Otar: Unveiling the Retirement Myth

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kyounge1956 Where do I get this info? I googled Washington + "pension guarantee" and got a bajillion hits. Is it usually the state insurance auditor or someone? And I take it the Feds in this case would mean the Pension Guarantee corp or whatever their name is?

I Googled "Washington State annuity guarantee rate" and got this:
Life and annuity guarantee associations by state

It looks like you are covered up to $500K in the aggregate and per contract. Your mistake was to look for pension guarantees -- different animal.

[kyounge1956]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff I Googled "Washington State annuity guarantee rate" and got this: Life and annuity guarantee associations by state It looks like you are covered up to $500K in the aggregate and per contract. Your mistake was to look for pension guarantees -- different animal.

Hi donheff,
thanks for the link.

based on what Bikerdude wrote, there may be a WA state guarantee on the City pension as well as on insurance company annuities:

Quote:

You should check, but I would assume your state guarantee's the city pension and the insurance annuity is probably covered up to 100K. If the state fails to cover the city pension the Fed's would step in. However, if you have a large pension you probably will not be fully covered.

My thought was, suppose the state pension guarantee (if any) wouldn't replace the full amount of the ordinary pension benefit. In that case maybe it would be smart to choose one of the reduced benefit/lump sum combos. That might bring the pension payment down into the range where it would be fully guaranteed, and the annuity would be under $500K so that would be guaranteed too. I still need to follow up on Stevewc's suggestion and find out whether my City pension is actually an annuity purchased on my behalf by the pension system. I don't think it is—to the best of my knowledge the pensions are actually paid by the pension fund, not by a private insurer, but it can't hurt to double check.

[donheff]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kyounge1956 Hi donheff, thanks for the link. based on what Bikerdude wrote, there may be a WA state guarantee on the City pension as well as on insurance company annuities:

I was focusing on the commercial annuity option. The city pension should be covered by the Federal program administered by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation - you can confirm with your HR people. I don't know the details on PBGC's guarantees but it should be relatively straight forward to check. Was this already discussed earlier in the thread? My gut tells me a PBGC covered pension is a safer bet.

[michelle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bosco I'm not sure exactly what you mean, Michelle. I am Canadian, and used to being treated more politely by Canadian merchants. This is partially why I was so shocked at rude behavior by this man. Having spent a lot of time in both countries, I will say that this is an atypical experience, in either country. I have never noticed a lower quality of customer service in Canada, with the possible exception of government agencies.

Admittedly, it was a stretch. I hope the sting of your experience is wearing off though. His book is really quite a good read.

[gryffindor]

I would love to see a good analysis of how to accurately ascertain the long-term risks of annuities / pensions. Otar spends little time on this unfortunately, Because one of the biggest issues in my opinion is the consumer being able to understand the true risk of the institution bearing the long-term risk.

People who had been counting on their defined pension plans with companies going bankrupt are finding that they never thought about this systematic risk.

Even now its very hard to clearly ascertain this risk if you find a good price on an annuity without the sales fees, etc. Does anyone believe the ratings institutions after they measured a lot of junk paper at AAA?

And finally, those with state government pensions are likely to be exposed to more risk of unilateral reductions than federal / military pensions as the state fiscal crisis worsens in the next 20 years and the states figure out a way to declare some type of bankruptcy.

Now many people don't have a choice -- they have to keep their pensions. But others have the potential to take the lump sum and at least transfer risk from a single company to 1 or many financial institutions if they could make a good decision

[retiredtuna1]

Freebird or LOL or Cuppajoe, if you have a copy of Otar's book in pdf format, could you email it to me? Thanks.

[samclem]

Quote:

Originally Posted by retiredtuna1 Freebird or LOL or Cuppajoe, if you have a copy of Otar's book in pdf format, could you email it to me? Thanks.

Hey, if you've got any Beatles tunes, could you rip 'em to MP3 and email them to me?

Hmm, I wonder why authors find it hard to make money selling books direct to customers, even when the price is right.

[Zathras]

No doubt Samclem. The dishonesty of some people still surprises me. Don't know why it should as I continue to see it, but there it is

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by samclem Hey, if you've got any Beatles tunes, could you rip 'em to MP3 and email them to me? Hmm, I wonder why authors find it hard to make money selling books direct to customers, even when the price is right.

Gee, I bet Otar never saw that coming when he was handing out his free copies... of articles that he'd already been paid for, repackaged and self-published...

[LOL!]

Otar posts on bogleheads that his PDF version of "Unveiling the Retirement Myth" is once again free for download. You have to click through at otar retirement calculator until near the final order page to read that it is free.

This is a great book for folks about to enter or already in the Decumulation phase as this lengthy thread attests to.

[Dennis]

Well, I guess IAD..If you have enough and a 3% from it will get the job done and want to leave some behind, like we decided?
We just dumped our $ into Balanced Funds like VWINX, BERIX and a few Bonds and the heck with it..

First time we reduced our bonds and added extra $ to them was after 08' , going into 09' to play a Recovery,but now we took that $ back out and everything is back on course..

We Lived on A Commission Income our whole lives, running our own business, so we don't need to have an annuity or anything else to give us a Reg. Income,like Salary people need to have.. Just keep a couple of Yrs of $ for bills in ST Bonds and things have worked out better than we hoped...

Looks like going to leave Alot more $ behind than we planned..
and if they are right, that the last 10 yrs was going to be the worse and the next 10-20 will be alot better..? Better yet for our Kids..and Grandkids..
:-)

[Onward]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! PDF version of "Unveiling the Retirement Myth" is once again free for download

Thank you so much! One more reason for me to get a Kindle.

[Darryl]

Otar posts on bogleheads that his PDF version of "Unveiling the Retirement Myth" is once again free for download. You have to click through at otar retirement calculator until near the final order page to read that it is free.

Thanks LOL I just downloaded as that was the price I was looking for.

[SecondCor521]

"No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher except in critical articles & reviews."

The way this is worded, it would seem perfectly OK to publish the whole publication. The prohibition is against publishing any part of the publication, not against the whole thing.

(Yes, of course I know what they meant, but that is not what they said. Knowing the difference between those two is a useful skill that I learned from my divorce attorney.)

2Cor521

[NW-Bound]

LOL, thanks for reminding us of this book. Last year, I was about to pay to download it, when the trouble that Bosco had and the rude response of the author turned me off. Then, I forgot all about it.

This turned out to be a very good book. The gist of it that many would want to hear is that if your WR is low, around 3%, then it should be OK. Around 4%, it is iffy. And if it is higher, one would be safer with buying annuity. And as someone else has pointed out earlier and as we have already known, luck has a lot to do with it, meaning if you happen to retire into a string of bad years, there are going to be many sleepless nights...

Some people only read the later chapters, from chapter 41 till the end. You would miss his discussions on the effects of the frequency of portfolio rebalancing, the inclusion of foreign equities into the portfolio, and gasp, how one can do a bit of "dirty market timing" by looking at P/E, etc...

All in all, an excellent book.

[chinaco]

Thanks for the info

[Danmar]

Agree it's an excellent book. Basically he interprets the data one can find in Firecalc and draws some excellent conclusions. Certainly worth the price.

[Lisa99]

I couldn't find it on his SW site, but found it on his blog. Blog states that it is free for download until January 2.

http://www.retirementoptimizer.com/d...G/URMGreem.pdf

[DeborahB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisa99 I couldn't find it on his SW site, but found it on his blog. Blog states that it is free for download until January 2. http://www.retirementoptimizer.com/d...G/URMGreem.pdf

Thanks - found the article (525 page pdf!) and saved it to my PC. Now to read it?

[retiredtuna1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! Otar posts on bogleheads that his PDF version of "Unveiling the Retirement Myth" is once again free for download. You have to click through at otar retirement calculator until near the final order page to read that it is free. This is a great book for folks about to enter or already in the Decumulation phase as this lengthy thread attests to.

Thanks for the tip, LOL. Got it.