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LEADERSHIP
WORD OF THE WEEK:
Trivial?
LEADERSHIP
QUOTES:
"Before
you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays
quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see
them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of
them, but you can't. You can only see one thing clearly
and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and
cling to it through thick and thin." Kathleen Norris
"True greatness consists in being great in little things."
Charles Simmons
"Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and
I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things."
Lawrence D. Bell
"The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a
palette." Henry S. Haskins
"Great things are not done by impulse but by a series of
small things brought together." Unknown
HISTORICAL PROFILE
Ted Benna/401s
With the October 2008 credit crisis came the now infamous stock
market slide. Many folks have watched their 401k retirement
savings plan plummet. Sadly some have had to revisit their own
retirement date. Except for one man who noticed a trivial law
change and then did something creative with it, we may not even
have 401ks to worry over.
On September 20, 1980, a little known benefits consultant was in
his office on Saturday. While pouring over the Tax Code, a duty
Ted often found himself doing as a retirement counselor, he ran
across a recent change in the tax law. The new law was directed
at the banking institutions but Ted realized it could also
pertain to private individuals.
Ted said, "A bit of desperation got the creative juices flowing.
That was when I thought of offering a matching employer
contribution as an additional incentive. It was at this point
that the potential of what I had just "created" hit. Most large
employers at the time had savings plans in which employees put
in money after taxes and received a matching employer
contribution. I immediately realized it would be possible to
change those plans so that employees would be able to put their
money in before taxes rather than after."
Thus section 401, paragraph (k) of the internal Revenue Code,
lifted from its obscurity by Ted Benna, changed the retirement
prospects for millions of Americans.
Ted's attention to the boring, tedious study of tax law proved
to be anything but trivial!
By the way, the bank he proposed this concept to, rejected his
idea! Millions of others have not.
SCRIPTURE
Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about
with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every
weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and
let us run with patience the race that is set before us!
(emphasis mine)
"Many are the tedious;
the mundane; the trivial pursuits that involve each of us. May
we see through the boring to find the creative. That often is
the difference between victory and defeat." JAS
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