Retirement

After a seven-hour closed-door debate over how to resolve a $405-million budget gap, the Los Angeles City Council put off a decision Tuesday on a controversial worker retirement plan, hoping to work overnight with employee unions to find new cost-cutting measures. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised to veto any decision that preserved the costly plan to allow 2,400 city employees to retire up to five years early with full benefits. Even that threat failed to break the logjam.

It's been nearly three years since her husband died of colon cancer, but Pamela Walton hasn't taken his voice off the answering machine. She still wears her wedding ring. Only recently has she considered her financial future. Stephen Walton left his wife a modest life insurance policy and a manageable mortgage. But as the fog of grief begins to lift, she worries about whether she's properly managing the money. A stay-at-home mother who taught mathematics on and off during her nearly 30-year marriage, Pamela Walton now needs a full-time job. "When your spouse dies and part of your income disappears, you panic," she said.

Re "The failure of the 401(k)," Opinion, Jan. 10 This recession will show the success of the 401(k) model. I would rather have control of my 401(k), even down 30% in value, than the promise of a "defined-benefit" pension from a company out of business. Lack of regulatory oversight has left many pension plans underfunded, which will lead to defaults, decreased benefits and another taxpayer bailout. This could be averted if all pensions, including of CEOs and federal legislators, were a pay-as-you-go 401(k)

Re "The bucks stop here," editorial, Feb. 5 As a taxpayer, retired entrepreneur and business consultant, I strongly endorse President Obama's move to tie bailed-out corporations' executive compensation to shareholder value, and to make bonuses and retirement benefits contingent on repayment of bailout loans and interest. Reassuringly, it appears some bankers seem to be redirecting their efforts already. But how does the president propose similarly to focus federal and state government officials on effective use of the billions of dollars they are seeking?

They say that even the worst tragedies harbor the seed of something good. So here's something positive in the stock market's gruesome behavior over the last year: It may finally have driven a stake through the heart of the campaign to "fix" Social Security. Let's be plain about one thing: This campaign, cooked up mostly by Wall Street investment houses and conservative Republicans, was always about "fixing" Social Security the way one "fixes" a cat. The perpetrators employed what might charitably be labeled flapdoodle to scare soft-headed politicians, inattentive journalists and innocent citizens into thinking there's something fiscally out of whack with Social Security.

These annual Brett Favre retirements are a little like rumors of the NFL returning to Los Angeles. They start as stop-the-presses stories, but after a while you just stop listening. Favre is done. Probably. But people who suggest this is absolutely the end for the 39-year-old quarterback were saying the same thing 11 months ago, when Favre tearfully retired from the Green Bay Packers. Is it real this time? Or just more crock management? Favre isn't the first NFL star to finish his career -- if this is indeed the end -- in an unfamiliar jersey.

Then: Hawks, 48, had made as much as $400,000 a year as a franchise consultant but was laid off shortly before her money makeover in June 2007. The single mother didn't have time to attend to her finances. She didn't open bank statements and couldn't say whether her bank account contained $10,000 or $100,000. She had lost 16 years of appreciation in one $100,000 retirement account by not managing it. With only $180,000 saved, she needed much more to retire. The planner urged her to go back to full-time employment for the benefits and matching 401(k)

Then: Judy, 56, a nurse, and Steve, 57, a Southern California Gas Co. technician, became middle-class millionaires through a lifetime of scrimping and saving. In March 2008, they were wondering how to best invest the $1.7 million they had squirreled away in savings and whether they could realize their dream of retiring early to a new home in Northern California. The planner said the Haibachs could retire and had enough money to last their lifetimes, provided that they diversified their portfolio and didn't move money in and out of the stock market.

Re "Mayor tries to eliminate layoffs," April 22 It's great to know that, after 31 years of loyal service to the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa now considers me "deadwood." Apparently, experience is not valued by this administration. Older, skilled city employees serve on the "frontline of city service" every day and will leave a gaping hole should they all elect to retire. Susan Harbach Sherman Oaks -- The Times reports that employee unions are urging the city of Los Angeles to offer early retirement packages to city workers as a means of avoiding layoffs.

KNBC-TV Channel 4 news anchor Paul Moyer, who announced his retirement earlier this month while he was on vacation but said he would appear again on air before leaving, won't be returning to the station. "Paul has decided to make the transition from vacation to retirement a seamless one, and he will not be returning to our air to say goodbye," the station's news director, Robert Long, said Friday in an internal memo to staffers. Moyer "feels strongly about making a departure with no fanfare and no formal farewells, and we are respecting those wishes," Long said.