But unfortunately I need to know. The first partly working iteration of my Lipscomb calculator is now available via a link on the left of this page. This version (call it alpha 1) only considers the effects of the Supreme Court upholding the Lipscomb ruling and, by extension, the "settlement". The program is crude -- it is written to run in a DOS console under Windows. It has no fancy installer (just the raw executable file), does minimal error checking and is hardly "idiot proof". Just download it to your desktop, click on the icon and a box will pop up on your desktop and take you through the inputs. Be sure you have the required two documents (1999 Member's Annual Statement) and your Notice of Entitlement handy. Be sure you retired between 4/1/00 and 3/1/04. The program is unnecessary for earlier retirees, and will not work for later retirees.
Some notes: 1) there is no Mac version yet; 2) there will NEVER be a native Windows version; 3) the program does not currently adjust benefits of people who received COLAs before the freeze, but the final amount as of 7/1/05 should be correct anyway; 4) the program will NEVER deal with the fluctuations in monthly benefits from continued participation in the variable after retirement. If you're in variable after retirement, your results should be refigured manually to reflect any variable adjustments made along the way.
The current version is subject to further revision and refinement, and the final version will also allow computation of benefits under a ruling that overturns Lipscomb. That piece is trivial to write and so is not of highest priority. The idea is to give retirees a pretty close picture of the current scenario as of 7/1/05. It would be easy to extend the picture out to 6/1/06, but that's not a priority right now.
If you have comments, criticisms, complaints, suggestions, inexplicable results, or just want to lavish praise on my brilliant programming skills, please email me backchannel at the usual address. Just remember that I'm doing this on my own time, my own nickel, and out of the goodness of my heart. While suggestions are welcomed, unless they are both important and easy to implement, I've got other things to do. I'm definitely interested in buggy and ambiguous results, as well as questions.
The link to the program and to future versions is:
http://web.pdx.edu/~h1mf/LipTest.exe
You can check back every few days for updates. Versions will be internally numbered so you can tell whether you have a later version than the one you have. Just copy new versions over old.
Some notes: 1) there is no Mac version yet; 2) there will NEVER be a native Windows version; 3) the program does not currently adjust benefits of people who received COLAs before the freeze, but the final amount as of 7/1/05 should be correct anyway; 4) the program will NEVER deal with the fluctuations in monthly benefits from continued participation in the variable after retirement. If you're in variable after retirement, your results should be refigured manually to reflect any variable adjustments made along the way.
The current version is subject to further revision and refinement, and the final version will also allow computation of benefits under a ruling that overturns Lipscomb. That piece is trivial to write and so is not of highest priority. The idea is to give retirees a pretty close picture of the current scenario as of 7/1/05. It would be easy to extend the picture out to 6/1/06, but that's not a priority right now.
If you have comments, criticisms, complaints, suggestions, inexplicable results, or just want to lavish praise on my brilliant programming skills, please email me backchannel at the usual address. Just remember that I'm doing this on my own time, my own nickel, and out of the goodness of my heart. While suggestions are welcomed, unless they are both important and easy to implement, I've got other things to do. I'm definitely interested in buggy and ambiguous results, as well as questions.
The link to the program and to future versions is:
http://web.pdx.edu/~h1mf/LipTest.exe
You can check back every few days for updates. Versions will be internally numbered so you can tell whether you have a later version than the one you have. Just copy new versions over old.
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