Word: pension
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...math last week at a senior center in Rock Hill, S.C., as a morning crowd of silver heads nodded in empathy. The miracle drugs that keep his 94-year-old mother healthy, the man said, can cost $700 a month--far more than she can afford on her $42 pension check and $1,200 from Social Security. Those tiny bottles of glaucoma drops alone cost $95 every two weeks. She couldn't pay for them without the $400 he and his brother chip in every month. "If we were passing Medicare today," the man added, "we would never pass...
...will be restored when ceos and directors are charged with their crimes, convicted, photographed in shackles and sent to real prison. Convicted executives must also be stripped of their ill-gotten gains. Retrieved monies should be used to reimburse loyal employees who suffered losses in their 401(k) and pension plans because of their bosses' misdeeds. WILLIAM GOLDSTEIN Boca Raton...
...reasonably cheerful but laments his lost opportunities to save. "I should be able to retire," he acknowledges. "Due to my own stupidity, I can't. But it's expensive to raise a family, buy a home, all that stuff." A big source of Alexander's problems is his puny pension benefit of just $130 a month. With modest savings and monthly Social Security benefits of just $1,040, things are tight, even with his $28,000-a-year...
...shrinking pension--or none at all--is something more Americans will have to get used to in coming years. The shift by employers from defined-benefit plans (traditional pension plans that guarantee income for life) to defined-contribution plans (the tax-favored, employer-sponsored savings plans such as 401(k)s that do not provide guarantees) is beginning to have a devastating effect. In 1975, according to the Labor Department, 29% of workers named guaranteed pensions as their primary retirement plan, and only 4% relied on 401(k)-type plans. By 1998, the most recently available data show, the numbers...
...performance and what is known as leakage. The average 401(k) plan's equity holdings are concentrated in large-cap companies, so their returns track the S&P 500, which has dropped 44% from its peak. Over the long run, experts say, 401(k) returns lag behind professionally managed pension funds by 1 to 2 percentage points a year. And as if meager returns were not bad enough, when people change jobs, two-thirds peel off a slice of their 401(k) savings for current spending rather than roll the whole amount over into a new plan...