Is Your Pension Insured?

Posted On February 19, 2017 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Financial Planning /  

Pensions offer what may be the ideal source of retirement income. If you are fortunate enough to be vested into a Pension Plan, consider yourself lucky. You should ask, though, What would happen to your pension if the plan were to terminate or fail?

If you are a participant in a private sector pension, check if your plan is covered by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation here. The PBGC is a federal agency that was chartered to protect pension plan participants; it’s funded through required employer contributions and receives no tax dollars.

Even if your pension is insured, there are limits on the amount of coverage available through the PBGC. If a plan terminates and you are vested, but not yet retired and receiving benefits, you would be covered only for your currently vested benefits and would not receive any further credit for future work.

This is important: you need to understand whether your Pension Estimate is based on past contributions, or an estimate based on the assumption you are going to work to age 65 or other future date. The PBGC will only cover vested benefits and a plan termination will halt the accrual of future benefits.

If you are retired and already receiving benefits, the PBGC has limits on the monthly benefit they cover. If a plan terminates and is taken over by the PBGC, you could see your monthly benefit drop by a significant amount.

The limit of benefits available through the PBGC depends on four things:

  • Whether your plan was a single-employer plan or a mutliemployer plan.
  • Your age at retirement.
  • The number of years you were a participant in the plan.
  • Whether your benefit is a single-life annuity or a joint and survivor benefit.

For single-employer plans, the limit of the PBGC coverage is capped based on your age and the year the plan was terminated. For example, if you are 65 years old and your plan were to terminate in 2017, your PBGC benefit would be capped to $5,369.32 a month for a single-life benefit or $4,832.39 for a Joint and 50% Survivor Annuity. Link: PBGC Monthly Maximum Tables.

The PBGC benefits for single-employer plans are generally quite strong. However, if your pension benefit is above the monthly guaranty amount, and the plan were to fail, your benefit would be reduced to the PBGC maximum.

This can happen! Years ago, I met an airline pilot who retired at the mandatory age of 60 and started his six-figure pension thinking he was set for life. After 9/11, his former employer went bankrupt and his pension was slashed to around $3,000 a month. They hadn’t saved very well because they were planning on the generous pension. The reduction to his monthly pension check was devastating.

If your pension offers a lump-sum payout upon retirement, we can determine the limit of your PBGC coverage and investigate the funded status of your pension plan. If your plan is in critical status, or your company has a credit rating below investment grade, you will seriously want to consider the lump sum, if your payment exceeds the limits of PBGC coverage.

The PBGC coverage for multiemployer pension plans is unfortunately much, much lower than for single-employer plans. If you are a participant in a multiemployer plan, your maximum coverage under the PBGC is based on the number of years of service. This is regardless of how your plan may calculate benefits.

PBGC formula for multiemployer plans:
100% of the first $11 of monthly benefits,
Plus 75% of the next $33 of monthly benefits,
Times the number of years of service.

The maximum monthly benefit under the PBGC then is $35.75 times the number of credited years of service. For example, if you were a participant for 30 years, your maximum benefit would be $1072.50 a month, or $12,870 a year. And in order to get $35.75 from the PBGC, you’d have to be receiving at least $44 from the pension. In other words, to get the PBGC benefit of $12,870 a year, your pension benefit amount would need to be at least $15,840.

The amounts for Multiemployer plans are not indexed for inflation and do not receive Cost of Living Adjustments. Link: Multiemployer Benefit Guarantees.

The PBGC only covers private sector pension plans. Participants in a federal, state, or municipal government plan do not have any separate insurance or guaranty. And there are significant problems with funding in municipal pension plans. Here in Dallas, there is a billion dollar short-fall in the Police and Fire pension plan. Recent problems have prompted a stampede for the exits, as members retire early so they can take a lump sum payment. All of which is further driving the plan over the edge.

There are lots of municipal pension plans that are ticking time-bombs. It’s not clear to me that the public has the willingness to accept increased taxes so we can cover generous employee retirement plans. It seems inevitable that there will be some plans which will be forced to reduce the benefits they have promised.

All of which means that investors need to have multiple legs on their retirement plan: pension, Social Security, investment accounts including IRAs, and other sources of income. If you try to have a plan that rests entirely on one leg, you are potentially asking for trouble.

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Guaranteed Income Increases Retirement Satisfaction

Posted On July 20, 2015 By Admin In Retirement Planning /  

Coffee Crossword

Several years ago, for a client meeting, I prepared a couple of Monte Carlo simulations to show a soon to be retired executive possible outcomes of taking his pension as a guaranteed monthly payment, versus taking a lump sum, investing the proceeds, and taking withdrawals. When I showed that the taking the pension increased the probability of success by a couple of percent, my boss promptly cut me off, and warned the client that if they didn’t take the lump sum they would have no control of those assets and would not be able to leave any of those funds to their heirs. That’s true, but my responsibility was to present the facts as clearly as possible for the client to make an informed choice, without injecting my own biases.

The fact is that retirees who are able to fund a larger portion of their expenses from guaranteed sources of income are less dependent on portfolio returns for a successful outcome. New research is finding that retirees with higher levels of guaranteed income are also reporting greater retirement satisfaction and less anxiety about their finances. Sources of guaranteed income include employer pensions, Social Security, and annuities. This is contrasted with withdrawals from 401(k) accounts, IRAs, and investment portfolios.

For the last two decades, the financial planning profession has been advocating 4% withdrawals from investment portfolios as the best solution for retirement income. Unfortunately, with lower interest rates on bonds and higher equity valuations, even a conservative 4% withdrawal today, increased annually for inflation, might not last for a 30+ year retirement. (See my white paper, 5 Reasons Why Your Retirement Withdrawals are Too High, for details.)

Professor Michael Finke from Texas Tech, writing about a Successful Retirement, found that, “The amount of satisfaction retirees get from each dollar of Social Security and pension income is exactly the same — and is higher than the amount of satisfaction gained from a dollar earned from other sources of income. Retirees who rely solely on a defined contribution plan to fund retirement are significantly less satisfied with retirement.”

Emotionally, there are a couple of reasons why guaranteed income is preferred. It mimics having a paycheck, so retirees are comfortable spending the money knowing that the same amount will be deposited next month. On the other hand, investors who have saved for 30 or 40 years find it very difficult to turn off that saving habit and start taking withdrawals from the accounts they have never touched.  Although taxes on a $40,000 withdrawal from an IRA are the same as from $40,000 income received from a pension, as soon as you give an individual control over making the withdrawals, they want to do everything possible to avoid the tax bill.

The biggest fear that accompanies portfolio withdrawals is that a retiree will outlive their money. No one knows how the market will perform or how long they will live. So it’s not surprising that retirees who depend on withdrawals from investments feel more anxiety than those who have more guaranteed sources of income. The 2014 Towers Watson Retiree Survey looked at retirees’ sources of monthly income and found that 37% of retirees who had no pension or annuity income “often worry” about their finances, compared to only 24% of retirees who received 50% or more of their monthly income from a pension or annuity.

While I’ve pointed out the negative outcomes that can occur with portfolio withdrawals, in fairness, I should point out that in a Monte Carlo analysis, investing a pension lump sum for future withdrawals increases the dispersion of outcomes, both negative and positive. If the market performs poorly, a 4% withdrawal plan might deplete the portfolio, especially when you increase withdrawals for inflation each year. However, if the market performs on average, it will likely work, and if the initial years perform better than average, the portfolio may even grow significantly during retirement. So it’s not that taking the lump sum guarantees failure, only that it makes for a greater range of possible outcomes compared to choosing the pension’s monthly payout.

What do you need to think about before retirement? Here are several steps we take in preparing your retirement income plan:

1) Carefully examine the pension versus lump sum decision, using actual analysis, not your gut feeling, heuristic short-cuts, or back of the envelope calculations. If you aren’t going to invest at least 50% of the proceeds into equities, don’t take the lump sum. Give today’s low interest rates, the possibility of retirement success is very low if you plan to invest 100% in cash, CDs, or other “safe” investments.

2) Consider your own longevity. If you are healthy and have family members who lived for a long time, having guaranteed sources of income can help reduce some of the longevity risk that you face.

3) Social Security increases payments for inflation, whereas most pension and annuities do not, so we want to start with the highest possible amount. We will look at your Social Security options and consider whether delaying benefits may improve retirement outcomes.

4) If your guaranteed income consists only of Social Security, and is less than 25% of your monthly needs, you are highly dependent on portfolio returns. Consider using some portion of your portfolio to purchase an annuity. If you are several years out from retirement, we may consider a deferred annuity to provide a future benefit and remove that income stream from future market risks. If you are in retirement, we can consider an immediate annuity. For example, a 65-year old male could receive $543 a month for life, by purchasing an immediate annuity today with a $100,000 premium.

Annuities have gotten a bad rap in recent years, due in large part to unscrupulous sales agents who have sold unsuitable products to ill-informed consumers. However, like other tools, an annuity can be an appropriate solution in certain circumstances. While many financial planning professionals still refuse to look at annuities, there has been a significant amount of academic research from Wade Pfau, Michael Finke, and Moshe Milevsky finding that having guaranteed income may improve outcomes and satisfaction for retirees. This growing body of work has become too substantial to ignore. I believe my clients will be best served when we consider all their options and solutions with an open mind.

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The AFM Pension Plan: What Every Musician Needs to Know

Posted On September 16, 2014 By Admin In Retirement Planning /  

violin bw

If you’re a professional musician in the US, you likely received your annual statement from the American Federation of Musicians Employers’ Pension Plan in the past several weeks. The main purpose of the mailing is to verify your Covered Earnings from the past year. Professional musicians often have basic questions about the AFM Pension, in part, because the annual statement doesn’t tell you very much about your personal situation other than your reported earnings and the amount your employer(s) contributed to the pension fund.

Give the importance of the Pension Fund to the retirement planning of musicians, here are five key questions about the plan that every musician should know.

  1. What is the Fund?

The AFM Employers’ Pension Fund (EPF) is a Trust Fund established by the AFM and funded through contributions from employers throughout the country, as required under a Collective Bargaining Agreement. Whether you’re a member of the Chicago Symphony, a Broadway theater musician, or a free-lance performer, you may be covered by the EPF. Currently, there are over 50,000 musician participants (active and retired) in the plan, and the fund has assets of over $1.7 Billion.

  1. How do I find out how much I am going to get?

The pension benefit you will receive depends on your contributions and the age you retire. While it is possible to calculate your benefit manually (it’s just algebra), it is much easier and simpler to use their website at www.afm-epf.org. Create your own Participant Login and use the Pension Estimator tool. Please note that while your contributions and earnings are always in annual amounts, the pension amounts shown are monthly benefits.

To be vested in the pension, you must have received covered earnings for 5 years, or 20 quarters. You receive a “quarter” of credit for $750 of covered earnings, and you will receive a full year of credits if you earned at least $3,000 in that year.

The normal age of retirement is 65 for the pension, but you can start as early as 55, provided you are retired at that age. If you are still working after 65, you can elect to start your pension at 65 and keep working, or you can delay benefits until you do retire and your benefit amount will be actuarially increased based on the age you decide to start benefits.

Once you’re logged on to the website and are on the Pension Estimator, you can create various scenarios to see what your pension benefit might be. If you’re vested, you’re guaranteed a benefit. If you want to find out how much benefit you’re eligible for based on your past earnings, enter 0 under Estimated Additional Contributions, and then hit “Calculate Benefit”. This defaults to age 65 for retirement, but you can make it for any age between 55 and 65. When you enter 0, your estimate doesn’t include any future earnings, so you will probably also want to create other estimates based on the future number of years you plan to work. As a simple estimate, you might take the past year’s employer contribution to the plan and multiply it by the number of years you plan to work.  Just remember that the estimate is based on today’s payout and crediting rules, which could be changed in the future.

  1. What are the payout options?

First, if your expected lifetime payments total less than $5,000, the EPF will give you a “cash-out” and send you a lump-sum payout. This is mandatory. However, if the expected payments exceed $5,000, there is no option to take a lump-sum or a rollover. You must take the monthly payments.

You can elect a Single Life Benefit (SLB), a 50% Joint and Survivor, or a 75% Joint and Survivor. The survivor options will pay you for life and then pay a reduced benefit (50% or 75%) to your “joint annuitant” for the rest of their life. If you are married, the plan defaults to the 50% J&S, but anyone can elect one of the joint and survivor options, regardless of your marital status. The joint amount is calculated as a percentage of the SLB, with a reduction based on the age difference between you and your joint annuitant. The younger your joint annuitant, the greater the reduction and the lower your monthly benefit amount. Your joint annuitant must be within 19 years of your age to elect the 75% plan.

The joint benefit is a valuable resource to take care of your spouse or partner, if they should outlive you, and it’s a relative bargain. Choose carefully, because your election at retirement is permanent. If you do outlive your joint annuitant, there is no option to change your plan or to select another joint annuitant.

The amount of your AFM pension is highly sensitive to the age of the participant at retirement. If you started benefits at 55, you’d receive only 37% of the benefit amount you’d receive at age 65. And that is assuming you didn’t work after 55 and had no additional contributions! Also, if you work past 65, your benefit also can grow significantly. For example, if you work to age 68, your benefit base would be increased by 35%, on top of the additional benefits you accrued from working between 65 and 68. This is one reason (of many) that some musicians are reluctant to retire – for every year they keep working, their pension is increasing by at least 10-11%.

  1. How does the AFM-EPF compare with Social Security benefits?

With Social Security, Full Retirement Age is 66 (increasing to 67 for individuals born after 1954), but you may start benefits as early as 62, or delay to 70. With the AFM EPP, Full Retirement Age is 65, but you can start as early as 55; you can delay the EPP past 65 only if you are still working and contributing to the plan.

One big difference is that Social Security has Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) based on inflation, whereas the AFM EPP does not. The amount you receive will remain the same for the rest of your life. Because there are no COLAs in the AFM plan, you have to be careful and not start benefits too early. If you can afford to wait until 65, it is a huge advantage to wait to full retirement age to receive benefits, even if you stopped working earlier. The reason is that you are guaranteed a 10-11% increase in benefits for each year waiting, which is better than Social Security (which increases by a maximum of 8% a year). You may or may not get 10-11% in your investment portfolio, but waiting on the pension is a guaranteed increase for life. Most musicians will receive both the AFM EPP and Social Security, but you do not have to start them at the same time.

With Social Security, your spouse may receive a survivor benefit. If your Social Security benefit is greater than your spouse’s benefit, then he or she will receive your benefit amount for the rest of their life, and their own benefit goes away. (If their SS benefit is already greater than your amount, they will not receive any increase or survivor’s benefit.) With the AFM plan, you don’t have to be married to have a joint annuitant and they can receive 50% or 75% of your amount after your death.

  1. I heard the plan is in trouble. Is my pension safe?

The AFM EPP is overseen by the Federal government and is covered by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), which is similar to the FDIC in regulating pension plans and providing protection for individual participants. The plan itself has been considered to be in “critical status” since 2010, which occurs when the projected assets are insufficient to cover the projected liabilities. That description is a bit of a simplification, but the current “red zone” status means that the plan is required to create a rehabilitation plan to address the potential shortfall. They have reduced the benefits that will be paid on earnings contributed after 2010, and the board trustees, actuaries, and investment managers are working to monitor and fine tune the plan to ensure that it will be solvent for future retirees.

In the very unlikely event that the plan should fail, individual participants would have their benefits insured by the PBGC. While this should give some comfort, I should point out that there are limits to PBGC coverage based on the number of years of service, so it is possible that some participants would not be fully covered if their benefit amount exceeded the levels of protection under the PBGC.  I don’t think we need to be overly concerned about the viability of the pension plan, but I would council any musician to not rely solely on the pension.  You need to have other sources of assets and cash flow to provide a strong and secure retirement.

I don’t think anyone becomes a musician for the money, but musicians have the same financial needs and concerns as any other professional.  Unfortunately, a lot of musicians don’t pay much attention to their own financial planning, and don’t know where to turn for honest advice. I’ve been a member of the AFM since I was 19 and take great joy in helping my fellow musicians plan for a secure financial future. If you have retirement planning questions that might be a good topic for a blog, please email me at [email protected]. Chances are that others may have the same questions! And of course, please feel free to call me at 214-478-3398 if you’d like to chat about any of your financial questions or concerns.

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