Annual Addition

  

Once you reach middle age, Annual Addition is the amount of girth you add to your mid-section each year. Outside of that, it represents an annual total related to retirement savings.

Some retirement plans (like 401k, IRA, SEP, Goodyear) have a cap on the amount that can be put in during a given year. For these defined-contribution retirement accounts, the annual addition figure represents the total amount added during the year. Add up things like contributions from the company, the amount the employee themselves put into the plan and other specific items. The sum of those various figures gives you the annual addition total.

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Finance: What is ERISA?7 Views

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finance a la shmoop what is ERISA ERISA

00:07

wasn't that the actress Milano or something from charmed and maybe not

00:12

well ERISA actually stands for Employee Retirement Income Security Act

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yeah next name there which was lovingly created by yes the Nixon clan in 1974 [picture of President Nixon]

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about a week after Watergate it essentially established minimum

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standards or guidelines for pension plans in the United States and believe

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it or not before this act companies essentially did not have to disclose to

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their employees how well or poorly their pension investments had been doing all

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along the way sort of a hidden set of numbers until well one day the [pension papers going into a filing cabinet]

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beneficiary retired and was more or less cashed out well here's what you got good [older guy casting a fishing rod]

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luck have fun in your two and a half years of expected lifetime after [$50 check passing hands]

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retirement weirdly pension funds were actually

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managed by the corporation that made whoopee cushions or whatever they made

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because of course it assumed that if it was great at making whoopee cushions [whoopie cushions in a production line]

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well then it would also be great at buying and selling stocks in the global [stock floating across world map]

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stock market marketplace yeah not so much

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so specifically ERISA codified or structured the way in which pension

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funds are created and managed in the United States it made them voluntary

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that is you are no longer forced to save money in a structure in which the [money going into piggy bank]

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company managed your retirement savings and by the same token it did away with

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the government's requirements formerly of the company having to have pension [gov't mandated pension plan paper getting ripped]

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funds in the first place like they didn't need them anymore wasn't a

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requirement additionally the features benefits and the whole notion of

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fairness in terms of how the pension fund monies were earned retained vested

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into and then distributed well it all had to be written down yes that was like

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a new thing back then in a rational logical way so that employees would not [guy writing in binder]

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end up being screwed under the yoke of unscrupulous managers in a lousy company

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ERISA only exists for corporations that is it's not something that government

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uses nor religious organizations nor other structured health things like

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workers comp unemployment or disability insurance and all of this only works if

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you and your they are in the good ol US of A there is [US map with whoopie cushion business man]

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in fact a Somalian corporate retirement plan but we're pretty sure you wouldn't

02:20

like it

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