Retired Actuaries Submit Comments to the Department of Labor Regarding Disclosure of Lifetime Income Stream Equivalents

Here are our comments to the Department of Labor regarding disclosure of Lifetime Income Stream Equivalent (LISE) amounts in defined contribution plan benefit statements. In summary, we made the following recommendations:

Changes Suggested by Actuaries Unlikely to Ensure Sustainable Solvency For Social Security

Every year, the Social Security trustees release a new OASDI Trustees report discussing the financial status of the Social Security system and every year, the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) releases their “Actuarial Perspective on the new OASDI Trustees Report (AP)”explaining the results in the new Trustees report and the Academy’s recommendations for possible system changes.  In an effort to provide our U.S. readers a slightly different actuarial perspective on the system’s finances (so they can attempt to plan for future possible changes to the program), this post will discuss some of the issues with which we agree and disagree with the AAA AP issue brief.  This post updates our posts of June 8, 2019, June 27, 2018 and August 3, 2017 on this subject.

How Conservative Are Your Planning Assumptions About the Future?

This post is a follow-up to our posts of April 11, 2020 and March 9, 2020.  In those posts, we discussed the default assumptions used in our Actuarial Budget Calculators (ABCs) and potential factors to consider if you believe our default assumptions are either too conservative or too optimistic, and you want to “override” them in your budget or essential expenses/Floor Portfolio present value calculations.