Gimme

Caution: This may seem uncaring. I was reading the Denver Post newspaper today and they had a story about a major US company that was changing a provision in their pension plan regarding death benefits. It seems that the company pension plan has had a provision that if a pensioner dies there is a life insurance benefit equal to their last year's salary, up to $50,000. This is above and beyond the pension benefits they have received. As of the 1st of January, 2007, this drops to a maximum of $10,000 and the pensioners are up in arms. I guess the thing that occurred to me is why is this such a big deal? Why in the world does an 85-year-old need life insurance, beyond what it takes to bury him or her? The answer, of course, is that they feel entitled to all they can get. The story cites the example of a retiree, age 85, who worked 38 years for this company. The man in question died a couple of weeks ago, before the change and his wife says that if he had died after the first of the year she might not have had the money to bury him. Well, who's fault is that? This guy was a long-time employee who rose to the rank of district manager in his company, retired with a good pension and social security benefits for him and his spouse and his widow is willing to go to the paper with the story that they wouldn't have been able to bury him because they lost at most $40,000 in net insurance proceeds, from a policy they paid nothing for. I would be way too embarrassed to peddle that story. Their lack of saving is not the pension plan's responsibility. The crux of all of these stories is greed. People often don't have any perspective when it comes to money. Perhaps this seems harsh, but the notion that someone else is responsible for us from cradle to grave is misguided. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor