Am I sure? Of course not. This is the most complicated retirement proposal ever attempted. They have at least 6 podcasts and multiple video messages all trying to explain a program to a large group of reasonably smart professionals. Since we still are having trouble getting our hands around it, this really only re-emphasizes how complicated this is. This plan was designed by Blitzstein to be something that the rank and file would never understand and he could "manage" the program however he wanted. Now he's having to try and explain it to a group of smart folks and it does not make sense to us. There's no Fidelity Rep helping to explain this, no Vanguard rep trying to sell their company as the manager of this program; this is a one-off special order program that non of the big financial management companies want anything to do with. Why do we?

But, excluding that here we are a bunch of pilots trying to implement the most complicated program ever designed that no one else in the world has ever done and hoping we are correct. All the descriptions of the plan are about Variable Benefits, meaning that your benefits vary based upon your earnings. If all we were doing was having a flat percentage of our earning deposited into a large "joint" account which was actively managed and then we received payouts from that pool based on the annual rate of return, I think we could all figure that out. That is NOT what this is. We split the "pie" amongst all the pilots based upon their individual earnings for that year as a percentage of total earning. Feel free to play stump the ALPA rep the next time they try to spin this and you're around. Ask them if you earn 100k every year for the next 10 years will your pancakes be the same every year? After the tap-dancing (mostly because none of them really understand the plan either), the answer will be, it depends. If it was a flay percentage of your earnings, it would not depend. It depends on what everyone else makes. That's why so much time is always spent showing you how the pancakes grow and that your end withdrawals will be soooo much higher. The bedrock of the program is built on smoke and mirrors. This is like getting an Amway pitch from your buddy in the squadron. "See when you reach Diamond status the returns start rolling in" In fact, that's my new name for this program.....this is the FDX Amway style variable retirement plan...Hmm I think I can do better. I'll keep thinking. Maybe the FDX Amway Retirement Theory...FART! Our great big FART.