kronan there is a large difference between having money in the fund and being fully funded per actuarial liabilities. this scheme does not do that at all, as a matter of fact the benefit of variable plans is that they do not have to fund based on actuarial science because the employer has no risk and the employee takes on all the risk. there is no guaranteed payout to meet. your example shows that the fund does in fact have money in it, but will never meet the actuarially derived funding requirements of the present value of future retiree liabilities. that is why variable funds never pay variable pbgc premiums, because they are never underfunded because they have no definite future liabilities. the savings account stabilization fund does nothing to change that. it's like we are trying to have our cake of a fully funded traditional pension fund with only the crumbs required to fund a variable plan. we cannot have both. if the plan ever terminated we would get pennies when the pbgc took over your example versus the 65k i believe we would get now. but i do thank you for taking the time to put an example forward and being constructive. what do you think about about this argument?

also do you care to answer my example above and concerns about taking 5 years of work off due to family issues and earning 0 notional shares for five years and its effect on your retirement? Thank you. Dr K