Salt Lake Tribune | 1996-01-15 | Page 14

The Salt Lake TribuneTIME, MONEY &COMPUTERS Monday, January 15, 1996 B2 Think Twice Before Accepting Offer To Retire Early Retirement expenses worksheet F But how do you know? Thereis someconfusion on this point. Dollars, of course, count p for alot whenit comesto sizi life withow’ z But somefinancial plannerrs say that money may not be the proper place to start in the decision pro: cess for taking early retirement First. decide if you are really ready to retire.” said financial planner David Strege. senior vice president of Cornerstone Finan- Today matters, other personal life finances will quickly worm their way into the exercise Strege said clients who are ear ly retirement candidates face these money questions @ Can | make it on my own withthis retirement package? @ AmI ready to make neces sary lifestyle changes” @ What are the economic trade-offs by taking this early re@ Andthe missing link: “How long will I live? For a healthy couple. age 65 there is a 30 percent to 40 percent chance that one will live to age 100, hesaid Nuts and bolts of early retire- ment deals often .nvolve a lump sum payment, earlySocial Security payments with a company matching payment. and monthly payments from a company-defined benefit plan Defined benefit plans guaran- tee to pay youa specified amount when youretire, based on your salary, age and years of service Some of these “sweeteners be reduced or eliminated once you reach age 62 or 65 warns Jacquie Anderson, pension andbenefits specialist at Koogler Company of Towa, a financial planning and investment firm in Pella, lowa Film Director Turns Attention To Horror CD-ROM Brooklyn,” “Vampire in has begun production on his first CD-ROM project, cur- rently titled “Wes Craven's Houseof Fear.” The dise, aecording to Variety. will be developed designed and y solished with Cy- berdreams, the company collaborating with MGMInteractive on a numberof upcoming titles Cravenis amongthe first Hollywoodfeature directors to take a hands-on approachto interactive title development. While other CD-ROMs have beenbased on ex- isting or upcoming filmed properties. directors usually havelittle orno involvement with the interactivetitle The dise will not be based on any of Craven'sfilms, because he does not personally own thefranchises. It might. however, include newlive-action video clips that Craven said he would direct. A 1997 release is expectedfor both PC and Macintoshplatforms. Games: Superhero Earthworm Debuts on Computer Earthworm Jim MinimumSys Requirements. 486/33, Windows 95, double speed CD-ROM 8 MB RAM, 256 ck SVGA video, sound car gamepad recommend: ed. Number PC $45. Rating: probably appropriate for anyone over pension plans? There are guidelines finally, Much love. We appreciate everything you've done for us. LOVE YOUR FAMILY. $ Expensedifferential $ offer in the ly-out retirement plans Early retirement deals commonly increase the monthly pen- W Look Before You Leap: A Guide to Early Retirement In- AARPFulfillment, 601 E St N.W., Washington, D.C. 20049. BReceiving a Lump Sum five years or moreto your tenure at the company for purposes of the formula that calculates your Distribution: A Guide for In- monthly benefit.’ Price’s vestors Aged 50 and Over was A lump sum payment pegged to your salary level and length of service @ “A ‘bridge’ to provide extra Kit is available free by calling [phone], @ Check out Daniel Kehrer’s book, 12 Steps to a Worry-Free Retirement (Kiplinger Times Business, $15). @ Ask a financial planner to evaluate your company’s offer. The International Association of Financial Plannerswill provide the namesof upto five financial planners in your area @ ToinquireaboutSocial Security benefits, call (800) 7721213 to order Form SSA-7004 Kehrer said key points to con- ‘Request for Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement.” ™@ For facts about IRAs, call sider when mulling an early re- tirement offer include pension dollar details and how the payoff the IRS, [phone]; ask compares with what you'd get if for Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements. BA Guide to Understand. ing Your Pension Plan, written for the American Association of Retired Persons by the you continued working; what your employment prospects are elsewhere; whereto put an early retirement lump-sum payment; and how muchof the payout will be counted as ordinary income and thus befully taxed T Planning ment Program fromthe Seudder mutual fund group. To orcall [phone], Ext. 4441 @ Extended health and lifeinsurance benefits. Retirement prepared by the AARP Investder the free, 30-page booklet, income until Social Security bene fits kick in at age 62. EEG A numberof mutual fund companies offer publications and software to determine how much moneytosaveforretirement and how to invest to reach your goal. T. Rowe the American Association of Retired Persons. Write to complished by adding three to A AARP Stock No, D13533 ARP Fulfillment, 601 BE. Street N.W., Washington, D.C 20049 centive Programs is free from sion checks you havecomingby as Op Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer group in Washington, D.C. Write to GANNETT NEWS SERVICE Where to learn more about evaluating early retirement offers: Kehrer outlined some common companies Gannett Brochures, Offices Available to Help Business, $15). incentives $ ement Planning Guide Daniel Kehrer, author of Ki plinger’s 12 Steps to a Worry-Free Retireme (Kiplinger Times who are members of the Regis- try of Financial Planners. These planners are CFPs who have passed a series of additional tests to enter the Registry. Call [phone]. - Rp8 3 iA,i Simple solutions he while driving Young people # Let someoneelsedrive. {Pull over and take a nap. Use well-lit rest stops; lock all doors; roll up windows. Night-shift workers. People with sleepdisorder Each year, driving Commercialdrivers. contrib beverages. Prevention about 200,000 automobile accidents, 1,600 of them fatal. Whatare the warning signs Your eyesfe avy keeping @ Don'tdrive through the night unless you haveto. Get enough sleep before your trip. © _ Don’tleave fora longtrip after working You weavefrorr lane to lane You don't remember driving the last few miles. You yawn a lot your head nods. DURCE: Centr for Corp all day. ® Avoid driving alone. %& WSchedule breaks CRC AAA,202-638-5944 Next week: The benefits of soy Knight-Ridder seems wehavewaitedforeverfor Activision's superhero earth- silly? It's supposed to be gameis a typical side-scroll (think Ad- Mario-type) game where yourun, jump, dodge and shoot. An extra and Sega Genesis systems have been jumping and shooting with special added feature is Jim’s whipaction. Rather than carry an actual whip, he whips the top of his head around, ‘‘whoosh, whoosh, scrak!”’ to defeat the enemies. Birds dive in and tryto pick himoff as a between-meal snack “EarthwormJim,” come out for the computer. venturers with Super Nintendos Jim for two years now, while the rest of us have had to console ourselves with his cartoon show. Jim was once just another lowly earthwormwith nothing much to do. Througha bizarreseries of events, he ended up in control of an “ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-spa' ber-suit” that gives him super powers. Sound es there, not saying much, just mar- veling at this miracle that had brought a picture into a living room — evenifit was a picture of something that looked like a bad bull’s-eye. It was a radical new form of entertainment, and we wereentertained We were also aware that we were looking. not at the real thing, but at the potential of the real thing. We sat there, not so much looking at the test pattern as looking for something on the horizon. It waslike standing out by the mailbox and peering down the street looking for the mail carrier on a day when you expected the arrival of the secret decoder ring you had ordered. ‘That wasin the early '50s, and I think we had a sense of howlong overdue television was. The fact is, television was invented before World WarII andits public availability delayed until well after the war. Wewere the generationthat could have been raised on television. But thanks to the stupid war. we werehalf grown before television came along. We missed our chance to be the first generation in history never to crack a book except at gunpoint dogs gnarl at his , the programming tical aligned and readyforaction So even when we finally had rea] television programming, we would spend some time staringat that test pattern with its promise of mirth and excitement just aroundthe corner We also had a fuzzy sensein those days that we were at the bare beginning of the television age, that down the road somewhere were color television a portable television and maybe even 3-D television I don’t think we anticipatedin teractivetelevision, the age thatis nowdawningin which you can ask the television set questions (such as what's the score of the game you're watching). ButI nowfind that age dawning as I sit at a computerscreenthat will soon be combined with the telephone and thetelevisionset. | will watch the evening news, ask for a sports score, call up reviews of a movie I may watch and havea two-way televised conversation with my grandchildren, all on the samedevice But right now, we have theIn. ternet — the massive global mes sage- and information-exchange service. I have usedit within the past few months to send a mes sageto friends in Berlin, to buy a travel book, to find out what'sgo ing to be on “Austin City Limits. to get a dessert recipe from a woman in Virginia I've never met and to find out what they're paying the guy whoruns the company one of my kids worksfor. Soon, the Internet will be han. died by cable. But right now, in mostplaces, it works through the phone line. That's like running a river through straw. It takes forever. I ask for somebit of infor mation to appear on the screen Andit does — slowly. taking seyeral seconds I just sit there and stare at a screen, not unlike a test pattern, and stupidly wait for it to bring the next miracle to me. Back to the future. did not begin until late afternoon. Butthe test pattern did go on the air before that, just so we could ali get our horizontal and our ver- Bill Hall is the editorial-page editor of the Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune, a Salt Lake Tribune group newspaper. Black English Has Enriched The Language Street Speech by John Baugh or Juba to Jive by Clarence Major To appreciate the lyric beauty of one black dialect, read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. ® Continued from B-1 Julene E. Fisher, West Valley City, is a former teacher of English as a second language. Send perfect for addressing someone whose appearanceis familiar but nameis not Facecouldjoin chill out, light- Speak, The Salt Lake Tribtine P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, UT 84110. comments and questions to Basy en up, (get off one’s) case, right on and blow (one’s) top in every- Open Your pwspaper and day conversation. A phrase I wish had never been necessary in Black English was part of slaves’ marriage vows:Till death or distance do us part. “Neophyte” does not begin to describe me as I understand Black English andits contribution to ourlanguage. To learn more, read American Talk by Robert Hendrickson, Black English Vernacular by Monica Frazier Anderson, Black Yy Starts Sunday, February 4th in The Salt Lake: Tribune worms don't have feet, do they? The Windows 95 version of the to wormgame, ness and the contrast and all that other fussy TVstuff. Whentelevision stations were first getting started, they would send out that signal before they went on the air with the programs. And just before the first station went on the air in Boise Valley, whereI lived at the time, the parents of one of the neighborhood kids bought a television set ahead of timeto get readyfor the station. Weusedto sit around that set and watch the test pattern, waiting for the day when the station finally started broadcasting actual entertainment We would turn ontheset andsit M Drink caffeinated wiledrowsy BILL HALL When television came along. people were so eager for the new medium that theyactually used to watch the test pattern. The test pattern was a kind of bull’slooking thing thattelevision stations used to adjust their signal and that you could use to adjust yourset, twirking the horizontal During the first couple of years As ja ti Whoislikely to drive drowsy WhenI use the fabled Internet — that sluggish worldwide pe line for computers —I feel asif I am back in high school watching television test patterns. 0f i Aa Woe “ Celebrates his 80th Birthday © On January15, 1996 ALVHILD HAMMER Happy 80th Birthday GRATULERER MED DAGEN $ nt expensesto estimate your annualretirement expenses. 80 percent of that income,” said 6. finally!! It Total Internet“Takes Me. Back To the Future of Television and the vertical and the bright- ow much your expenseswill changeinretirement, simply subtract the mn from the total for column 1. Then subtractthis amount from your ice, most compa SOOO OPP RIES Finally, $ $s S $ Insurance Ah. yes. the money. Howdo you NEWSDAY Horror director Wes Craven whose latest film is Other expenses $ $ $ $ Travel Medical much as a third. Often that’s ae- tirement proposal? may Annual costslikely to increase evenin the ballpark with other that you are shooting to replace mirroron the wall for self-analy $ $ Work expenses $ Other expenses $s Taxes (federal, state and local) $ Savings knowif yourearly buyout offeris family After you've consulted your Ss $ $s $ $ $ Security taxes money youare going to receive. sis about job satisfaction, health Moines, Iowa. and Housing § they are key numbers usedby the company to calculate how much fined benefit plans are designed so the pension benefit plus Social Security benefits will replace 60 percent to 70 percent of an employee’s preretirement income That's not bad, considering cial Advisors Ltd. in West Des In retirement Annual costslikely to decrease longerperiodoftime [now to your life expectancy] will be more valuable than a larger benefit over a shorter time.’ Anderson said, ‘Ask for thesecalculations Correct dates of birth and employment areimportant details to check, Anderson said, because For ins > In column 2. list how muchyou expect to spend each year after youretire. having a smaller benefit over a You're handedan envé ofworkthat contains a one-t fer — early retirement It's a generous offer.” the boss says Option 2 > In column 1. list how much you spend yearly for each category today. Option 1 ey, your current annualincome by to 80%. This will give you a working our annual retirement You need to know whether By Jim Law 2 one ofthe two options belowto estimate what your expenseswill be each year in retirement. Enter annual amounts in today’s dollars. Youdefinitely want a joystick or gamepad to play this game. I tried it with the keyboard, and while there aren't too many controls to remember, it is easy to get excited and lose your place on the well, earth- ComePlant Your Honeymoon Memories. ‘ys. Kim McDaniel, a Salt Lake Cityfree-lance writer, welcomese- mail at [e-mail]. 40-50% OFF "m3" CUSTOM TABLE PADS Honeymoon Consultation and Planning Seminar. LAST WEEK! WINTER SALE SPECIAL January 17, 1996 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m, Ft. Union Office: 6969 South 1300 East Call 562-2829 for more information. Gt JARD YOUR TABLE ANDSAVE! ( pad comp. Ne f or messy C.O Ask us about our Special HoneymoonGift Registry! Morris: Beehive TABLE PAD CO. SENTRY INCETSTI Le R A Vv E L POOR COPY]