Top 5 STUMP Posts for 2024: Pension Drama, Pick Your Retirement Age, Uncounted Votes, and More!

Plus two special RIP posts from the year

Closing out the 2024 countdowns — here are the two prior posts:

• Top 5 Podcast Episodes of 2024: Bobby Bonilla, Death Fraud, Walz, and More Scientific Fraud!

• Top Five (well, 6) 2024 Mortality with Meep Posts: Life Expectancy, Cuomo, Cancer, and Murder!

Before I do my top 5 for the non-Mortality and non-podcast posts, I have taken two posts out of the rankings, for a special category of RIP. They had many more views than my usual posts, getting more views via other venues and having interest well beyond what I usually write about.

First, in February, a tribute to a fellow actuary:

I didn’t know Adele very closely, as I didn’t even know she was ailing.

And then there were several posts about the passing of Stuart, the STU part of Stump. This is the primary post:

This year’s Movember fundraising was in memory of Stuart, and as a result of those efforts, my campaign ended up in the top 150 fundraisers and I got this today:

looking up the ICD code for “fell off skateboard”

Thanks to everybody!

Let’s get to the regular 2024 content!

5. Ohio Pension Drama Continues: Investigation Called on "Hostile Takeover"

And what a drama this is.

The only reason we’re not seeing more dramas like this in other public pension systems is that some have already had their dramas, many have jacked up contribution rates (unlike Ohio STRS) to keep the benefits going, and others are just deep in denial and have yet to have their big drama.

The Ohio STRS drama has been going on for years. You will see below I did a lot of posts this year, as there was a lot of legal action this year. This is not yet finished, obviously.

For convenience, here are all the Ohio STRS posts in 2024, in chrono order:

• 6 May 2024: Public Pension Governance Drama in Ohio

• 10 May 2024: Ohio Pension Drama Continues: Investigation Called on "Hostile Takeover"

• 16 May 2024: Ohio State Teachers Pension Drama Continues! Board Turmoil!

• 17 May 2024: More Ohio STRS Commentary: Alternative Assets in Pensions, Anonymous Memos, and Teachers Pensions in General [corrected/updated on May 22]

• 1 June 2024: Corrections and Clarifications on Ohio STRS: Audits and Investments

• 27 June 2024: Ohio STRS Drama Continues: No Bonuses and Board Member Resigns

• 15 July 2024: Ohio STRS Update for 15 July 2024: More Legislative Action, Advisor Resignation(s), Research on Public Pension Asset Returns

• 18 July 2024: Ohio STRS: Trade-Offs, Alternative Assets, and More

• 28 Aug 2024: Ohio STRS Drama Continues: Subpoenas Filed Against Some Board Members

• 28 Sep 2024: Ohio STRS Drama Continues: CIO and Acting Executive Director Resign... In Time for Retirement from Ohio PERS

4. On Choosing a Retirement Age: For Individuals

Spurred by something idiotic said/written by Ben Shapiro, I explain the different types of ages in U.S. retirement-related tax policy and law. I talk about life expectancy versus survivorship to different ages. And I also talk about different types of risks, such as unemployment and disability.

3. Post-Election Public Finance and Pension Round-Up

There wasn’t a lot of talk about public finance or pensions during the 2024 election season, other than the usual “THEY’RE GONNA KILL SOCIAL SECURITY!”

Don’t worry, I’ll be writing plenty about that in 2025.

I had the usual suspects in this post — Chicago and Illinois, and even a taste of Bernie Sanders. But there was a new entrant — the Vatican! The Holy See also has pensions, and they’re not doing well, either.

2. UPDATE: Checking on Ballot Counts -- 20 Million Missing Ballots in 2024 Compared to 2020?

This one was a bit unusual for me, but not really.

Estimating the number of votes already cast but uncounted is similar to the concept of IBNR (incurred but not reported) claims from insurance, which actuaries have to estimate for financial statements.

People being impatient over uncounted ballots annoyed me, especially the conspiracy theories being spun. So I decided to do some rough estimates… and then updated. In a later post, Election Post-Post-Mortem: Vote Counts, Polymarket, Pollsters/Predictors in the Dumps, on November 30, I estimated the vote count had dipped 3% since 2020.

1. Chicago and Illinois Finance Update: Forecast Pain

Surprising absolutely nobody, the top post of the year was on Chicago/Illinois, and the current mess that is the Chicago budget (and especially the Chicago schools budget).

It was mainly a step back and a look at a high level of their current situation:

I understand Johnson wants all sorts of goodies for his friends in the CTU, but he doesn’t have the money to distribute to them (yet). He needs to learn about this thing called negotiation, which involves working with people who have competing interests, not the fake thing he has been doing with his friends where they agree on some number that they think they can get away with.

All this while Pritzker is trying to set himself up as some sort of Trump antagonist… while he has no money to do this. Illinois would do better to go back to its shameless begging.

This is yet another topic which I will almost definitely be writing about a lot next year.

Both Illinois and Chicago have put themselves in a position of pain. They did that to themselves — Trump didn’t do that.

They may strut and attempt to distract in 2025, using Trump as an excuse. I think it’s unlikely to work.