I knew my works defined benefit plan was too good to last, but it still hurt to recieve the letter yesterday:
"We are all no doubt aware of the changes many companies have had to make to their retirement benefits......the media is filled with stories about companies, some in our industry, that have stopped making contributions.....terminated their plans outright."
"The facts of the matter are that lower investment returns and teh increased longevity of retirees have combined to put significant pressure on pension plans. In the past few years ********* has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to our pension plans. We remain commited to providing....." blah blah blah for a while longer.
This is my favorite sentence of the bad news letter: "These changes are designed to maintain the viability and stability of our benefit programs, and to make our retirement program costs more predictable and manageable in a highly competitive business environment." - Notice how they manage never to say "WE ARE CUTTING YOUR BENEFITS."
Long story short, they are changing the normal retirement date from 62 to 65, calculating your benefit as an average of the last 10 years instead of just 3 (to make the payment lower), and jacking new hires after mid 2006 even more so they can grandfather out us "old timers".
They just lowered the benifits in 2003, to have to re-adjust again 3 years later does not bode well! Man, this is really messing with my SWR!
The thing is, I see them working, I predict in ten years the pension will be completely gone for new hires, and won't be worth much to us old timers either. I guess they feel they can't just wipe it away in one stroke without upsetting the employees, but if you boil the frog slowly...stops being an intillectual conversation when it happens to you!
"We are all no doubt aware of the changes many companies have had to make to their retirement benefits......the media is filled with stories about companies, some in our industry, that have stopped making contributions.....terminated their plans outright."
"The facts of the matter are that lower investment returns and teh increased longevity of retirees have combined to put significant pressure on pension plans. In the past few years ********* has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to our pension plans. We remain commited to providing....." blah blah blah for a while longer.
This is my favorite sentence of the bad news letter: "These changes are designed to maintain the viability and stability of our benefit programs, and to make our retirement program costs more predictable and manageable in a highly competitive business environment." - Notice how they manage never to say "WE ARE CUTTING YOUR BENEFITS."
Long story short, they are changing the normal retirement date from 62 to 65, calculating your benefit as an average of the last 10 years instead of just 3 (to make the payment lower), and jacking new hires after mid 2006 even more so they can grandfather out us "old timers".
They just lowered the benifits in 2003, to have to re-adjust again 3 years later does not bode well! Man, this is really messing with my SWR!
The thing is, I see them working, I predict in ten years the pension will be completely gone for new hires, and won't be worth much to us old timers either. I guess they feel they can't just wipe it away in one stroke without upsetting the employees, but if you boil the frog slowly...stops being an intillectual conversation when it happens to you!
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
