In reading the article about the striking Boeing employees (“Generations coveted Boeing jobs. Strike reveals how much has changed,” The Herald, Sept. 17), I noted that workers are asking for a return to the old pension system and thought, “Be careful what you wish for.”
I’ve had 401(k)s all my working life and used to think that it would be nice to have a pension instead. That changed when the company that my father retired from declared bankruptcy and pushed its pension obligations off onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that oversees private pensions, and his payments got cut.
It seems like I’m always reading articles about pension plans that are in trouble financially, or that get into trouble by investing in risky assets to try to get the returns they need to sustain the payments to their retirees (an example of which is the teacher’s pension fund in Ontario, Canada, that lost tens of millions investing in FTX), and I’ve come around to being glad that I’m the one making the decisions about my retirement money. The only pensions I can think of that I wouldn’t be nervous about would be a federal government pension or a military pension.
I know that a lot of people are nervous about doing their own planning and investing, which is one of the reasons I hope our state government passes a bill this next session that would require financial literacy classes be taught in schools so people will be aware of the need to save, and be confident in investing their savings.
Cindy Molitor
Lynnwood
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
