pension woes revisited

What would a walk across America be without setbacks, eh? This week, I'll be receiving the pension payout from my recent job at Smoo, and it promises to be disappointingly small.

I had originally hoped to receive about $7200 based on a rough calculation: I was paying about $100/month into my pension plan, and Smoo was matching it. 36 months at $200/month comes out to $7200, right? Seemed like a fair assumption, anyway. When I found out I had actually paid almost $4400 into my plan, I briefly thought I might be getting $8800.

But, no: consistent with its history, Smoo has kicked me in the head one final time. As noted earlier, Smoo's pension plan doesn't pay an equal share into my fund, so I was told a few weeks back that I would be receiving about $6200 (W6.2 million won). The email that arrived today, however, said (1) my net pension (what the hell is net pension? no one mentioned any deductions!) would be only 6,060,000 won, and because of the weakening won, I would be getting only $5752 before wire transfer deductons. So: from lofty (albeit brief) hopes of receiving $8800, we've come tumbling down to a reality of around $5700. Quite a fall.

I'm tempted to say that the moral of the story is Game the system. When in Korea, teach a ton of illegal private lessons and charge exorbitant hourly rates, because that's the only way to ensure you're paid fairly. The more practical moral, however, is Be prepared to be screwed, because you can't prepare for a specific screwing: you can only prepare yourself for the fact that somehow, somewhere, it'll happen. If you think I'm feeling frustrated right now, you're right.


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