2 • MARTIN H. RUBY
But, like all choices in life, there are consequences when you choose to save for retirement in a qualified plan. And most of us have never been fully briefed on what those consequences — good and bad — might be. I wrote this book to talk about those consequences. Each of us has made compromises to save in a qualified plan. Now, we need to understand them. Only then can we reduce their impact on our retirement funds and, more importantly, our retirement plans. It Happened to Me Looking back at my savings experience, it’s probably pretty similar to your own. I graduated from Purdue University in 1972 with a degree in mathematics and physics. I was so eager to start my first job that I skipped my graduation ceremony altogether. While my classmates were tossing their hats in the air, I was settling into a new role as an actuarial student at Travelers Insurance in Hartford, Connecticut. At that point, saving for retirement was easy: I didn’t have to do it personally because my company did it for me. In the 1970s, Travelers had a defined-benefit pension plan, so each year I accrued a portion of my salary that would be paid to me at retirement for the rest of my life. Amazingly, I didn’t have to contribute a cent to this plan. It was up to my employer to fully fund it. If only it had stayed that easy. By the 1990s, I was CEO of an insurance company called Integrity Life, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. Here’s where my retirement savings got considerably more complex.
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