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Is your pension safe?
Gerri Willis answers questions from readers about private pensions, maintaining good credit and health insurance.
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| For more information on managing your largest investment, check out Gerri Willis' "Home Rich," now in bookstores. |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- 1. My wife and I are both retired and we depend on our private pension and other small investments for our income. We are both very concerned and afraid that within the next 6 months there will be nothing left. - Jack
Today the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC)- this is the governmental agency that steps in to protect your pension if your company is unable to - goes before congress. At issue is a $3.1 billion investment loss.
The agency has $68 billion in assets. Companies that sponsor pensions pay a premium to the PBGC. That, in part, is where the money comes from.
So, Jack, there's little reason for alarm here. The performance of the PBGC overall is better than private money managers who lost on average over 6% in this kind of market. There's no reason to think your pension won't be there when you need it.
2. What is better to help your credit score, have a payment to make on your credit cards each month to show activity or have no payment at all? -Garland, Texas
It doesn't matter to your score if you make no payment, or you have activity on your card...as long as you pay off what balances in full by the due date. What you do want to avoid is having your credit card canceled because of inactivity.
If that happens, that can really hurt your score because it reduces the amount of available credit that you have. Make sure you spread your balances out between a few cards so that you keep those cards activated.
3. Could you please let me know the Web site addresses of the places where people can try to find health insurance? -Jerilyn, Wisconsin
With more than 45 million people who are uninsured - this is a big problem. To find coverage, you can visit covertheuninsured.com and healthinsuranceinfonet.com to find state-by-state breakouts of programs available to the uninsured and discount drug programs.
If you don't qualify for state programs, there are other places to go. Ehealthinsurance.com for example will give you quotes from private insurers. Obviously, you're going to have to pay out of pocket for this coverage. 
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