Hertz Schram PC ERISA & Pension Lawyers

Under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), participants in tax-qualified pension plans [most pension plans ARE tax qualified] MUST start taking “required minimum distributions” (RMDs) of their pension by April 1 of the year following the year they turn age 70½. This is referred to as the “required beginning date” (RBD), and it is very important because the penalty for failing to take an RMD by the deadline is an onerous 50% tax penalty. Ditto if you fail to take your…

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The National Bureau of Economic Research recently published a working paper that purports to answer this question. [See “The Power of Working Longer,” by Gila Bronshtein, Jason Scott, John B. Shoven, and Sita N. Slavov]. With exhausting technical analysis, the authors demonstrate that working longer is a much more powerful strategy for achieving retirement security than saving more. For example, the authors show that delaying retirement by just one year results in an 8% increase in the standard of living,…

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Each year, Social Security’s trustees report on the current and projected financial status of the Social Security trust fund. Their 2018 annual report is worrisome. In a nutshell, the trustees conclude that the Social Security trust fund faces insolvency and resultant benefit cuts by 2034 if changes are not soon made to the program. BackgroundSocial Security actually has two trust funds: the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, which pays retirement benefits and survivors benefits; and the Disability Insurance…

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A paper by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) provides intriguing insights into the role of immigration on our Social Security retirement system. [See “America’s Demographic Challenge: Understanding the Role of Immigration,” Aug. 2017, by Kenneth Megan and Theresa Cardinal Brown]. The U.S. population has been aging rapidly the past few decades, due mainly to declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancies, a trend that is expected to continue. This demographic shift has placed a strain on our Social Security retirement…

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It’s all about the money, honey. In April [2018], the Census Bureau released data comparing men’s and women’s 2016 median earnings in over 300 occupations. In nearly all occupations, women earned less than men. Overall, women’s median 2016 earnings equaled $40,675, while men’s median earnings equaled $50,741-nearly 25% more! However, the gender pay gap varies among occupations. The widest gender pay gaps were in financial management and sales (real estate brokers, real estate sales agents, insurance sales agents), and in…

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When our nation’s Social Security program was enacted in 1935, there was no automatic adjustment in Social Security retirement benefits to account for inflation. Rather, Congress would periodically adjust benefits to reflect inflationary increases in the costs of goods and services. In 1972, however, Congress enacted an amendment to the Social Security Act that requires benefits to be increased based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) the previous year. At the time of the 1972 amendment, there…

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A recent issue brief prepared by the Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew) reports that most state pension plans are significantly underfunded and that, for many, the funding gap is growing. [See “The State Pension Funding Gap: 2016. Investment shortfalls, insufficient contributions reduced funded levels for public worker retirement plans (Pew, April 12, 2018)]. Pew, founded in 1948, is an independent non-profit organization that strives to inform the public and improve public policy by providing useful data and analysis to illuminate issues…

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I regularly review commentary, data, and analyses of respected financial advisors concerning retirement savings and investing. While they don’t all agree on everything, there exists a consensus around the most common retirement savings and investment mistakes. Here are the top “dirty dozen” mistakes (as I see them). 1. Holding a Large Portion of Your Savings in Just One or Two Stocks. Even if they are performing well today (or for years), if there occurs a major downturn in the companies’…

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For over fifty years, Palm Beach, California maintained a generous traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plan for its employees that based benefits on a percentage of the employee’s final average pay times years of service. As employees accumulated service and their pay increased over the years, their pension benefits grew exponentially. Upon retirement, the benefit was paid in the form of a life annuity, thereby guaranteeing that participants would never run out of money. During the 1990s, the plan was…

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