Originally Posted by
Denny Crane
I'm not a numbers kind of guy and everyones number is different based on what they had earned up to the bankruptcy and freezing then termination of the pension. Frankly I believe myself and anyone else in my position is SOL as far as getting any payback. I just want the younger folk to realize the magnitude of the losses. In my case I had an earned benefit at age 60 of $7800/month. If I retired at age 60 now and started taking my PBGC, I'd get $3800/month. 4000x12=48000x25(years)=1,200,000 dollars. Yes, there are other factors that will reduce that amount but, on the whole, I'm losing about a million over my lifetime (85). Mother died at 78 and father still alive at 92.
Well see that's sort of my point, you are short 1.2 mil from your original DB, and actually, at a 4% withdrawal rate, you'd need $1.2 million in retirement to get that 4k/mo additional income. In your case you've had 13 years since the BK, plus 5 more until 65, to bank your 16% DC and PS. Even using modest numbers you should be able to make up a big chunk of that number in 18 years, and that doesn't even include any investing you do of your own base pay towards retirement. Plus your heirs will thank you since all that money won't vanish once you pass away.
My point is that many people today crying foul over the DB termination have had a decent amount of time to accrue retirement savings to nearly make up for the PGBC shortfall. That's why people in my age range view people who want a full or nearly full restoration of a DB as making a "money grab" since they could reasonably be close to their original potential retirement promise. Now I do grant that it does require working an extra 5 years, and of course it's really hard to put a dollar value on that aspect of things.