Management Pension Plan COLA adjustment?

Brownwifey

Active Member
I placed the thread on the retirement forum, but thought I'd ask here too:

Hello,
I'm currently pencil whipping our retirement plan projection and thought I saw somewhere on the upsers website there is a cost of living adjustment for the management pension plan of around 2% annually. I'm lazy and thought I'd check here first before digging through the website. Those of you already collecting checks, does your pension increase annually or does the initial amount remain constant for life? For example, $1000/mo year 1, $1020/mo year 2, etc...

People overlook the difference, but a cost of living adjustment makes a big impact on your retirement plan. Thanks in advance!
 

Brownwifey

Active Member
bummer! I must have been dreaming.

At any rate, I've got some advice for folks who are 5-10 yrs from retiring and playing with the retirement calculator online. Make sure you know if your pension estimate is in current or future dollars.

If you ask HR to calculate your projected pension at your selected retirement age, make sure you understand whether you are looking at "current dollars" or "future dollars". In my husband's case, they sent us a printout that based his pension estimate on the five consecutive highest annual compensation amts without accounting for future raises, i.e. the pension amount was in "current dollars". If you're ten years out, this could make your pension calculation off by 25-30%. Hopefully, we're much closer to retiring than that.

Bummer on no COLA. This really reduces the value of a pension if you plan on living to be old as dirt... :) Thank god for the 401k.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
Bummer on no COLA. This really reduces the value of a pension if you plan on living to be old as dirt... :) Thank god for the 401k.

I remember (circa 1989) "no COLA" being a big point as to why we should participate in the 401k.
My 401k has more Net Present Value (at 4%) than my pension.
My outside investments is more than those 2 put together.

Thank God for all three.
Soc Sec will be icing on top if I get it.
 

Brownwifey

Active Member
Amen, you're preaching to the choir. You have to have multiple investment strategies to have a "margarita sippin", not a "XXXmart greetin" retirement. We run retirement income projections annually with a pro. If it's any help, our investment advisor (certified financial planner) thinks SS will be essentially unchanged for those 50 and over with cola's calculated differently to slow raises. Younger will probably face increase in retirement age. Don't know if he's right, but I paid for the advice so I thought I'd share.

I feel sorry for the folks under 30. I think "retirement"will be redefined for their generation.
 
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