About American Pensions

All ben­e­fits (such as health insur­ance, pen­sions, etc.) are accrued if you work full-time, prefer­ably in a high-pay­ing job. Pen­sions are guar­an­teed only for gov­ern­ment employ­ees and mil­i­tary per­son­nel; oth­ers must man­age their own retire­ment sav­ings. There is a spe­cial social tax of 6.2%, which is deduct­ed by the employ­er or entre­pre­neur from the employ­ee’s salary. This tax, sim­i­lar to our pen­sion sys­tem, is col­lect­ed only up to a cer­tain annu­al amount. From this accu­mu­lat­ed fund, the month­ly pen­sion is then cal­cu­lat­ed, start­ing at age 65. Some Amer­i­cans, after work­ing full-time their whole lives at low-pay­ing jobs, end up with very small pen­sions because it’s tough to save on a low salary. This pen­sion bare­ly cov­ers hous­ing costs. Some indi­vid­u­als, whose incomes allow it, con­tribute to a spe­cial per­son­al retire­ment account, from which they can with­draw mon­ey after age 65. They can access this mon­ey before 65, but doing so incurs a hefty tax, result­ing in sig­nif­i­cant losses.

Our pen­sions aren’t straight­for­ward either. Not only do our pen­sions amount to 200 – 300 dol­lars a month (which is just “pock­et change” here), but the gov­ern­ment has made receiv­ing them quite prob­lem­at­ic. Pre­vi­ous­ly, until 2015, pen­sions for retirees liv­ing abroad were sent to the Russ­ian con­sulate in the retiree’s coun­try of res­i­dence once a quar­ter. At the end of 2014, a res­o­lu­tion was adopt­ed stat­ing that any­one who moved after that date must receive their pen­sion in Rus­sia per­son­al­ly or through a trust­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Fur­ther­more, a retiree who moves abroad must vis­it the Russ­ian con­sulate in their coun­try of res­i­dence once a year to ver­i­fy that they are alive. The con­sulate then sends this con­fir­ma­tion to the Pen­sion Fund of Rus­sia (PFR). I agree that the PFR needs to know if a per­son is alive, but why must this be done through con­sulates? Why can’t it be done through a notary? Why not have a trans­la­tion cer­ti­fied with an apos­tille? Giv­en recent events, there are now only two or three con­sulates in the U.S. Many peo­ple find them to be “a two-day trek through the woods, a three-day jour­ney across fields.”

Pen­sions are guar­an­teed only for gov­ern­ment employ­ees and mil­i­tary per­son­nel; oth­ers must take care of their own retirement.

When my aunt left in ear­ly 2015, we went with her to the pen­sion fund in the Voroshilov Dis­trict to find out how to han­dle every­thing. They told us that they them­selves still didn’t know any­thing, and “you should make a pow­er of attor­ney for some­one, and let that per­son col­lect it.” So I col­lect­ed her pen­sion through a pow­er of attor­ney for two years and brought it to her when I vis­it­ed. But in mid-2017, just before her 80^th birth­day, the PFR stopped send­ing her pen­sion to Sber­bank. My rel­a­tives pro­vid­ed me with notar­i­al doc­u­ments con­firm­ing she was alive, trans­lat­ed into Russ­ian and cer­ti­fied with an apos­tille (every­thing done accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing stan­dards). As her trust­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive, I went to the PFR in the Voroshilov Dis­trict with these doc­u­ments, but they replied that they only accept con­fir­ma­tions through the con­sulate. This means the retiree has to trav­el to the con­sulate in Washington.

The increase in the retire­ment age in Rus­sia out­rages me. It seems we have places where peo­ple can work in their pre-retire­ment years. They want to add a full 8 years for women. I once heard a state­ment from a pen­sion fund offi­cial: “When we live like in Switzer­land, we can raise the retire­ment age”. I even wrote it down. Prob­a­bly, we have reached the stan­dard of liv­ing of the Swiss.

Lat­er, I heard in the news that it is unfair to raise the retire­ment age for women by 8 years while men only have a 5‑year increase. Now, per­haps all women want to cry tears of joy that the retire­ment age will be only five years longer, not eight.