The Pension Series (Part 7): How to Create Your Own COLA

St. George’s Thesis

“Cry — God for Harry! England and Saint George!”

How was your week? Productive I hope. I spent most of my spare time drafting my pièce de résistance for the Pension Series as a guest post for one of my favorite blogs and bloggers. I’m excited, so stay tuned for the announcement as to when and where you can find it. Unfortunately, it means I’m short an article because I (stupidly) don’t keep any posts in the bank.

However, I am about to let you in on a little blogging secret. Facebook provides an endless amount of material to write about. As proof of this point, about 10 days ago George, one of my awesome Golden Albatross Facebook Group members, asked the following sizzler of a question related to pensions and inflation-adjusted Cost of Living Allowance (COLA):

Basically, if my pension is say $50k [a year] with no COLA provided by my employer, what do I have to have saved in an IRA to be able to grow my pension with cost of living for the next 30 years? (50k+4%)+4%)+4%)etc. For 30 years…)
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The Pension Series (Part 3): What is Your Pension Worth?

Posted on 16-September-17 by Grumpus

Grumpus Types Too Much

Anybody else exhausted from Part 2 of the Pension Series? I know I am. At 3200+ words it wasn’t concise. Amongst all those words, you may remember my promise to help you determine your pension’s worth in future posts. Well, the future is now, or at least partially. Unlike Part 2 though, I intend to break up the discussion over the next several posts. How many? I don’t know yet; at least two, maybe more. Since calculating your pension’s worth is more of a “how to process”, I hope the articles don’t need to be overly verbose. I understand people don’t have time to read 3200+ word posts every week, and frankly, I don’t have the time to write them.

Calculating Your Pension’s Worth … Ain’t Like Dusting Crops

For this post, I will examine the three key inputs in determining your pension’s worth. I will also examine some of the basic mathematical formulas used to calculate your pension’s worth. I will keep it simple because I am not a math genius by any means (liberal arts major here!), and more than likely you are going to use a pension calculator to make the calculations anyway. However, you should understand the inputs and formulas because like Han Solo said in Star Wars: A New Hope: Continue reading →

The Pension Series (Part 2): Worth vs. Worth It

Posted on 10-September-17 by Grumpus

Prologue

I’ll admit up front this article won’t be to everyone’s liking which probably isn’t a good way to start out a blog post if you want people to read it. However, there’s a likelihood that some readers will get no more than a few paragraphs in, and question what the hell any of this has to do with Financial Independence (FI) or pensions. They may even think all I’m trying to do is blow my own horn. I’m not, but I could see how it might appear that way if you don’t stick around to the end. Admittedly, I used this post as an opportunity to engage in some much-needed writing therapy. One of my Docs told me it would help to write about events from my career which contributed to my PTS. Thus, dealing with the topic of “worth vs. worth it” gave me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I’ll leave the determination of whether I successfully pulled it off up to you. Continue reading →

The Pension Series (Part 1): Pension Safety

Posted on 03-September-17 by Grumpus

The Grumpy Labourski

I just realized the serendipitous nature of the topic I chose for this Labor Day weekend’s post, which is pension safety. Of course, for my one international reader, I refer to U.S. Labor Day. Don’t confuse it with the rest of the world’s International Worker’s (Labour) Day, otherwise known as May Day. The U.S. celebrates its laboring workers in September due to May Day’s association with the Haymarket Affair and the Communist Party. There’s no way this Cold War kid would celebrate some Commie Red version of Labor Day. Of course, now I feel torn between shouting either “WOLVERINES!” or “YeehaaAAAWWW!” in homage to one of the two greatest Cold War movies of all time. I’ll let you decide which one is laced with more irony. (Grumpus Maximus is an Amazon Associate, see Disclosures for more details.)

Seriously Dude, Wolverines!

Jokes aside, this article marks the start of a new series of posts centered on pensions. My choice of Labor Day weekend to begin this series, while fitting, was coincidental. In all honesty, I don’t plan that far in advance. I decided to write about pensions because I noticed that the blog’s kind of light on pension discussions. That’s not good for a blog “Where Financial Independence (FI) and Pensions Meet to Create a Better Retired Life”. Thus, I felt it was time to rectify that oversight. Continue reading →