Pension Pillar

  

A “pension pillar” is an element of the pension framework described by the World Bank and adopted by many countries, mostly in Europe. There are actually five pension pillars, and each pillar represents a different type of pension format. According to the World Bank, the point of this pension pillar framework is to help policymakers and financial institutions make sure they’re addressing issues related to retirement, poverty, and old age in their societies.

So what are these pillars and what do they mean? Here’s a quick and dirty breakdown:

Zero pillar—This pillar requires no pay-in and provides pensioners with the minimum level of financial and social service support to keep them alive.

First pillar—People contribute, and then, when they retire, they receive a pension that is equal to part of their prior working income (there are some who say first-pillar pension plans should be mandatory for all working people).

Second pillar—Individual savings accounts that exist to help with retirement expenses.

Third pillar—Voluntary pay-in pension plans that will provide more financial stability in our golden years than first-pillar plans.

Fourth pillar—Relying on our network of friends and loved ones to carry the costs of whatever we need, but can’t afford in our old age.

The five-pillar framework isn’t a recipe. Countries don’t receive exact instructions on how to create their own successful national retirement plan soufflé. But what it does do (at least, the World Bank is hoping this is what it does) is gently nudge the folks in power toward thinking more about the long-term needs of a society that is living longer and longer. If we as lawmakers and retirement planners take a more holistic view of what our country offers for retirees—in other words, if we evaluate our nation’s retirement resources in terms of each of the five pillars—then it might help us come up with better and more useful options and plans for our own citizens.

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Finance Allah shmoop What is the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

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Well the PBGC is a notionally independent agency of the

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federal government Its goal is to protect the retirement incomes

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of nearly forty million American workers in nearly twenty four

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thousand private sector defined benefit engine plans And that mission

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statement is right off their website The agency was set

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up in nineteen seventy for is part of Arisa Employee

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Retirement Income Security Act to protect defined benefit plans That

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one were there Benefit is a huge deal because it's

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non identical Twin sister is a defined contribution plan The

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big diff well in a defined contribution pension plan employees

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contribute some percentage of their income to their retirement pension

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and the employer matches it and that's it The money

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gets invested in the stock market and goes up and

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down and up and down but over time mostly up

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And then the employees retires Decades later owning whatever the

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market or their investments that they risk say they young

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period End of story But in a defined benefit plan

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the employer essentially guarantees a minimum amount of invested return

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That is the big boss Usually the federal government with

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its union employees on taxpayer dollars then guarantees a raid

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of say nine percent a year to the employee retiring

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in the form of a minimum monthly draw from their

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pension that the employees can take out If the market

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goes through a really bad spell well then it's up

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to the company to make up the difference to that

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employees The people who framed a Risa knew of the

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likely issue that the guaranteed investment return could end up

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bankrupting states and or the country So PBGC was formed

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and it helps a lot of people like one point

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five million who ultimately rely on PBGC to bail out

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their pensions And if you're one of those people while

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you can expect to get something like sixty five thousand

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dollars annually or about fifty three hundred bucks a month

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assuming you retire at sixty five So if you retire

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early well those cheques arriving in your mailbox won't be

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quite so heavy Retire late in while the numbers go

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S taxpayer doesn't need to get all up in arms

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Since the dough used to manage PBGC doesn't come from

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John Q Taxpayer but rather from the private worlds employers

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