Less is More

I had a couple of interesting email exchanges in the past week. One began with the puzzled question: "What's all this talk about 20% earnings in 1999? I only got 18.5%". This led to an exchange of emails and some postings over on OPDG about this. To make a long story short, some unknown number of PERS members received "1999 Member Annual Statements" captioned with "1999 Regular Earnings Rate: 18.5%", while most of us got 1999 statements that reported the 1999 Regular Earnings Rate of 20%. When you do the math on these odd statements, it turns out that the actual earnings crediting WAS 20%, not 18.5%. While I always checked the math on my PERS statements, not everyone does. This was one of those cases where less really is more. It also means that those who hold those statements who were counting on a smaller "hit" when the PERS Board finally implements the settlement can fuggetaboutit.