The survey does not directly ask respondents if they have ever divorced or separated. Instead, we know the marital status at the time of the survey and the number of times someone has married. The above reflects the percentage of people who work a job and were either divorced, separated, or married more than once. For example, a person in his second marriage would say he was currently married, but we assume he was divorced previously.
That’s a silly assumption.
My mom’s on her second marriage. She was never divorced.
He’s also checking if people are remarried (so people who are widowed and remarried are part of his rate – people like my mother, pre-retirement. She got remarried at age 43… having been widowed at age 38.)
to be fair, he isn’t proclaiming that the software was wrong, just that an alternative method produced a different number, and that the higher of the two was booked.
But the question of “where did you get this number?” never coming up in 34 years is highly suspicious.
Or an actuary forgetting to document their methodology, or being able to unilaterally increase reserves, or having a concern about a process and not bringing in anyone else because they wanted the company to figure it out on their own (and then leaving without saying a word)…
Eh. It’s reserves. If they are too high, they will never eventually be realized.
Good news is they saved on all those taxes for decades.
Bad news is that the IRS might know about it.
EDIT:
Ah. The actuary was reserving more correctly.
Though using the calculator was stupid IMO. Could have used Excel instead, as the methodology was the difference in the calculation.
And locking it in a drawer was stupid. No one was going to steal it. Maybe steal her purse, which she might also have locked in there.
And, it seemed as if the actuarial software was not documented well enough, either.
