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Announcing the TIA forum

July 6th, 2012

We are very excited to announce the launch of the TIA forum!

In the past, using TIA to study for exams has been a relatively solitary endeavor.  You watched the videos, worked the problems, and occasionally emailed your instructor for assistance.  If you prefer to learn that way, then don’t worry, you can still do it that way.  Think of the forum as an additional (and optional) way to enhance your learning.  You might just browse other student’s questions, and decide to give it a try later on.

Although a few TIA members have gone out of their way to interact with others by posting on the Actuarial Outpost or other public forums, the TIA forum makes it incredibly easy for all of us to interact with other members.  Any time you have a question or a topic for discussion, you can immediately enter the subject forum and make your post.  Everyone else that is subscribed to the seminar will see that there is a new post in that subject forum, and can respond immediately, seconding or answering your topic.  Watch the short video posted in the “Introduction” section of the course to see how the forum works.

Making your experience at TIA more interactive will result in much more powerful and effective learning.  But another terrific aspect of the forum is that it will act as a growing and changing knowledge base of answered questions.  As your instructor, I’ve found that I answer the same question by email many times.  The forum will allow me to post answers to questions in a way that will remain readily available to all seminar users.  After a while, you’ll find answers to many of your questions instantly in the forum, instead of needing an email response.

But the forums aren’t just for my answers to questions.  As you probably know, there is no better way to test your knowledge than to try to answer the questions that other learners ask.  You should try to answer the questions that other members post as often as you can.  Other members can chime in to ask more about your answer too, and I’ll be keeping an eye on things to make sure that all the questions receive accurate and useful responses.

As always, we want your learning experience here at TIA to be a positive one.  When interacting with each other on the web, please be sure to maintain a cheerful attitude and encourage your fellow learners.  Feel free to immediately flag any post that you feel would discourage anyone from interacting.

The forum is open now, so go ahead and watch the introduction video and get started!

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Finished live seminars

October 14th, 2011

A bit of post-seminar humor to celebrate – now back to work!

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Getting started – slowly

May 19th, 2011

Here is a bit of Tumblr humor that is VERY close to the entire concept of studying for EA-2A.

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2010 Updates to discussions

July 12th, 2010

In June, I started recording updates to the discussions of the single employer overheads (IRC 430 and IRC 404(0)). I have now finished recording updates to the multiemployer overheads.

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Printing, Printing …

July 24th, 2009

I’ll be mailing out CDs plus a box of paper on 07/31/09 to ALL the seminar students this year (live and online).

You’ll need to buy a BIG binder. This year’s stack of paper clocks in at about 2,100 pages.

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Overhead recordings – Multiemployer plans

July 10th, 2009

This week, I started recording discussions of the multiemployer overheads (IRC 431, 432 and 404). I expect most of those files to be uploaded next week.

Next week I start updating all the sample exam problems that I work during the seminar. Once I do that, I will start recording the new solutions.

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Overhead recordings – Single employer plans

June 27th, 2009

Last week, I started recording discussions of the single employer overheads (IRC 430 and IRC 404(0)). I have almost finished revisions to the multiemployer overheads. I’ll start recording those as soon as I finish recording the single employer topics.

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Overhead revisions – 416 and 417

June 4th, 2009

On Wednesday I finished making a few minor updates to the overheads for IRC 416 Top heavy plans and IRC 417(e) involuntary cash-outs.

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Overhead revisions – Single employer plans

May 28th, 2009

Last week I updated the IRC 415 overheads to reflect the 2009 limits. I also reflected the changes made by WRERA.

Today I finished the updates to the overheads for single employer plans (minimum and maximum funding). Most of the revisions were related to WRERA as well.

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Benefits Conference of the South

October 17th, 2008

I just got the email from ASPPA with the conference brochure. This meeting will be in Atlanta, GA on January 15-16, 2009:
http://www.asppa.org/archive/conf/2009/2009bcos.htm

Looks like I’ll be on the podium with Jim Holland to talk about “PPA 06 Funding Issues”. Darn, instead of 2 days to cover the topic, we only have 1 hour and 15 minutes!

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