Dave Baker

It is a pleasure and an honor! Here's to a healthy and prosperous 2010! Dave

We nuked it early today. I hope we don't have more Personal Messenger spam. It is possible to stop Personal Messenger messages altogether: --- My controls > Options > Board Settings > Personal Messenger Options Disable your personal messenger? yes/no If you disable your personal messenger, you will not be able to make or receive personal messages. --- This is the first time this has happened. I am amazed at the lengths to which spammers go. They are using people overseas who are paid very little money, to actually register with message boards and send messages. I am looking into ways to fight it, but it will be difficult unless the registration process is made more complicated. This also might be an automated 'bot' that is crawling through the database sending personal messages to every registered user. I am having an interesting morning :-) I will investigate a software fix today.

Not following you; are you referring to an articles section on these message boards (or news or press release section)? We have news at http://benefitslink.com/news and press releases at http://benefitslink.com/pr -- wonder if that's what you mean. David

Sure can, in the sense that it is part of the new terms of service. So any message on the board would be subject to the new terms of service. That's how I'll apply it, anyhoo. I'll find out if the software provide an easy way to change a signature line with respect to already-posted messages.

Thanks for your comments! I have asked that no further articles be posted. Breach of that policy by him or other members will mean temporary suspension from the board followed at some point in my discretion by permanent suspension. I hate to need to be that strict, but the problem seems to me to be one that many members object to strongly, so my role as the 'administrator' is to follow the dictates of our community wherever possible. David

Ahoy, gang: I propose the following policy re the use of biographical (advertising) text in signature lines (the stuff at the end of a posted message): Your signature line may contain your name, the name of your firm and contact information (e.g., a web address, an email address, a street address, a phone number). No other text concerning your services is permitted (because this generally would constitute a commercial advertisement, which is not permitted on the message boards in the text of messages). Use of such text after being notified by an administrator is grounds for suspension of posting privileges.

Bravo! I had not seen it or heard about it. Wow. Tears.

I love this! Should it be sung to the tune of any particular song?

I don't think so; new messages posted in any of the forums will be included in the list of new posts. You can monitor new messages in one or more particular forums via another method,though: it's called "subscriptions." By subscribing to a forum, you get an email whenever a new topic is started. To subscribe to a forum: log in, then go to that forum (click on the name of the forum on the list of forums on the home page, at http://benefitslink.com/boards). Look for the "Forum Options" drop-down menu towards the upper right part of the page (it sits on top of the box that lists all of the topics in the forum). Click it and choose "subscribe to this forum." You'll get a screen that asks for your preference as to how you'd like to be advised of new topics started in the forum; "immediate email notification" is your best bet. Then click the Proceed button. You can do this for any number of different forums. Let me know how it works for you! P.S. - It's not obvious how to "unsubscribe". Instead of being able to use the aforementioned drop-down box, you click on "My Controls," which is up there on the "Logged in as:" line at the top of just about any page you're viewing (if you've logged in). Then look for the "Subscriptions" heading over in the left-hand navigation bar; under it is "View Forums," which is what you click on. The resulting page lets you change notification options for any of your subscribed forums, or unsubscribe from a forum.

I have been able to figure out the way the message board software works with respect to the update/log-in/session/your-last-visit-was interactions. On the front page of the message boards, where it says "Welcome back; your last visit was:", the purpose is to show the time and date of your last "visit." (More on that in a moment.) The message board keeps track of the time and date of your last visit because it needs that information to make the "View New Posts" link work for you. When you click on "View New Posts," you are shown a list of all topics that have either been started or to which a reply has been added since the time and date of your last visit. That's a nice thing if you want to keep up with everything new on any of the message boards. A visit generally begins (i.e., is recorded by the message board software on the server side) whenever you open your browser and view any page on the message board. If your browser stays open (e.g., you leave your computer on and you haven't quit the browser application), a visit would begin when you use the browser to refresh/reload any page on the message board or when you click on any link to any page on the message board. In other words, the message board software knows that your particular computer is visiting the message boards whenever your browser loads a page on the message boards. But a new visit doesn't begin if it's been fewer than 60 minutes since the last time you refreshed/reloaded any page on the message boards or the last time you clicked on any link to any page on the message board. This exception to the "new visit" rule means that you don't have to worry about the "View New Posts" link getting wiped out while you're sitting at the computer browsing the message boards. You can click on "View New Posts" several times as you sit at the computer viewing the message boards, and each time you get the topics that were added or to which replies were added since your last visit. In fact, the View New Posts list is updated on the fly; even topics that are new or newly changed in the few minutes since you sat down at the computer will appear on the list when you click View New Posts. (That's because those posts were indeed posted since the time of your last visit several days ago, etc.) When it's been 60 minutes or more since your last click on the message boards, the "visit" time and date is reset (to the time and date of the last click, I believe). That means the View New Posts list will be completely different at your next visit, which is what you want. By the way, if you were to leave your computer after browsing the message boards in the morning but then come back to browse the message boards in the mid or late afternoon, your View New Posts list that afternoon would no longer include topics that were new or that had been changed before your morning visit. If you hadn't had time during your morning visit to look at all the posts that appeared at that time on the View New Posts list but you want to be sure nothing falls through the cracks, all is not lost. The fall-back would be to use the "Today's Active Topics" link that appears (actually, more like buried) at the bottom of the message boards home page. The "Today's Active Topics" link in effect is a "View New Topics" that presumes your last visit was 24 hours ago. Another interesting aspect of the "Today's Active Topics" link: when you click on it, the resulting page shows, at the bottom, a drop-down list next to the words "Get active topics for:". The drop-down list has options for "today", "this week," "past two weeks," "this month," "past 3 months" and "this year." So if you know where to find this drop-down list, you now have a way to pull up a list of topics added during any one of those time periods (and topics that have had replies added during that time period). That's what it seems to mean by the term "active." To get this whole "Welcome back; your last visit was:" procedure to work right for you, you should do a one-time log-out and then log back in. Click the "Log Out" link that appears toward the top left of the screen where it says "Logged in as: Your-Username-Here." A log-out seems to definitely cause the message board software to consider your visit to end. Unless you do that, you might continue to see a time and date that's many weeks or months ago (and hence the View New Posts will include pages and pages of posts), due to the way I had misconfigured the message boards in an effort to solve a different problem (namely, people were having to log in several times during the same day). Regarding the log-in problem, I think I have fixed that, too. It turns out to be a different setting than the setting that controls the time-out of a visit. You should not be required to log in ever again, if you use the message boards at least once every 7 days (assuming your browser is configured to allow "cookies" to be stored on your computer). That's almost certainly more than you wanted to know, but now you know! Dave

Yes, when you consider the 'tax expenditures' from tax-free investment earnings in retirement trusts, and from employer-provided health insurance, you're looking at some real money on the table.

IRS Announces Pension Plan Limitations for 2009 IR-2008-118, Oct. 16, 2008 WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service today announced cost of living adjustments applicable to dollar limitations for pension plans and other items for Tax Year 2009. Section 415 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for dollar limitations on benefits and contributions under qualified retirement plans. It also requires that the Commissioner annually adjust these limits for cost of living increases. Many of the pension plan limitations will change for 2009 because the increase in the cost-of-living index met the statutory thresholds that trigger their adjustment. However, for others, the limitation will remain unchanged. For example, the limitation under Section 402(g)(1) on the exclusion for elective deferrals described in Section 402(g)(3) is increased from $15,500 to $16,500. This limitation affects elective deferrals to Section 401(k) plans and to the Federal Government's Thrift Savings Plan, among other plans. Effective January 1, 2009, the limitation on the annual benefit under a defined benefit plan under Section 415(b) (1)(A) is increased from $185,000 to $195,000. For participants who separated from service before January 1, 2009, the limitation for defined benefit plans under Section 415(b)(1)(B) is computed by multiplying the participant's compensation limitation, as adjusted through 2008, by 1.0530. The limitation for defined contribution plans under Section 415©(1)(A) is increased from $46,000 to $49,000. The Code provides that various other dollar amounts are to be adjusted at the same time and in the same manner as the dollar limitation of Section 415(b)(1)(A). These dollar amounts and the adjusted amounts are as follows: The limitation under Section 402(g)(1) on the exclusion for elective deferrals described in Section 402(g)(3) is increased from $15,500 to $16,500. The annual compensation limit under Sections 401(a)(17), 404(l), 408(k)(3)©, and 408(k) (6)(D)(ii) is increased from $230,000 to $245,000. The dollar limitation under Section 416(i)(1) (A)(i) concerning the definition of key employee in a top-heavy plan is increased from $150,000 to $160,000. The dollar amount under Section 409(o)(1)© (ii) for determining the maximum account balance in an employee stock ownership plan subject to a 5 year distribution period is increased from $935,000 to $985,000, while the dollar amount used to determine the lengthening of the 5 year distribution period is increased from $185,000 to $195,000. The limitation used in the definition of highly compensated employee under Section 414(q)(1)(B) is increased from $105,000 to $110,000. The dollar limitation under Section 414(v)(2) (B)(i) for catch-up contributions to an applicable employer plan other than a plan described in Section 401(k)(11) or Section 408(p) for individuals aged 50 or over is increased from $5,000 to $5,500. The dollar limitation under Section 414(v)(2)(B)(ii) for catch-up contributions to an applicable employer plan described in Section 401(k)(11) or Section 408(p) for individuals aged 50 or over remains unchanged at $2,500. The annual compensation limitation under Section 401(a) (17) for eligible participants in certain governmental plans that, under the plan as in effect on July 1, 1993, allowed cost of living adjustments to the compensation limitation under the plan under Section 401(a) (17) to be taken into account, is increased from $345,000 to $360,000. The compensation amount under Section 408(k) (2)© regarding simplified employee pensions (SEPs) is increased from $500 to $550. The limitation under Section 408(p)(2)(E) regarding SIMPLE retirement accounts is increased from $10,500 to $11,500. The limitation on deferrals under Section 457(e)(15) concerning deferred compensation plans of state and local governments and tax- exempt organizations is increased from $15,500 to $16,500. The compensation amounts under Section 1.61 21(f)(5)(i) of the Income Tax Regulations concerning the definition of "control employee" for fringe benefit valuation purposes is increased from $90,000 to $95,000. The compensation amount under Section 1.61 21(f)(5)(iii) is increased from $185,000 to $195,000. The limitation on wages under Section 45A regarding individuals eligible for the Indian employment credit is $40,000 for tax years beginning in 2008 and will increase to $45,000 for tax years beginning in 2009. The termination date of section 45A was recently extended from December 31, 2007, to December 31, 2009, by Section 314 of Division C of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, P.L. 110-343. The Code also provides that several pension- related amounts are to be adjusted using the cost-of-living adjustment under Section 1(f) (3). These dollar amounts and the adjustments are as follows: The adjusted gross income limitation under Section 25B(b) (1)(A) for determining the retirement savings contribution credit for married taxpayers filing a joint return is increased from $32,000 to $33,000; the limitation under Section 25B(b)(1)(B) is increased from $34,500 to $36,000; and the limitation under Sections 25B(b)(1)© and 25B(b)(1)(D), from $53,000 to $55,500. The adjusted gross income limitation under Section 25B(b) (1)(A) for determining the retirement savings contribution credit for taxpayers filing as head of household is increased from $24,000 to $24,750; the limitation under Section 25B(b)(1)(B) is increased from $25,875 to $27,000; and the limitation under Sections 25B(b)(1)© and 25B(b)(1)(D), from $39,750 to $41,625. The adjusted gross income limitation under Section 25B(b) (1)(A) for determining the retirement savings contribution credit for all other taxpayers is increased from $16,000 to $16,500; the limitation under Section 25B(b) (1)(B) is increased from $17,250 to $18,000; and the limitation under Sections 25B(b)(1)© and 25B(b)(1) (D), from $26,500 to $27,750. The applicable dollar amount under Section 219(g)(3)(B) (i) for determining the deductible amount of an IRA contribution for taxpayers who are active participants filing a joint return or as a qualifying widow(er) is increased from $85,000 to $89,000. The applicable dollar amount under Section 219(g) (3)(B)(ii) for all other taxpayers (other than married taxpayers filing separate returns) is increased from $53,000 to $55,000. The applicable dollar amount under Section 219(g) (7)(A) for a taxpayer who is not an active participant but whose spouse is an active participant is increased from $159,000 to $166,000. The adjusted gross income limitation under Section 408A©(3)©(ii)(I) for determining the maximum Roth IRA contribution for married taxpayers filing a joint return or for taxpayers filing as a qualifying widow(er) is increased from $159,000 to $166,000. The adjusted gross income limitation under Section 408A©(3)©(ii)(II) for all other taxpayers (other than married taxpayers filing separate returns) is increased from $101,000 to $105,000. Administrators of defined benefit or defined contribution plans that have received favorable determination letters should not request new determination letters solely because of yearly amendments to adjust maximum limitations in the plans.

I think I caused the problem on October 9 when I upgraded the software but then inadvertently fixed the problem late in the day on October 10 when I rebooted the web server for another reason. If a user is still having the problem, please try your browser's "refresh" or "reload" key/button and see if that clears it up. I'm sorry; I could swear I had posted a message onto this message thread on October 9 when I saw the first questions come up, but it sure isn't here. I also was having the problem on October 9 when using Internet Explorer 7 but not Mozilla Firefox. Thanks, folks; I apologize for this trouble.

Test: ERISA section 404© I have fixed 'em with respect to items posted before October 9 and after noon on October 15; please report any that you see in posts between October 8 and now (davebaker@benefitslink.com). Thanks for the report!

Janet, when you say you "logged in" today, do you mean that you were at the home page of the message boards and you clicked on "Log Me In" next to the words "Welcome guest"? Or do you mean that you powered up your computer today, started Internet Explorer and then opened a bookmark or clicked on a link on some other web page in order to get here to the message boards, without going through any sort of log-in process that asked for your email address and your password? Dave

WDIK, are you saying that when you click on "View New Posts", you get a list of messages that go back to July 11? Also, when you're at the home page of the message boards (http://benefitslink.com/boards - or click on ">BenefitsLink Message Boards" toward the top left of any page), are you seeing this phrase: "Logged in as: WDIK"? Also, when you're at that page, are you seeing this phrase: "Welcome back; your last visit was: ______"? If so, what's the date and time that's showing in that phrase? Thanks! Dave

Are you using the same computer (not one at work and one at home) for all the message board visits?

Hmmm. I might have caused the trouble, by extending the time during which a user is able to visit the message boards without needing to log-in again (entering email address and password). I'll take a look.

Hi, Larry! I'm game; such changes would not be hard at my end. Sure appreciate your post. I guess the goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to monitor messages about topics in which they're interested (and to ignore the rest), so one or more of your suggestions might fill that bill. It's a tension between being simple and being precise; hard to have both, I guess. The "trouble" is the way that a message often deals with more than one topic; ideally it would be possible to tag a message with its topic(s) and then have a sort of search engine that would display any messages under specified topics within a specified period of days. That one would be hard to implement, but I continually check for better message board software and might eventually find such a critter.

Yikes. It took me a little while to locate it, but I think I have found the troublemaker and fixed it: I changed a setting in the message board software. If you're interested (fasten seat belt): The setting was designed to make the log-in process super-secure rather than just secure. It has to do with whether the user is accessing the message boards from a "new" IP address, compared to the one used with the last log-in. I think some corporate and ISP networks use "dynamic" IP addresses; your IP address changes every so often, perhaps even in the middle of a session while you're at your computer. Bot attacks can come from "zombie" computers each of which has its own IP address. The change I've made will ignore any changes in the IP address with respect to the use of a particular computer. As long as you're sitting at a particular machine, you shouldn't have to log in ever again, if you use the message boards at least every 7 days (the log-in cookie on a particular computer is supposed to be good for 7 days; it also restarts that 7-day period every time you read a message or click on some message board link). If you log in from another computer (a laptop or a home computer, rather than the office computer, for example), you're dealing with a different "cookie" file on that other computer, so it's a completely different 7-day period (7 days from the last time you used that other computer to read a message or click on some message board link). The way the board was set up it probably meant a new log-in was required every time you went from an office computer to a home computer or vice versa; I hope the new setting eliminates that hassle as well. Dave

Eeek. I don't think anything has changed at the BenefitsLink end.

From today's BenefitsLink Retirement Plans Newsletter: ---------------------------------------------------------- [Official Guidance] Text of LaRue Unanimous Supreme Court Opinion Upholding Damages Claim Against ERISA Fiduciaries for Participant's Investment Losses (PDF) http://benefitslink.com/cases/larue-06-856.pdf 18 pages; decided February 20, 2008. Excerpt (from the opinion's syllabus): "Held: Although §502(a)(2) does not provide a remedy for individual injuries distinct from plan injuries, it does authorize recovery for fiduciary breaches that impair the value of plan assets in a participant's individual account. . . . For defined contribution plans . . . fiduciary misconduct need not threaten the entire plan's solvency to reduce benefits below the amount that participants would otherwise receive. Whether a fiduciary breach diminishes plan assets payable to all participants or only to particular individuals, it creates the kind of harms that concerned §409's draftsmen. Thus, [the references in Massachusetts Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Russell to] 'entire plan' . . . which accurately reflect §409's operation in the defined benefit context, are beside the point in the defined contribution context." (United States Supreme Court)

Sure can! Thanks for asking. Log in Click on 'My Controls' In left-hand nav bar, under 'Options', click on Email Settings Scroll down and check the checkbox that's labeled 'Enable Email notification by default?' Use the drop-down box next to the checkbox; set it to 'Immediate email notification' Click the button that's just below that drop-down box, which is labeled 'Amend my email settings' Voila! I regret that the power (options, gee-gaws of various kinds) of this message board software arguably outweighs the cost in its complexity (which is compounded by a truly lousy help system and awful, uninformative and insulting error messages). The next 'major' upgrade will fix the error messages, I have been told. Thanks for participating! Dave

Lawyer Brooks Hamilton has authored a work entitled Proposition: The Inalienable Rights of We The People to Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, Due Process of Law ... Trump Any Authority (Constitutional or Otherwise) Asserted by Congress to Mandate Uniform National Laws Preempting Such Inalienable Rights 11 pages. Mr. Hamilton is a longtime observer of retirement plans, especially 401(k) plans. Transcript of Frontline Interview with Brooks Hamilton Opinion: 401k Plans -- Is the Story Under-told or Over-sold? Opinion: Retirement Planning and 401(k) Decisions Others (click) Comments here are welcome!

The software is trying to give you a shortcut way to create a link to a particular post in a particular message topic, when you're composing the text of a reply message; the text of the post won't be dropped into the reply message, but you don't need to know any HTML or other stuff in order to create a hypertext link to the post. For example, now (as I type this reply message) I'll click on the "Insert: Post Link" in the Quick Access menu at left; Here's a link to a post by pmacduff in another message topic I did that by putting 157988 into one box and "Here's a link to a post by pmacduff in another message topic" in another box. It's not easy to know the post number (each post has a different number); it appears that one way is to click "Post #4" up towards the top right of any particular post (in this example it's the 4th post in a message topic), which generates a long URL that is actually the guts of the thing that the "Insert: Post Link" is trying to avoid. In my example, it's http://benefitslink.com/boards/index.php?s...st&p=157988 So you could get the post number from that URL: it's the number following p= This "Insert: Post Link" shortcut is more trouble than it's worth, I think. Maybe there's an easier way to determine a post number, though. To make this all the more complicated, a "post link" is a link to a particular post, and a "topic link" (also in that drop-down menu) is a link to a "topic," which is the name for the post that starts a particular message topic (to which reply posts are made). I don't know how to determine the topic number for any particular message topic, other than looking at its URL in the address bar of your browser while you're viewing that message topic. The company that makes the software used for these message boards seems to be imitating Microsoft in trying to add more and more features, but it with increased "power" comes increasing complexity.