Tag: pensions

Why I Hate – Episode 5: Benefit Improvements

HOOPP recently released their 2022 Annual Report. On their website, they list numerous positives and benefits that the pension plan offers. What was also noted was that these benefits have been given improvements as of late.

“Proudly serving…since 1960!”, “Enhancing retirement security…”, “Successful investment approach”, “Consistently healthy funded status”.. It’s all Sunshine and Lollipops! Then you get to bottom of the page where they drop the transparency bomb of their total investment return for 2022; in small print no less.

-8.60%!!!!

Ohhhh boy… While it is highlighted, HOOPP doesn’t specifically talk about this significant loss of assets. And even though it looks bad, it’s not nearly so dire as the benchmark that they compare themselves too, having lost -13.21%! HOOPP then clarifies that the difference of these two numbers creates a “value-added” return of +4.61%!!! A positive number is a positive number, even if the overall is negative; that makes sense, right?

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Why I Hate Pensions: Episode 3 – Sketchy Descriptions

Pensions are billion dollar businesses. HOOPP for example, is worth ~$114 billion (as of Dec 2021), up from 104 billion in 2020; that’s about an 11.28% gain. But how much of that 10 billion increase do you think that the members of the pension actually benefit from? Was it the full amount? Or perhaps only a fraction of that? And if so, where did the rest go? And more interestingly, how is HOOPP increasing in net value when more pension dollars are being paid out each year than are being contributed? Sounds sketchy to me…

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