Letters to the Editor

Hi Doreen: I just read through the latest edition of KIT and I appreciate receiving it very much. Once again, it is simply excellent, filled with a variety of news and information, including Rosalie's report, health information, international volunteering, and cross provincial activities. On a personal note, the Riding Mountain Excursion story struck a chord with me. My Mom was born in Whitewater, Manitoba where the German POW's were later kept and in our area of Northwestern, Ontario, there are several POW sites like that where wood was harvested. Would you please pass on my congratulations to the folks that help make your magazine so successful.

Thanks,

Brian Kenny President, ACER-CART

Dear Doreen,

Thank you for the excellent articles in the latest KIT. I read this issue from cover to cover, something I haven't always done in the past. I appreciated the article by Ron Nordstrom regarding volunteering in Guatemala. What an excellent initiative by the Rotary Clubs and the hard work by the volunteers.

I especially enjoyed, and learned so much, from Judy Olmstead's article, Riding Mountain Excursion. She did a lot of work in researching the history of the area. When I was a little fellow I used to attend summer camp on the shores of the lake. The Seventh-day Adventist church had a campground near Camp Wannakumbak (perhaps on what is now designated Indian Reserve). I have such happy memories of swimming in the lake, skipping stones across the waves (only to be scolded by some of the men who said they'd worked hard to clear those stones out of the lake), evening campfires, and overnight hikes. I don't think I've ever slept as soundly as I did on those overnight hikes when we'd unroll our sleeping bags under the stars.

I believe one of Dad's cousins, who was a conscientious objector during WWII, was sent to a work camp at Riding Mountain. I don't know whether he was building park infrastructure or cutting firewood.

Thanks for a great issue of KIT.

Robert Ramsay Surrey, BC

Teachers:

Retired or active teachers, you need to be aware and alert to changes that can/ will come your way. We have in the past lived our lives in such a way that it would appear that we are separate groups with little in common with others, and when changes have occurred, we have responded in reactionary and ineffective ways.

Retirement generally occurs when we are approximately 60 -65 years of age. Life expectancy, at age 65, for men is age 84 and for women it is age 87 years. This obviously doesn’t mean that we will all reach those numbers, because statistics tend to be an average. Some of you (us) will live longer; some for a shorter period of time. What it does mean is that at some point we all retire and that most of us will be retired for a generally long period of time. Retirement looks different for everyone. Some continue working until they die. Others will work for different periods of time in the same job or in some other.

We, fortunately, have an agreement with our employer to defer some of our salary into the future. Both we and the employer have agreed to the amount of our contributions to this deferred salary and the manner in which this deferred salary will be paid back to us. This deferred salary is our pension. What is still open to question is the manner in which our deferred salary will be

increased to meet the cost of living.

Currently, what we can be certain of is that the buying power of our pension will decline each year that we are retired because of inflation. We can also be certain that everything that we purchase in the future will increase in cost. We can also be certain that our needs and wants will change in retirement.

Initially we are active in our retirement. We want to go places and do things. As we age, we reduce this initial activity because we are unable, because of health or interest, to do what we had been doing. As we continue to age we continue to change what we do. We do less, we do things differently, or we stop doing some things altogether and we do other things. For example, we may stop traveling altogether. Each of these life changes requires a change in amounts of money that we spent, where we spend it and on what. The amount of money required continues to increase, in most cases. Some of it due to changes in our life some due to the loss of purchasing power of our pensions. Regardless, we need to reallocate and be sure that we have enough money to outlast our needs (outlasts us).

You are teachers, retired or not. You cannot ignore things that affect you. Be aware of changes that occur in your pensions or are proposed as changes in your pension. Retirement just doesn’t mean that we continue to do the things that we like and not think about the future. We do not have an inalienable right to a happy and carefree existence till we die nor do most of us have unlimited resources. You may be retired but you shouldn’t put your mind out to pasture. There are things to do and actions to take.

First of all you should look at your income coming in. Each of those changes in your retirement requires consideration. You may dislike budgeting. But running out of resources to do what you would like to do in retirement is small potatoes when compared to running out of funds to provide for your basic needs- food, shelter and other daily requirements. Changes in how your retirement moves forward will be affected by what you can afford. Successful responses to this is easier now then it will be in 15 years or 20 years’ time. Investing in lottery tickets is not an answer. Ongoing planning using a rough budget should be part of your life plan. Precise planning is not necessary but you should have a plan for foreseeable changes as time goes along in your retirement. What you must always take into account is “money in should match money out”.

Beware of laws, written and those proposed, that are injurious to your pensions. By law, pension funds, are far down the list of who gets pension money that is already set aside, if a company goes bankrupt, is sold to a foreign company or if the company just wants to close and move out of country. We need to get our government to change that. Pension money is our deferred wages. How dare they take and give it to others. Question your M.Ps. Are they in favor or against it? What will they do about it? Changing pensions from defined benefit to defined contribution or target pension plans. Learn about them and realize that the plan is to allow provinces and companies, by law, to replace defined benefit plans with defined contributions or target systems. Are these plans inferior? You bet they are. Your pension may be largely unchanged, right now. We need to understand that a forest fire starts small. If given time, it is very difficult to stop and it sprreads. We need to object and object loudly through our political representatives. Our pensions are agreed to by both us and our employers. One party should not be able to change the agreement without out approval. You should be mad as hell. In effect your money is being stolen from you.

For your interest, I will describe Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution and Target Benefit pensions. These are the most frequently talked about pension plans in the pension world.

Thanks, Ray Sitter, Retired Manitoba Teacher