I have a legacy Bellsouth Pension as a manager. I always hear about the 20 year and 2025 year pension dump but no one give an estimateZ jIs there any truth about the dump?? And if so, what is the estimate I will have at 20 and 25 years?? Even if you are legacy SW, I would like to hear from you. Thanks!
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Originally hired into Amertech and we got a huge bump in the pension like almost double at rule of 55. 26 years $750k lump sum...ba bye gotta go also with my subsidized medical ; )
@OP L2 legacy Bellsouth here. 32 years. Roughly 350k in pension. In 1995 we got a correspondence that if your NCS date was 12/31/89 you were grandfathered in on traditional legacy pension. Anyone after that was transferred to a cash balance type. For SBC and Ameritech that switch was around year 2000. Traditional Pensions are designed to pay you a percentage of your retirement income. The difference in my pension at 32 years and peers who are legacy SBC with roughly same number of years is over 1 million dollars. Whoever posted those previous amounts for Bellsouth at 20 and 25 years is not a Bellsouth legacy employee, unless maybe director or above.
↓↓↓↓ And again, we're talking about BellSouth Southeast people, which is Qualified Cash Balance.
@ad I am over 20 years from BellSouth and nowhere near 750k based on the fidelity estimate site. If I had that coming I’d leave today.
Call fidelity.
For my personal circumstances, I plan on moving the money into my own annuity. This way, the annuity can go to my child whenever myself and my wife pass.
Setup a call with a personal advisor to give you some options.
Rise in 10 year treasury rate drives down lump sum amount on Pacbell management pension. Annuity payments not impacted so it is a flip of coin when rates are high deciding as i could drop dead month after retirement leaving family nothing if I chose monthly payments.
There is a big penalty in the SW if you don’t have 30 years or are at least 55 years old. I guess maybe SE doesn’t have that?
@ac Wrong, those are the percentages of the company pay into your pension, quitting make that go to zero. The interest rate your balance is increasing at is a different amount, and above your money market I'll bet.
For BellSouth, plan on a lump sum of $750K at 20 years. Count on $900K at 25 years. These figures may fluctuate slightly based on your management level.
The cash balance goes up slightly faster after certain milestones. Like 5% then 6% after 20 years and 7% after 30 years if memory serves. You would have to check your Netbenefits docs for the specifics. So it is basically a bad mutual fund. I have often thought most of us would do better to quit, take the cash balance and put it in index funds and then come back as a new hire or contractor.
BellSouth's Pension (called Southeast Programs of the AT&T PBP) is Qualified Cash Balance, meaning we get what it shows, regardless of bond rates, etc. and it's available paid as lump sum or annuity. So while that's the plus, we also don't get the 'multiplier' that other Bells get/got--which is a bigger 'plus' than cash balance IMO.
The increase or “bump” when reaching certain milestones was only at some of the other Baby Bells unfortunately, Bellsouth/Southern Bell didn’t have that in their pension plans.
That’s why there is so much confusion on this site when talking about various benefits like retirement, healthcare or severance because each Baby Bell had different policies depending on what region of the country they were in.
You can easily model your payouts at various times on Fidelity.
You need to know which SPD applies to you, as there are many different ones.
For instance, mine is Mobility. It is a cash balance plan, and does not have those big spikes at different service milestones. It is what it is basically. Company contributes like 5% of my salary a year to it and that’s it.
IDK WTH you're talking about and I've been here almost 30 years. (Also BellSouth.) There was nothing significantly different in pension balance at either 20 or 25 year mark. You can check past balances on Fidelity; just select 'View Stament.'
Contact Fidelity.