Your Pension Plan

How much do you know about your pension plan? Do you know if it is stable and if it is, do you know how long it will stay that way? A pension plan is actually a retirement account that your current employer adds to for your future. This amount that the employer contributes is based on the amount of income you earn and the amount of years you have worked for him.
For those who are new employees, it will take about three to five years of employment before you will be eligible for this plan. It is true that many employers have been terminating their pensions and they do this because of the cost to continue. The reason for this is because interest rates are low, there are many more retirees and the stock market in unstable.
If your employer happens to go out of business and you are worried about your pension, there is a government agency called the Pension Benefit Guaraty Corporation and they pick up pension payments when this happens. This agency will pay a certain percentage of your pension yearly. This leaves you will less of your pension than you typically would have received from an employer. When a company is in trouble, the pension plan is usually the first thing to go.