April 2019 – Firefly Admin Inc.

ELIMINATE THE PRACTICE OF SIGNING OTHERS INTO ACTIVITIES

April 30, 2019

The recently released report on the Office of the State Comptroller audit of the Jamesport Fire District (you can download it below) has the following to say regarding signing others in for activities: 120 points were supported by attendance records where the member didnot sign themselves in. Instead, the members were marked as present bysomeone…

LATEST STATE LOSAP AUDIT – PART 2

April 29, 2019

Last time we looked at a recent audit report released by the State Comptroller. Here is another section of the report, regarding the Miscellaneous Category: Miscellaneous – GML authorizes a service award program to provide points for“miscellaneous activities,” with one point per activity (up to a maximum of 15points). For this purpose, GML defines “miscellaneous…

LATEST STATE AUDIT ON LOSAP

April 26, 2019

The Office of the State Comptroller recently released the latest LOSAP audit – this time the audit was of the Jamesport Fire District. You can download a copy at the end of this post. There are several things to react to here, which we will do in some later posts. But off the top, the…

ADJUSTING THE INTEREST RATE

April 24, 2019

This post is a piggy-back of the last post – go back one day to read that (you may want to read a few of the prior posts as well). We saw in the last post that is we assumed a 2.5% rate of return on the investments but consistently earned only 1.5%, contributions would…

FAILING TO MEET EARNINGS TARGET

April 23, 2019

Yesterday we looked at a simple scenario to help illustrate how the funded ratio increases towards 100% over time as contributions are made and earnings are realized. It looked like the following, where the first number is the assets of the plan, the second number is the present value of accrued benefits, and the third…

FUNDED RATIO

April 22, 2019

The last two days we’ve discussed the time value of money, and mortality. Both of these concepts are key to developing the annual contribution that the sponsor of a DB LOSAP must make each year. They are also used to determine the present value of all of the promised benefits, which is a key component…

LIFE EXPECTANCY

April 19, 2019

Life expectancy, or mortality, is an integral part of determining how much a sponsor of a defined benefit plan must contribute to the trust fund to pay for the promised benefits. In actuarial science, the mortality assumption is not just the answer to the question “how long will I live?”. It is instead more of…

TIME VALUE OF MONEY

April 18, 2019

The time value of money is a core principle in the world of finance. It is also an important factor in actuarial calculations. In general the time value of money is the idea that money is money available to you today is more valuable than that same amount paid at a later date. The reason…

BENEFICIARY DESIGNATION MISTAKE #3

April 16, 2019

Something else we see an awful lot really just comes down to paying attention! Have you had a significant life event – marriage, child(ren) born, divorce or parents die? All of these events could impact your beneficiary designation. In particular, if you get divorced, you should immediately update your beneficiary. Even if you want to…

BENEFICIARY DESIGNATION MISTAKE #1

April 12, 2019

In the last post we discussed the importance of designating a beneficiary. If you have completed a beneficiary designation form – great! However, there are still some common mistakes we have seen over the years that must be avoided. Even if you have completed a form, you may want to review that designation. One mistake we…

Month: April 2019