Life Strikes Back: BrewDog’s Lump Sum Update

Posted on 23-April-24 by Grumpus

One great thing about taking a break from blogging is that once you start publishing again, people who missed your regular updates contact you with words of thanks and encouragement. Such was the recent case with BrewDog. You might remember him from Pension Series Part 19, in which I helped him analyze his annuity vs. lump-sum options connected to a small defined benefit pension from a previous employer. He recently sent me a note thanking me again for the help I lent him nearly five years ago (wow, how time flies)! In his polite email, BrewDog also provided an update on his lump-sum decision. Spoiler alert, he took the cash and forwent the annuity.

BrewDog taking the lump sum wasn’t a big surprise. He was leaning in that direction when I initially helped him. However, the ultimate reason why he took the lump-sum and some of the lessons he’s learned since are worth considering. They include the importance of:

making a correct survivorship decision if you take a pension annuity
directing your lump sum into a tax-efficient investment vehicle
having a clear investment strategy for a lump-sum

If nothing else, I encourage everyone to read the first lesson learned. It’s an important one for any pensionable worker who decides to take an annuity over a lump sum because sometimes life intervenes in unfortunate ways. As for the rest of the lessons, they will help guide anyone who’s got a lump-sum decision similar to BrewDog’s. Regardless of whether you take the lump sum, internalizing the points stemming from his choice will help you make a well-informed decision. And, as I’ve pointed out numerous times, helping you make well-informed pension decisions is what this blog is all about! Continue reading →

Why I’m Offering Paid Pension Analysis Services

Posted on 21-February-24 by Grumpus

Pension Analysis Services

I made some subtle changes to The Golden Albatross webpage the other day. First, on the home (aka splash) page, I added three paragraphs under a subsection called “Services” that briefly describe the paid pension analysis services I now offer. Those paragraphs also quickly explain why I’m charging for services. Second, I created a permanent page called Pension Analysis Services, where I provide an in-depth explanation of the range of services on offer. I also explain the technicalities of how hiring my services works.

In case you don’t want to click away, here it is.

Since “what I offer” got a web page, I wanted to circle back with an article about “why.” By doing so, I will have a permanent explanation for anyone who asks, nested under the “what I offer” page. More importantly, I want to explain “why” because paying me pension analysis is a marked departure from the original intent for The Golden Albatross website. In all, I provide five solid reasons, which I list below. Continue reading →

The Pension Couch: A Lump-Sum Offer Mystery

Posted on 12-December-21 by Grumpus

As the title of this Pension Couch post suggests, I help solve the mystery behind a lump-sum offer for a reader. I decided to code-name that reader Charleston because I have relatives who live in South Carolina. As with all Pension Couch posts, most of this article is made up of my lightly edited email to Charleston. In that email, I analyzed her two options: either take the lump sum or stick with the pension annuity. The wild card that makes this article different from my other lump-sum articles is that her lump-sum offer was from what’s known as a church pension plan (aka church plan).

I’ve never written about a lump-sum offer from a church plan. Actually, I’ve never written about church pension plans full-stop. Moreover, while I discuss them in this article, I don’t go too deep. I’ve made a note to write a post on church plans for the Pension Series in the future, though, because they’re an important topic. In the meantime, all you need to know is church plans don’t have to abide by the US’s Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). For those of you unfamiliar with ERISA, it is the “federal law that sets minimum standards for most … retirement and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.”

Since church plans in the US don’t have to follow the federal minimum standards, their inner workings are somewhat opaque. This opacity can create some severe pension safety concerns for plan members. Moreover, it also turns out the lax rules governing church plans impact how these plans can calculate lump-sum offers. Therefore, the mystery in this story isn’t a “who’s done it?” but a “how was it done?” Continue reading →

The Pension Series (Part 19): Pension Annuity vs. Lump Sum Analysis (Again) — Updated

Featured

Posted on 11-November-19 by Grumpus

Substantive Revision

This is a substantive revision to the original Pension Series Part 19 article I published on 23 June 2019. I updated this article because I have a new method for calculating the Total Dollar Value (TDV) of pensions that do not possess a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA). The new method is far more accurate than the old method, so I am updating all articles in which I used the old method.

I notified BrewDog (the subject of this article) and provided him with updated Master Pension Calculator spreadsheets that utilize my new method. I did this because the TDV of his no COLA pension changed significantly when I used the new formula. As a result, I also updated the two spreadsheets embedded in this article and some of the text. If you downloaded the old spreadsheets, delete them, and download the new spreadsheets with the new formula. The text changes are noted in blue below and include ~~strike throughs~~ of the original article’s verbiage when needed. I kept the italicized format for the verbiage cut and pasted from newer emails between BrewDog and myself.

My apologies for any inconvenience this update may cause, or already has caused. I’m well aware that the updated version of this article no longer reads as clean and easy as the original post. However, I’m committed to ensuring the information shared on this blog is accurate. As a result, when new circumstances alter the accuracy of an old post, I feel obliged to update it, even at the expense of readability.

If you want more information on why I updated the TDV formula for no COLA pensions, you can go to Part 4 of the Pension Series for the abridged version. That is the source article for all my TDV calculations, and as such I updated it first. If you’d rather read a more in-depth explanation about the impacts of inflation, and the correct way to incorporate it into TDV calculations, then you’ll need to wait for my book, “The Golden Albatross: How To Determine If Your Pension Is Worth It“. It’s currently scheduled to be published in early 2020 by ChooseFI publishing.

Continue reading →

The Pension Series (Part 12): More Pension Lump Sum Analysis (Updated)

Posted on 28-January-18 by Grumpus

Nerd Alert!

This article is a follow-up on the lump sum case study I conducted for the ChooseFI listener, Tess, in Part 11 of the Pension Series. If you missed it, that case study also aired as Episode 58R on the ChooseFI Podcast. I mentally debated if I should make this Part 11a considering the links between the two articles. However, given this article’s length, and the alternate pension lump sum analysis method it outlines, I decided it warrants its own part in the series.

I’ll warn you now, this article is another deep dive into the world of pension lump sum offers. It won’t be my last either. Pension lump sum analysis is a rabbit hole. As I pointed out in my previous article, there’s no one correct method. A lot depends on what the pensioner values and the questions they are trying to answer. Proper analysis is also based on the strings attached to either the lump sum or the annuities.

Hello? Can anyone up there hear me? I got stuck down here analyzing my pension lump sum!

Fortunately, as a result of my appearance on ChooseFI 58R, several people reached out to discuss methods of calculating pension value and conducting lump sum analysis. We are currently in the process of compiling a spreadsheet with many of those methods baked in. It’s not quite ready though. So, for now, you have to put up with another wordy pension lump sum analysis from yours truly. Forewarned is forearmed. Continue reading →