed into law. The Pension Protection Act ("PPA") [P.L. 109-280] originated as a single-employer defined benefit pension funding reform bill to strengthen the DB pension system. However, it is best known for the number of provisions to enhance 401(k) and 403(k) plans, especially the auto enrollment feature. Among other noteworthy provisions are those intended to remove legal obstacles to, and create new incentives for, automatic enrollment 401(k) and 403(b) plans. It represents one of the most comprehensive pension reform legislation since ERISA was enacted in 1974. The Act has lead to many companies changing the way their plans are designed and administered, amend plan documents, increase plan funding, and make additional plan disclosures in regulatory filings and to plan participants. The Act made many sweeping changes but for the sake of brevity, only the automatic enrollment plan made by employers on the behalf of its employees is addressed in this report as to the rationale behind the passage of the PPA. Even though the provisions generally apply both to 401(k) and 403(b) plans, for explanatory purposes all references will refer only to 401(k) plans.

According to a USA Today article from last year, nearly sixty percent of Americans have more than $25,000 put away for retirement. Thirty-six percent of Americans have less than $1000 saved for later in life. This means that as more people, especially the baby boomer generation, retire, there will be more strain on program such as Social Security and Medicare, and ultimately the federal budget that is responsible for these programs. If steps are taken now to close this gap, we will insure the continued longevity of these programs by raising the tax contributions flowing into both Social Security and Medicare.

For an extended period, state and local policymakers and labor unions ignored the growing public pension obligations as they became an increasing fiscal burden. The pension problem was enormous and associated with irresponsible financial practices connected to defined benefit pension plans (Thompson, 1980, 118). Following this, the state of California and its local governments have a problem of underfunded and unfunded public pension liabilities that was estimated to be around $583 billion (Nava & Christensen, 2015, 1). Despite the fact that the implementation of PEPRA was significant, its impact will be minimal over an extended period, and it has many weaknesses that include failure to address the currently underfunded pension liability

The United States’ Social Security system was implemented by Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1935 as a part of the New Deal during the Great Depression “to frame a law which gives some measure of protection to the average citizen and his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age." Although the system has proven to be one of the most popular programs ever established, its future has been questionable for some time. According to the Social Security Administration (2008), “People are living longer, the first baby boomers are nearing retirement, and the birth rate is lower than in the past. The result is that the worker-to-beneficiary ratio has fallen from 16.5-to-1 in 1950 to 3.3-to-1 today. Within 40 years it will be 2-to-1. At this ratio there will not be enough workers to pay scheduled benefits at current tax rates” (Social Security Administration [SSA], 2008). This issue concerns many citizens, especially younger generations, and continues to be a hot topic of debate amongst politicians. Many ideas have been proposed about how to reform the current system. The most popular of these ideas is to create an entirely new system consisting of mandatory pension accounts which would allow individuals to accumulate a balance over time with investment options such as stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. This argument will show why Social Security should not be replaced by a mandatory private pension system.

Therefore, your dependence on Social Security depends on your gender, ethnicity, and class/labor market status. If you are a women you will be penalized within Social Security for taking periods of time off work to care for children and parents because they do not recognize that as being unable to work (Wellin, Lecture: October 21). This affects many women because they are the majority of caretakers within the family. They are socialized to be caretakers at a young age by family, peers, media, and schools. I believe that Social Security should be amended to incorporate a policy for those who need to take off work to help those family members in need. Did you know that only one-third of working women have access to supplementary income besides Social Security (Wellin, Lecture: October 26)? This is most likely because that they use their savings to help take care of family members and they use that while they aren’t receiving any income. Also, women are less likely than men to receive income from private pensions; this pattern also was found in blacks and Hispanics (Quadagno: 356). Even those that received private pensions that were not white men received less benefits than those who were white men (Quadagno: 357). About 20% of Americans rely on Social Security as their only source of income, within that group of people: 18% are white elder white women, 38% elderly blacks, and 38% Hispanic (Quadagno: 100). Notice how

The championed cause of social responsibility is embodied in the Social Security program; at its core, Social Security's mission is to provide assistance to the elderly and less-privileged in society. Although it may have been a sound approach for its time – during the depths of the Great Depression, when many were poor and unemployed and the economy may truly have benefited from the increased spending – it has since become a bloated budgetary item. Many of its difficulties could be said to stem from its “pay-as-you-go” funding plan. Social Security withholdings are not put away for the future needs of the person from whom they are withheld, but are instead transferred to an existing claimant. The pay-as-you-go system means that current recipients are paid for out of current revenues.

The Great Depression is described as: “the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, it began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors.”1 This is known as an extremely dark time in the history of the world, as the economic system that was supposed to be a fair playing ground for the masses, showed the amount of damage it could have upon lives. The wealth was in the hands of a very few (not much has changed), and the rest of the world were left to fight over the breadcrumbs of the 1%. Whether it be a negative or positive remembrance, Franklin D. Roosevelt will forever be remembered for his efforts in creating the intricate and paragon shifting bill, The New Deal. This proposal was filled head to toe of different programs, reliefs, and actions all set to help the USA get out of the Great Depression. The one that made the absolute most noise and impact upon our country is known as “Social Security”, which is defined as: “a federal insurance program that provides benefits to retired people and those who are unemployed or disabled”. This writing is set to transport the reader back to that time and further explore the impact that social security has had on us as a society, as well as alternatives that were proposed that could have taken America a different route.

Retirement and Social Security issues have become local, national, and international concerns that will also affect each of us on a personal level. Social Security benefits began in 1935 when the depression hit and put many elderly people out of work (http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov). Social Security has been around for over 70 years providing a dependable monthly income with automatic increases as the cost of living increased. The Social Security Administration reports that workers need 70-80 percent of pre-retirement income once retired and Social Security only provides about 40 percent (www.ssa.gov). The depletion of funds is becoming a great concern and is also getting worse with each generation.

Amazingly, private pension plans survived the stock market crash in October of 1929 with only a three percent of workers losing their plans. In fact, a few of the private pension plans started before 1929 are still active today-

First and foremost, despite slight recent increases in the amount of income obtained by members of the older population, their economic status is still quite perilous (Federal Interagency Forum, 2012).1 Men in this category have a median income of $27,707, while women continue to lag behind with a median income of $15,362 (AOA & AOCL, 2012). A vast majority of these individuals cite Social Security as their primary source for this income, amounting to 86-percent of the total older population (AOA & AOCL,

Social Security is now the largest government program in the world as it accounts for 24% of total US federal spending. Since 2010, its money has been depleting due to paying out more benefits than it collects in taxes. A proposed solution is switching over to a Private Pension system, which has workers managing their own retirement funds through personal investment accounts. While some countries have adopted this system, I believe it benefits us to keep the current Social Security system and not replace it with a Private Pension one.