Pensionless


Book Description

"Provides tips on using a variety of sources, including Social Security, Medicare, and 401(k)s, to build a retirement income"--




Pensionless


Book Description

As seen in The Washington Post, US News & World Report, and Yahoo! Get the most out of your retirement! If you're one of the millions of Americans without a pension plan, your retirement years might seem like a huge financial question mark. Pensionless, by U.S. News Senior Editor for Retirement Emily Brandon, addresses the retirement benefits that are available to you, how to use them correctly, and how to avoid potential pitfalls. Learn how to avoid surcharges on your Medicare benefits, how to increase Social Security and employer-sponsored benefits to help pay for retirement, and how to minimize costs and boost the value of your existing retirement benefits. And you'll learn how to tweak your lifestyle now so that you can live well in retirement without the security of a pension. Inside you'll find ideas on how to get more Social Security by claiming benefits twice, ways to minimize fees and avoid penalties on retirement accounts, and how to inflate 401(k) balances. Featuring an analysis of the significant changes made to Social Security in the recent federal budget, Pensionless will help you enjoy those retirement years you've worked so hard for.




Private Pensions and Public Policies


Book Description

The private pension system, together with Social Security, has provided millions of Americans with income security in retirement. But over the past thirty years, pension coverage has stagnated, leaving behind some vulnerable groups. Defined contribution plans have exposed workers to greater investment risk, while cash balance and other hybrid plans may have adverse effects on older workers caught in the transition. Pension regulations, infamous for their complexity, can be bewildering to policy analysts and policymakers. Private Pensions and Public Policies sheds timely and much-needed light on specific issues within the broader context and framework of pension reform. Contributors focus on topics that must be addressed in any reform effort, including the effects of the shift in emphasis toward defined contribution plans (after the 1974 Employee Retirement Income and Security Act) and hybrid plans (from the 1990s); regulatory issues such as nondiscrimination rules and contribution limits; how to increase the information available to participants and improve financial education; how participants in defined contribution plans make choices on questions such as asset allocation, back-loaded versus front-loaded saving, and annuities versus lump sum distributions; and the interaction of the private pension system with Social Security. Contributors include Robert L. Clark (North Carolina State University), Sylvester J. Schieber (Watson Wyatt Worldwide), Richard A. Ippolito (George Mason University School of Law), Alan L. Gustman (Dartmouth College), Thomas L. Steinmeier (Texas Tech University), John Karl Scholz (University of Wisconsin), Dean M. Maki, (JPMorgan Chase), William Even (Miami University of Ohio), Jagadeesh Gokhale (American Enterprise Institute), Laurence J. Kotlikoff (Boston University), Mark J. Warshawsky (TIAA-CREF Institute), Annika Sunden (Boston College), Andrew A. Samwick (Dartmouth College), David A. Wise (Harvard University), Joel Dickson (T




Reinventing the Retirement Paradigm


Book Description

This book explores how rising pension and healthcare costs, along with workforce aging, are affecting pension and retirement planning around the world. Many middle-aged workers now realize that they will have to work longer than intended, as they begin to recognize that their retirement resources will be inadequate to finance retirement consumption. Volatile capital markets, rising medical-care costs, and low saving rates make retirement behavior and policy a moving target. Olivia Mitchell, executive director of The Pension Research Council at Wharton, and Robert L. Clark, Professor of Business Management and Economics at North Carolina State University, explore these themes with colleagues, touching on a diverse set of issues ranging from employment trends to pension accounting and investment, to retirement system overhaul. They illustrate how employers are actively reformulating the meaning of work and retirement, seeking to encourage more people to work longer than ever before in the face of projected labor shortages. At the same time, public and private trust in traditional pension offerings is rapidly eroding, as companies alter, amend, and terminate their conventional plans in the face of poor investment performance and new methods of pension accounting. Experts from the UK, the US, Japan, Sweden, and Canada offer international perspectives on the evolving institutions of retirement practice. This book provides readers a range of insights and strategies not available in other volumes, and it represents an invaluable addition to the PRC/OUP series. It will be particularly valuable for managers working toward more efficient pension plans; to scholars and policymakers seeking to maximize pension design and effectiveness; and to actuaries and tax specialists concerned with pension regulation. The Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania was founded 50 years ago to encourage research and teaching on pensions and retirement security. Council projects address the long-term issues that underlie contemporary concerns and seek to broaden public understanding of these complex arrangements through research into their social, economic, legal, actuarial, and financial foundations of privately and publicly-provided benefits.




State and Local Pensions


Book Description

In the wake of the financial crisis and Great Recession, the health of state and local pension plans has emerged as a front burner policy issue. Elected officials, academic experts, and the media alike have pointed to funding shortfalls with alarm, expressing concern that pension promises are unsustainable or will squeeze out other pressing government priorities. A few local governments have even filed for bankruptcy, with pensions cited as a major cause. Alicia H. Munnell draws on both her practical experience and her research to provide abroad perspective on the challenge of state and local pensions. She shows that the storyis big and complicated and cannot be viewed through a narrow prism such as accountingmethods or the role of unions. By examining the diversity of the public plan universe, Munnell debunks the notion that all plans are in trouble. In fact, she finds that while a few plans are basket cases, many are functioning reasonably well. Munnell's analysis concludes that the plans in serious trouble need a major overhaul. Buteven the relatively healthy plans face three challenges ahead: an excessive concentration of plan assets in equities; the risk that steep benefit cuts for new hires will harm workforce quality; and the constraints plans face in adjusting future benefits for current employees. Here, Munnell proposes solutions that preserve the main strengths of state and local pensions while promoting needed reforms.




The Evolving Pension System


Book Description

The Evolving Pension System examines the foundations and the future of the private pension system. It provides a broad overview of the underlying assumptions, characteristics, and effects of existing pension policy, as well as alternative views on how public policy toward pensions should evolve in the future. Contributors include Robert Clark (North Carolina State University), Eric Engen (Federal Reserve Board), William G. Gale (Brookings Institution), Theodore Groom (Groom Law Group, Chartered), Daniel Halperin (Harvard), Alicia Munnell (Boston College), Leslie Papke (Michigan State University), Joseph Quinn (Boston College), Sylvester Schieber (Watson Wyatt), John B. Shoven (Stanford), and Jack Vanderhei (Temple University and EBRI). William G. Gale is the Joseph A. Pechman Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. John B. Shoven is Charles R. Schwab Professor at Stanford University. Mark J. Warshawsky is director of research at the TIAA-CREF Institute.




Fundamentals of Private Pensions


Book Description

For almost five decades, Fundamentals of Private Pensions has been the most authoritative text and reference book on private pensions in the world. The revised and updated Eighth Edition adds to past knowledge while providing exciting new perspectives on the provision of retirement income. This new edition is organized into six main sections dealing with a variety of separable pension issues. Section I provides an introductory discussion on the historical evolution of the pension movement and how pensions fit into the patchwork of the whole retirement income security system in the United States. It includes a discussion about the economics of the tax incentives that have played a role in stimulating pension offerings and in the structure of the benefits provided. Section 2 lays out the regulatory environment in which private pension plans operate. Section 3 investigates the various forms of retirement plans that are available to workers to determine how they are structured in practical terms. Section 4 focuses on the economics of pensions. Several of the chapters in this section update and refine material from the prior. New chapters in this volume describe the conversion of some traditional pensions to new hybrid forms, including cash balance and pension equity plans, and the growing phenomenon of phased retirement and the issues raised for employer-sponsored pensions. Section 5 explores the funding and accounting environments in which private employer-sponsored retirement plans operate. The concluding section investigates the handling of assets in employer-sponsored plans and their valuation as well as the insurance provision behind the benefit promises implied by the plans. This latest edition of Fundamentals of Private Pensions will prove invaluable reading for both academics and professionals working in the area of pensions and pension management.




Managing Pension and Retirement Plans


Book Description

The purpose of 'Pension & Retirement Plan Management: A Guide for Managers and Other Fiduciaries' is to provide reliable guidance for regulatory compliance, advice on managerial strategies, and some clarity on the underlying economics and finance of pension and retirement plans.




Pensions in the U.S. Economy


Book Description

Pensions in the U.S. Economy is the fourth in a series on pensions from the National Bureau of Economic Research. For both economists and policymakers, this volume makes a valuable contribution to current research on pensions and the economics of the elderly. The contributors report on retirement saving of individuals and the saving that results from corporate funding of pension plans, and they examine particular aspects of the plans themselves from the employee's point of view. Steven F. Venti and David A. Wise offer a careful analysis of who contributes to IRAs and why. Benjamin M. Friedman and Mark Warshawsky look at the reasons more retirement saving is not used to purchase annuities. Personal saving through pension contribution is discussed by B. Douglas Bernheim and John B. Shoven in the context of recent government and corporate pension funding changes. Michael J. Boskin and John B. Shoven analyze indicators of the economic well-being of the elderly, addressing the problem of why a large fraction of the elderly remain poor despite a general improvement in the economic status of the group as a whole. The relative merits of defined contribution versus defined benefit plans, with emphasis on the risk aspects of the two types of plans for the individual, are examined by Zvi Bodie, Alan J. Marcus, and Robert C. Merton. In the final paper, pension plans and worker turnover are the focus of the discussion by Edward P. Lazear and Robert L. Moore, who propose pension option value rather than the commonly used accrued pension wealth as a measure of pension value.




A History of Public Sector Pensions in the United States


Book Description

From the Wharton School, offering a comprehensive assessment of the political and financial dimensions of public-sector pensions from the colonial period until the emergence of modern retirement plans in the twentieth century.