Sears Canada

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meme said:
It sucks for Sears employees but hits home the concept of managing your money - so you are not relying on a pension.

Even with a secure job one change of management ( or mismanagement) can mean the pension is gone. It shouldn't but we've all learned this lesson before.

My advice is start investing (RESPs, gics, mutual funds - whatever) as soon as you start earning. I like property. 8 years away from retirement and I still don't trust my pension will be there
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Agreed. Also don't blindly trust anyone. Some people do crooked things and others do stupid things. Same result.

I think the hardest part is being cautious with your finances when you see everyone else spending like drunk politicians. They're playing with a new toy and you've got a stock certificate. I figure it takes ten to fifteen years to get to the point where they are stewing in debt and you are starting to enjoy the rewards of understanding compound interest.

sigh.... Then they tell how lucky you are because you have a house, no credit card debt...............
 
beverage said:
Rather than put new legislation in place to protect company pension funds, the Ontario Liberals will start using this as the poster-child to really start pumping their Ontario Pension Plan initiative. Then we can watch how poorly the Ontario government manages peoples pension money.
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Pension money? How about any money?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...eneral-report-fair-hydro-plan-wynne-1.4358168

The $26 billion is being borrowed through Ontario Power Generation, so will not appear on the province's books. Electricity customers will pay off that debt through rate increases spread out over the next 30 years.

Our hydro rates went down...................right

Borrow money to pay down a debt?

What's next?

How about the $200 payday loans Auntie Kathy. You could use them to bribe more voters.

We are doomed.
 
crankcall said:
unless your in a 'bullit proof' pension, which may not be so forever, balancing some personal management with the hopefully solid company deal should be on every young adults radar.
How many times does history need to repeat itself before that starts to sink in.

I'm in favor of Federally mandated management of pension funds ie; no poaching. IMO its stealing from your employees , once a company goes down that rabbit hole it never seems to bounce back, its management by desperation, its 'look I found a pile of money and we can borrow and pretend to pay interest, but its sort of already ours so...'
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get rid of pensions altogether. just remove the annual caps from RSP/TFSA and an employer can offer an RSP/TFSA deposit match, administered by a 3rd party. it would look like what some of us have known as defined benefit plans, they are basically just RSPs that are called pensions. they are also annoying to deal with. I'd rather just receive the cash value of the benefit to invest as I see fit. but alas, some folk need to be forced to save for the future and that brings us full circle to why pensions exist.
This way once the match is made it's out of the company's hands, there's not liability/asset for them to shimmy around their balance sheet.
 
eljay said:
get rid of pensions altogether. just remove the annual caps from RSP/TFSA and an employer can offer an RSP/TFSA deposit match, administered by a 3rd party. it would look like what some of us have known as defined benefit plans, they are basically just RSPs that are called pensions. they are also annoying to deal with. I'd rather just receive the cash value of the benefit to invest as I see fit. but alas, some folk need to be forced to save for the future and that brings us full circle to why pensions exist.
This way once the match is made it's out of the company's hands, there's not liability/asset for them to shimmy around their balance sheet.
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Most companies require at least a year or two of employment before their contribution to your pension is vested to you. Leave early and they claw back their contribution. I don't blame the companies for wanting some employee commitment before fulling vesting pension contributions, and that would be hard to manage if they simply handed the money over to the employee. Although I'm sure something could be figured out to bridge the "vesting" period.
 
beverage said:
Most companies require at least a year or two of employment before their contribution to your pension is vested to you. Leave early and they claw back their contribution. I don't blame the companies for wanting some employee commitment before fulling vesting pension contributions, and that would be hard to manage if they simply handed the money over to the employee. Although I'm sure something could be figured out to bridge the "vesting" period.
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It seems simple enough to have the matching contribution as accounts payable to the employee which is paid out at the end of the year or two. If it bails in that year, the employee loses, but at least there is just a year of potential downside instead of a lifetime (and the employee contribution is obviously safe as the employer had no access to it).

Most of the pension game seems to be setup to favour business (I am sure with some crap about allowing businesses to reinvest in themselves). If a commitment is made to an employee, it should be honored. If a business cannot afford to fully fund the pension promised to employees, they need to renegotiate with employees and let them know right away that they can't afford what they agreed to. Has anyone ever heard of a company catching up to fully funded after getting behind? Why would they? Literally they have nothing to lose, they transfer out the employees money for management/owners to keep and if the company goes bankrupt they have no downside to the process.
 
announced today 16,000 Sears workers are looking at pensions possibly imploding. That's a lot of workers getting hung out. Ouch.
 
crankcall said:
announced today 16,000 Sears workers are looking at pensions possibly imploding. That's a lot of workers getting hung out. Ouch.
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And they are all going to end up on the government dole because of it. That my friends is why the government needs to develop strict pension rules for corporations and more protection for employees whose employers go bankrupt. Now we're all going to pick up the tab one way or the other while a bunch of wealthy creditors and executives walk away with the loot. Talk about corruption.
 
crankcall said:
announced today 16,000 Sears workers are looking at pensions possibly imploding. That's a lot of workers getting hung out. Ouch.
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Roadghost said:
And they are all going to end up on the government dole because of it. That my friends is why the government needs to develop strict pension rules for corporations and more protection for employees whose employers go bankrupt. Now we're all going to pick up the tab one way or the other while a bunch of wealthy creditors and executives walk away with the loot. Talk about corruption.
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Just to complete the circle of corruption, Morneau Shepell is now in charge of the Sears pension plan. Yes, the company owned in large part by the finance minister of Canada is in charge of the collapsing sears pensions. It's amazing that he is still confused about how this is a conflict.
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