Cash Balance Plans Part 2: EDU #2606

Feb 11, 2026

Steve Sansone, a retirement plan specialist in cash balance and defined benefit design, joins to tackle listener questions. Conversations cover using cash balance plans for business owners with lumpy income, handling two related companies with different profit cycles, and the real-world costs, administration, and risks of running these plans. Short, practical scenarios and tradeoffs are highlighted.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

IRS Treats Short Lived Plans As Disguised 401k

Cash balance plans carry an implied permanence because the IRS may treat short-term setups as disguised 401(k) abuses.
Steve explains the IRS can disallow deductions if a plan appears to be a one-off vehicle to shelter a windfall instead of a long-term pension design.

ADVICE

Calculate Employee Contribution Tradeoffs First

Do the math on employee cost: owners get big benefits only if you also increase contributions to rank-and-file employees.
Steve notes the 3/5/7.5 rule: larger owner contributions require giving roughly 3%, 5% or 7.5% to eligible staff, which can kill the business case for large payrolls.

ADVICE

Use A 3% Safe Harbor Non Elective Instead Of A Match

Swap a safe-harbor match for a 3% non-elective contribution if planning a cash balance to simplify discrimination testing.
Steve calls this a 'schneck' because 3% non-elective goes to all eligible employees and helps the plan pass coverage rules.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Chris’s Summary
Jim and I are joined by Steve Sansone as we revisit Cash Balance Plans and respond to listener follow-up emails.

(8:30) A CPA asks whether cash balance plans could be a fit for farmers with high income near retirement driven by deferred grain and equipment sales.
(18:30) A listener with two controlled-group businesses asks how a cash balance plan works with divergent profit cycles, whether it can support succession planning, and whether it makes sense if ownership works until death.
(36:45) A financial advisor asks for real-world details on costs, duplication/administration, duration, interest crediting rate risk, investment management, participant inclusion decisions, partner exits, lifetime maximums, and terminate/restart mechanics.

Jim’s “Pithy” Summary
Chris and I are joined by Steve Sansone as we dig back into cash balance plans, but this time we’re doing it by letting listener questions drive the conversation. We take three listener emails that each come at this from a different angle: one from a CPA working with farmers facing lumpy income near retirement, one from a family dealing with two controlled-group businesses that don’t behave the same way financially, and one from an advisor who’s basically saying, “Convince me this isn’t just theoretical.”

Chris and I talk with Steve about what makes these plans work and what makes them a headache—cash flow consistency, the “permanence” expectation, why manufacturers with lots of employees can be a tough fit, and how quickly the math changes when you have to fund meaningful benefits for staff. We also get into the stuff people don’t always hear in the sales pitch: what “interest crediting” really means, where the risk lives if returns don’t cooperate, and why newer market-rate designs change the conversation compared to older fixed-rate versions.

And we cover the messy real-life questions: what happens when partners leave, what it looks like to terminate and restart a plan, and why you can’t treat this like an investment strategy with a neat five-to-ten-year horizon. It’s a tax and retirement-acceleration tool with rules, tradeoffs, and guardrails—and Steve does a solid job laying out when it’s worth the complexity and when it’s just not.

The post Cash Balance Plans Part 2: EDU #2606 appeared first on The Retirement and IRA Show.