The Retirees' Newsletter Page 7

The Faculty and Librarian Retirees' Association, University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada

Vol.VII , No.3, June, 1997

IN FACT, we have, from this formula, set up a little table which gives you values of n -- that is, the number of years until the Money Purchase Pension overtakes the Minimum Guaranteed.

FIRST, WE DID IN FACT CALCULATE the average increases in the cost of living (i), and in the earnings of the Pension Fund (r), over the past sixteen years (1981 to 1996). These are i = 2% and r = 5%. We use these two numbers in making our predictions from the above formula.

SO ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is calculate the ratio A/B, from your yearly statement (the statement you receive each year, usually in September, from the University's Pension Administration), and look at the number n corresponding to the value of A/B in the following table closest to the ratio you calculated. That will give you the best estimate of the number of years before your Money Purchase Pension will exceed your Minimum Guaranteed Pension.

A/B	n
1.05	2
1.10	4
1.15	5
1.20	7
1.25	8
1.30	9
1.35	10
1.40	12

A COUPLE OF COMMENTS SHOULD BE MADE AT THIS POINT. These are:

1) It does not matter how many years after retirement you choose to make your calculation A/B, so long as you take A and B at the same date -- that is, from the same statement. In this case, n will be the number of years from the time you make your calculation until you attain the Money Purchase Pension.

2) We propose to update the above table each year, to reflect possible changes due to any changes in yearly average cost of living rate (i) and yearly average Pension Fund earnings rate (r).

Norm Shklov taught Mathematics and Statistics. Following his retirement, he was made an

Honourary Lifetime Member of the Statistical Society of Canada

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE CHRONOLOGICALLY CHALLENGED

By Eugene McNamara

ONE MORNING IN MARCH I got the Toronto Globe and Mail off the porch and sat down with my coffee. I began to read a review of a recital where a majority of the audience , according to the reviewer, consisted of the "blue-rinse set." I put the paper down and thought who can these blue-haired people be?

I THOUGHT OF MY FELLOW COOTS, codgers, geezers and curmudgeons. One was probably surfing the internet. Another was walking or riding his bike to the library (for him a four mile round trip.) Another of my chronologically challenged contemporaries is playing the piano and another is working with intaglio. That morning, I planned to get back to the poem I was writing.

MARGARET AND I have been on two Elderhostel Programs. When I first heard about Elderhostel I pictured hearty people in teutonic hiking books clutching alpenstocks. We have seen no such stereotypes. We saw no blue hair. What we met were people from their fifties to their eighties, coming from widely divergent backgrounds and sharing an incessant curiosity and a spirit of zest. There is no single label to describe them

I READ AN ESSAY IN THE CATHOLIC WORKER RECENTLY in which an octogenarian says of growing old: "You gradually see yourself amount to something." These are words of promise, not of disdain or despair. And I'll bet that octogenarian doesn't have blue-rinsed hair.

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