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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I worked in a pension department and most people were getting $1600-$3600/month depending on years of service, marital status and salary and age etc. most of them falling in the $22-2600/mo range. Add social security and you won’t starve especially if you have your house paid off.

[b]Pensions are guaranteed by pbgc.gov [/b]but there was a time when pensions were failing and a bunch of companies did away with them [/quote]

True, but you're not guaranteed to get what was promised in the company's pension plan.  My FIL was a steelworker at Bethlehem Steel- when their pension plan failed, it was taken over by PBGC and he received much less than what was expected from Bethlehem's plan.  [/quote]

A few points on this.  First, there has been significant pension reform over the years and single employer pension plans are all required to be fully advanced fundied.  So even if the company fails, the money is already put aside for the pension.  The only way this doesn’t happen is if two things happen at once—the stock market crashes such that the money the company put aside significantly decreases AND the company goes bankrupt.

Also as a steelworker it’s possible your FIL was in a multi employer plan not a single employer plan — those have different rules.

PP is right that you can figure out what you’d have to pay to buy a guaranteed annuity at that amount.  Another way to do it is to look at one of the calculators and figure out what you’d need to save to have that much in retirement.  But because the company bears the risk of market loss in a DB plan, you should use a really low interest rate there (something basically risk free like 4%), and you should also consider whether you’re likely to outlive the actuarial tables.   In my family, everyone outlives the actuarial tables so I will need to save a lot more to equal a DB plan (which I don’t have and wish I did!).[/quote]

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