30 years left for me. Opted out.

Did the math, and MBCBP did not win out under any circumstance for me. I kept it simple. My whole life I've parked extra savings in something like VTSAX (Vanguard total market Index), which averages around 10% since inception. That means that your money doubles every 8 years. I don't care if a little more % from ALPA dues came out of it, or it was subject to a higher initial tax bracket. In the end, that pile of cash is still going to be worth several multiples of what my MBCBP fund would end up at.

The MBCBP was forced to use a very conservative investment fund to meet the requirement that your returns will never go below 0, lest the company get put on the hook to reimburse you. If the market gets so bad that long term gains go below zero, then we have bigger problems to worry about than our spillover cash (likely we won't have jobs at all). So that extra conservative security strategy is a complete non-feature to me.

Also, in the grand scheme of things, a stock market index fund is still relatively safe and returns have never in history remained negative for more than 7 ish years. In the rare event that happens, again, we have much bigger issues to worry about. That being said, if you go beyond mutual funds and start getting into real estate investments like I've dabbled in, change that 10% avg return to 20-30% cash-on-cash average return. MBCBP gets left even more in the dust, even after considering taxes and dues. So there is no possible "re-adjusting" my accounts to balance the overly safe MBCBP, my 10% mutual funds were already my minimum baseline for safety.

Mutual funds are already "set-it and forget-it". You can set up automatic monthly contributions, or make single deposits every few months with your extra cash. Log in to Vanguard, type a number, click submit. Takes under 5 min.

In 30 years of compounding interest:
At 5%.... $200k grows to $864,388
At 10%.. $200k grows to $3,489,880

I'm happy with the latter any day...but that's just me


The *only* hesitation I had is that, if at a future date they eventually make the MBCBP much more lucrative (correct me if I'm wrong, they can tweak it in the future), I'm possibly left being stuck out of it. But in that case I'd hope they re-open it, or have yearly enrollment like United(?)