5036 Screwed up the MRD

Saturday, December 12, 2015

If all your friends are fat, there are no seesaws, only catapults.

 – Demetri Martin –

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Lately I've been sleeping oddly.  I go to bed very early, then read in bed or do logic puzzles for an hour or two, fall asleep, then I awaken again somewhere between 2 and 5 am, read or puzzle some more, fall asleep again, and wake in the morning.  Last night I woke up about 2 am, started to read, and decided I wanted something to eat.  So I came downstairs, and while munching on crackers and peanut butter, I puttered around on the computer.  I was still mulling over why the 401K folks seemed surprised that I asked more more than the Minimum Required Distribution on the 401K, so I looked some stuff up.

Well, it turns out I had been given bad advice several months ago, when I was looking into the requirements for taking the MRD (a.k.a.RMD) from my 401K and the IRAs.  The amount one has to take depends on the account balances from 12/31 of the previous year, and a percentage from IRS tables.  I had been told by my financial advisers that I could add up the accounts, arrive at the total MRD, and then take all of it from any one of the accounts, or a bit from each, or any combination, as long as the total came out to the required minimum --- and back then I found nothing online that disputed that.  So I added it all up, and took it all from the 401K.

Surprise.  I found a very recent article that says that you cannot combine the 401K with IRAs.  You can combine several IRA balances and take money from any of them, but a 401K has to be handled separately.  You have to take the 401K's MRD only from the 401K, and you can't take any IRA MRDs from the 401K.

Crap.  If I hadn't found that, I'd have been hit with major tax penalty for not having taken any MRD from the IRAs!

So, I did that at 3 am.  I took the required amount from each of the IRAs.  The IRS will have nothing to complain about.

I'm still a bit confused about why I have to pay a 20% tax "penalty" on the "excess" over the required minimum I took from the 401K.  I thought this was my retirement account, and that I'm now old enough to be able to take as much as I want out of there whenever I want --- whatever I need to live on, right?  It likely has to do with what portion is "tax free", and anything over that is taxed as income.  But I ran the numbers, and if I were to take only the minimum every year, that account wouldn't be drained until I'm 115 years old.  I'm not likely to live that long.

BTW, there's no penalty if I take money out of the 401K and roll it over into an IRA, and then I can take all I need from the IRA whenever I need it, taxed as normal income.  No penalty.  I think.  I'll have to look into that next year.
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4091 Rambles

Monday, August 17, 2015

“If women are expected to do the same work as men,
we must teach them the same things.”

-- Plato --

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I mentioned that I have been unable to go north to the country house for various reasons.  I realized the other day that there's another reason I have resisted getting in the car and just going.  My last two trips were both emotionally, physically, and financially draining.  I just can't face doing that again.

I'm actually afraid to go north again.

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I find Bernie Sanders very interesting.  I like all his positions and observations.  But I doubt that he's electable.  He's a socialist, and to the average idiot 'Mericun voter socialism is a dirty word, even though they have no idea what it means and they aren't interested in finding out.  These are the same people, by the way, who seem to think that corporate fascism (the end game of capitalism) is just fine.

And even if by some miracle he was actually elected, he'd have even more opposition from Congress than Obama did on anything seen as even remotely "socialist"  even if it happened to be a "friendly" Congress, so he couldn't make any difference anyway.  

An exercise in futility.

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People sure do love fireworks around here.  Every local fair, several a year, ends with an hour of house-rocking booms and huge colorful chrysanthemums, often six or eight in the sky at once for the whole damn hour, even long before the finale.  I see them through the trees, and every time I find myself wondering how many people could have been housed or fed on what it cost to burn all that material.  And I see my $8K in real estate taxes going up in smoke, even as my car falls into axle-breaking potholes.

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I haven't had a retirement raise in 15 years.  I don't understand.  I understood at the time I retired that I would be getting periodic COLAs.

I have this idealized version of how it should work.  In very simplified terms, let's say that at the time I retired there was $100 in the total employees retirement fund (you can think of that like 100 million or whatever, I'm just using $100 as an example), and let's say that I had contributed $5 to the fund before my retirement.  So my principle in the fund was $5, or 5% of the fund.  It seems like I should be entitled to 5% of the profits earned by the investment of that fund.

As more employees contribute and retire, the total fund balance goes up and my percentage share in the principle and profits in the fund goes down, but the total profit in the fund goes up, so the actual dollar value of my share of the profits should go up - especially when over time other contributors die off and their principle stays in but their profit share no longer goes out.

Carefully invested, the retirement fund should be earning at LEAST an average of 7% per year, even with the 2008 panic averaged in.  Properly invested, it should be earning more.  A lot more!  My IRAs and 401K without active management on my part earned 30%+ last year.

So, even though my idealization isn't the way it works, why haven't I seen a raise in 15 years?  Can you imagine the inflation in my costs over 15 years?   I've probably dropped in retirement income buying power by a huge amount.  A table I found online says that $100 in 2000 is $140 in 2015, at about 2.5% per year inflation.  It seems like there's something very wrong here.

The Company puts out an annual report on various employee funds.  It's both very high level and very complicated, so I don't pay much attention to it, don't attempt to figure out what's going on with it, but I think I might delve a little deeper next time.  I want to know what The Company is doing with the money they aren't giving to me.
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3448 Jasper says "Cat Outside!"

Monday, January 23, 2012

Done is better than perfect.

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Investment newsletters will usually tell you that during retirement you will need about 80% of your final pay to maintain your lifestyle. They go on to point out that it's less than 100% because you don't need to support a work wardrobe and will no longer have commuting expenses.

Bull poopy.

I guess they think you'll be just sitting in your house watching TV for the rest of your life. Doesn't work that way. You'll want to be active, and it doesn't matter whether it's golf, or classes, or volunteering, there'll still be expenses. Even more if you want to finally travel - even if it's only to visit the grandbabies. And they don't seem to consider inflation, either. I sometimes wonder if the people who write this advice are kids, who think 65-year-olds are decrepit and happy to just sit and knit.

The following is the scariest part. It's from a newsletter from the IBM 401(k) Plus Plan (an aside - "Plus" what?). It's absolutely discouraging, especially since corporations, IBM included, are gradually doing away with retirement plans in favor of personal savings plans.

"Someone who saves 12% annually over a 40-year career could expect to have enough savings to replace 40% of their pre-retirement income, according to Russell Research."

Um, you said I'd need 80% (and I think that's low; I think you need 100% or more if you plan to live through another 20 years of inflation), so where's the other 40-60% supposed to come from? Social Security? Not if the Repulsicans have their way and sh*t-can Social security.

Shortly after I retired, IBM announced that for people hired after a certain date, they were no longer going to maintain a retirement fund and pay a monthly retirement. Instead they were giving people a lump sum which employees would manage as savings toward retirement, with some kind of matching plan. (But, um, they didn't get raises to put into that fund to be matched, duh, so this was effectively a pay cut....)

It doesn't matter that when those people were hired they were promised retirement. Same as when I actually retired I was promised free lifetime health care. Yeah, sure. There was fine print, saying that the company could change the terms in any way at any time.

My friend Nancy had 22+ years in, and was 59 years old when they "lump sum"ed her. Know how much she got toward her retirement? $125,000. Total. She is now retired, and living with her daughter and son-in-law.

There's a lot wrong with all of that.

You'll have to save more than 12%. More like 25-30%. Nobody is paying anyone below the executive level enough to easily save 30%. Raises aren't happening - companies are pleading bottom line (even as the execs get multi-million dollar bonuses). The government is allowing companies to do away with retirement plans. Conservatives seem to consider social security to be some kind of welfare, without realizing that social security, since its inception, has allowed corporations to reduce what retirement incentives they had to offer to get the best workers. Corporations don't have to offer incentives any more. They are allowed to import workers and export jobs with impunity. The Man says there are very few "Americans" working with him these days. But the corporations still get huge tax breaks, and now with unlimited contributions they can buy all the politicians they want.

There's a LOT wrong with all of that.

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Note - I am fully aware that no matter how much or how little you are paid, you CAN save 30%. I did it the first three years after I left Ex#2 because I was scared sh*tless. Daughter and I ate beans and hot dogs, I made my clothes, she wore hand-me-downs, and she didn't get the name-brand stuff to keep up with the "in" kids at school. It can be done. But it was hard, it hurt, and it needn't have, shouldn't have.
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3167 A wandering mind

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"All meetings last longer than they should."
-- Scott Adams --

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An oddity: When I was young, the islands of the Caribbean were often referred to as the West Indies. You never hear that anymore.

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When Daughter was in school, I would get very annoyed because when the allotted snow days were used up, in order to meet the mandated minimum, the school board would extend the school year into middle to late June, despite the fact that Spring Break was supposed to be used. The reason? Because teachers had scheduled vacations during Spring Break and were angry that they might have to eat plane tickets. The teachers were stupid to count on having those days.

Something has changed in the past twenty years. The school district at the old house has announced that they have already used up the snow allotment, and if there are any more snow days, they will use the Spring Break. Cool.

What I don't understand is the way they have chosen to use it - guaranteed to piss off a lot of people.

"If school needs to be closed for emergency reasons, weather-related or otherwise, and additional “make-up” days are needed, classes will then be in session first on Wednesday, April 20, and thereafter on Thursday, April 21, and then on Tuesday, April 19th, in that order. If additional “make-up” days are needed beyond that, April 18 and April 22 will then be under consideration."

This says that if one more snow day is needed, they're taking it out of the middle of the break.

I don't understand.

I guess maybe they're thinking that they'll at least preserve two long weekends?

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There's a lot of talk about raising the Social Security retirement age again. There's something they're not taking into consideration.

Not so very long ago, if you got a good job, and kept your nose clean and your manager happy (which was often a contradiction, if you know what I mean), and kept your skills up, you pretty much had a job for life.

Nowadays, the only people with that much security are folks in strong unions. High tech companies have pretty much been able to avoid unionization. The technology, however, changes so quickly these days that those companies find it efficient to get rid of older folks (who are higher on the salary ladder) and replace them with new college graduates, at a lower starting salary, who will impact company-sponsored health plans less, and who already know the new stuff.

This means that people over 50 are finding it increasingly difficult to find permanent jobs. They end up working temporary contracts, with minimal benefits, no vacations, and no retirement plan. (The benefits of contracting at different companies in various industries are that you end up with a robust and varied resume, which makes it easier to get the next contracting job. The down side is that it still doesn't help you to get a permanent job with all the benefits.) Periods of unemployment between contracts make it difficult to maintain your own retirement plans.

The saddest cases are the folks who worked for the same company for 24 years and then were replaced by a kid. They are 50 years old and have experience specific to that industry and, worse, skills possibly specific only to that company.

It isn't going to get any better. The days of the lifetime job are over. It's only going to get worse.

These folks who want to raise S.S. eligibility to 70, what do they think people will be doing for the last 25 years (or more, the way things are going) of their working life? Nobody is guaranteeing that they'll have a job until then.

Of course, the people who are proposing, considering, and will be voting on this plan have lifetime benefits and a generous retirement, regardless of how long they are in office. They have no idea what others have to contend with.

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I've been checking around for a hair salon. Becs has even offered her adored Herschel. I'm sort of keeping that in reserve (thanks Becs), but closer would be better.

I want someone who will cut my hair DRY. Not just will cut it dry, but fully understands why I want it cut dry.

There are places online where one can read customer reviews, but I'm suspicious of them. How do I know those reviews are not plants - employees or family and friends of employees?

So, I did something dangerous.

I bought a fine-tooth rattail comb. I already have hair shears. I trimmed it myself. I didn't change the style. I just parted it every which way and smoothed the choppiness, trimmed wherever chunks of hair were sticking out beyond the other hairs around them. It's still a little chunky because in some spots chunks were so short it would have been pretty drastic to cut the longer stuff around them down to that length, so I had to leave it uneven. And the right side is still slightly longer than the left. But it does blend a lot nicer now, and it looks less like a wig at the back of my neck.

I like it now.
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1971 Visibility, Part 7 - the arbitration, Part 2

Monday, August 25, 2008

[Continued from Part 1] So the battle is on.

The problem of externals exposure existed not only in the particular product that had been copied, but throughout The Company's products.

A group was pulled together in White Plains to act as the coordinators and first level interface between the legal eagles and the software labs. They did most of the prep work for the attorneys. Four "Litigation Labs" were set up, northeast (us), southeast, west coast, and the other side of the world. Our jobs were many.

We received code from the competitor, and tore it apart to identify the copied portions. That, actually, was the reason for the high building security. We reviewed every manual for every product, to identify exposed internals and direct the publication departments in removing those references. We reviewed all new design documents to ensure that proper user exits were provided, and no new internals were exposed. We translated "legalese" into terms the lab programmers and design folks could understand, and translated lab concerns into terms the attorneys could understand. We educated pubs people and programmers in the whys and wherefores of the new rules. We had final approval on all new releases, and were very strict - schedules be damned. (I was finally in my element!)

I, personally, had responsibility for compliance of 35 products in 5 programming labs: 3 large operating systems and 32 major applications.

Now, the saying is that if you have a hammer for a tool, everything looks like a nail. The first claim of the competitors was that it was the manuals, the publications, that exposed the internals. So when corporate set up the departments to contain and correct the problem, they recruited pubs people. That whole top layer in White Plains were pubs people. They wanted the manuals cleaned up. All presentations and lab education was aimed toward what should be documented, and what should not. We in the Litigation Labs were not allowed to put together our own presentations or classes - we had to use foils developed by them and approved by the attorneys. At first, the only people we were to work with were the pubs people.

Fine. I agree we had to start sensitizing the publications departments. BUT - the folks in White Plains seemed to think that when the pubs were clean, the job was done.

I was shocked. The problem was not simply in the publications, it was in the design! Internal control blocks were exposed to the customer because no other means for debugging or plugging in had been provided. A few of us in our litigation lab had come from programming and design, and I was able to convince them that unless the design area in particular was sensitized to the issue, the concept of "black box", they were going to continue to design transparent functions. This would put the pubs people in a tough spot - design is going to continue to hand them transparent customer interfaces, which the pubs people would then not be allowed to document.

We HAD to get to design, too.

Well, surprise. Everyone who had come from design understood the problem, but none of them were willing to take it on as an issue. Do the assigned job and get out.

I fought it, all the way. Eventually everyone in White Plains also understood that the problem was larger than initially thought. We still had customers out there plugging right into the code. We had to identify them, and provide proper exits, otherwise we were still exposed to the argument that all that code was an external interface. We had to teach the design departments to provide proper "plugs", and hide everything else.

Everybody understood, that is, but Sue. Sue was one of those people who somehow found herself in rarefied air, and knew deep down that she didn't belong there. She seemed to be deathly afraid of being found out. She constantly "ran scared", freaked out daily. I heard, but don't know as a fact, that her previous department wanted to get rid of her, but she wouldn't accept transfers, so when White Plains was looking for pubs people, they figured that was one job she wouldn't turn down. I also heard, but don't know for fact, that she was hired in because she was Asian, and they needed someone who could read Japanese, and then after she got there, they discovered she could neither read nor speak Japanese. It could be both.

Sue was, of course, my interface in White Plains. I'm lucky that way. She was a complete ass. I had called a meeting with design in Endicott one time, and she decided to attend. The topic was the design for some function whereby they required that the customer know how certain algorithms worked and what bits were set in certain control blocks in order to use the function. This was an obvious violation. I was sitting down with the designers to explain what was wrong with it, and to figure out with them how we could redesign the function so that the internal operation would be hidden. All it required was a front-end, and we were talking about what the front-end could expose.

Well, Sue objected. She insisted that the design was fine as is. All they had to do was NOT document the customer interface. "Just don't say this, and don't say that...." She didn't understand that that would make it completely unusable, and force the customer to reverse engineer the code to use it, which is the worst scenario imaginable.

Because her desk was in White Plains, she decided she outranked me (she didn't), and she thought this meant she could interrupt me and "correct" me at will.

In short, I finally lost it. She and I ended up both standing on opposite sides of the conference room table, leaning on the table with our faces about a foot apart, screaming at each other. The lead designer called a break, and during the break, he said that I'm right, anyone can see that, and, um, how 'bout we end the meeting now, and resume in two hours without telling Sue. Which we did.

I spent four years fighting with her. My coworkers had occasional dealings with her, and they asked me how I could stand it.

In the third year, my manager put me in for promotion. It had to be approved by the director. The director asked the person in White Plains who worked most closely with me whether I deserved promotion. Of course, Sue said no.

In the fourth year, my manager put me in for promotion. It had to be approved by the director. The director asked the person in White Plains who worked most closely with me whether I deserved promotion. Of course, Sue said no. (Sue wasn't getting promotions either. Had I been promoted, I'd have been a higher grade than she.)

And then The Company, who under previous CEOs rarely fired anyone - they'd shift people around until they found the right spot - warned the world that there would be major cuts in personnel. "RIF"s. Reduction in force. The Mid-Hudson Valley was going to lose several thousand jobs. Transfer somewhere else now, or die.

They offered packages to people who were willing to quit or retire. The "easy out" retirement package included lifetime medical, and five years added to your time, and a very healthy severance check (for me, it was a year's salary), and assistance finding another job. If you didn't volunteer and were RIF'd, you got next to nothing. Just fired.

Our litigation lab headcount was under White Plains, not the Mid-Hudson valley labs, so no one in our group was going to lose a job (although I understand two people were strongly advised to take the offer since it would probably be the best they'd ever see). However, since our payroll paperwork was handled in Poughkeepsie, we were eligible for the package anyway. The cuts would be announced on April 1, 1993. Jay and I were planning to get married, so we waited until the end of the day on April 1. If he was RIF'd, I'd keep my job. If he still had a job, I'd volunteer for the retirement package.

More than nine thousand local people lost their jobs that day, but Jay wasn't one of them.** On April 2, I went in to my manager, and told him I was taking the easy out, and he freaked. Six of the ten** in the department planned to take it, including him. He said that he was afraid that if Martha and I left, they wouldn't let him leave.

We all kind of figured that the spotlight was going to turn on headquarters sometime, and since we were under their headcount, we'd all be sacrificed before any of them, and there'd never again be a package as good as this one.

And that's why and when I left the company. In constantly pissing off Sue, I broke rule #10.

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** The next year, 1994, they did it again - RIF'd a few thousand more people, including Jay and the remainder of the Litigation Lab. From April 1993 to April 1994, about 13,000 local folks were out of work. The real estate market tanked. Job losses rippled throughout the surrounding communities. Thirteen thousand computer professionals were turned loose on a depressed job market, and even if they did manage to find another job, they couldn't sell their house to move.

The second severance package was much much MUCH less attractive. I did really well taking the first one when I did.

Remember Peter, from Visibility Part 4? Uh huh. And Sue? Disappeared. I don't feel at all guilty gloating. For once, I got something good at the right time.
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1206 Boring Museum Day

Friday, April 13, 2007

A bunch of errands this morning. Stopped in at Piper's to warn him about the Belorussian, and he said he's already decided that the ferry idea wouldn't fit into his vacation schedule. He was surprised to hear what else I had to tell him, though.

Then to the bank, to deposit my first check from my widow's share of Jay's retirement. It's a tiny check, but I wouldn't be able to collect the full amount until Jay would have been ready for retirement, and by that time I'd be 73. I decided to take the reduced amount now.

To the health club to make my monthly payment. There was a sign on the rack that any shoes that had not been used in a while (like, say, MINE!) were going to be thrown out. Um, my shoes weren't there. I freaked. They are rather expensive jazz shoes, difficult to find, and especially difficult in my size. The woman in charge wasn't there, so I left a note. She called later in the afternoon to say that she has the shoes.

To the deli to get tea and a snack for the museum.

To the post office, mail some more bill payments.

I forget where else.

Then to the museum, where I put in 4 hours printing labels and membership cards for 33 more renewals and stuffing envelopes with cards, letters, and premiums. They have like eight levels of membership, and each level gets a different envelope stuffing. The current process is to do them alphabetically. That's a piece I'm going to change. Next time, I'm going to sort them by level! Sheesh!

The hardest part is stuffing the envelopes, because I have to stand at a conference table to do it, and leaning forward is extremely hard on my back. My back is sore and tired tonight. (People compliment me on my "perfect posture". What they don't know is that if I slump, I fall down.)

They've been working on the exhibits, for the May opening, and the featured exhibits are ice boats. Those things are BIG. (Well, some of them.) So before I left, I went downstairs with Russ to see what they'd done. It's amazing to me that I ended up volunteering at a museum whose concentration interests me very little. At least the location is interesting.

To the post office to mail the membership envelopes.

To the next village upriver. I read that they have free WiFi in the village, and I have a load of stuff to download that keeps timing out on my dialup at home. The laptop did recognize that there was WiFi, but it said the connection was weak (I was sitting right under the tower, which is atop the town water tank!), and it "connected", but said it could not access the internet. Huh? Their definition of "connect" is not the same as mine, I guess. I gave up.

And that was the day. Boring, but tiring.
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