Employee Benefits: Open Enrollment, The Most Valuable Benefits [Video]

 

For some of you it is about time for open enrollment. This means electing new benefits, changing some benefits from what you had in the past, and really understanding what are all the things your employer offers you beyond just your base salary.

Today we are going to look at three very important benefits to make sure you are utilizing them to the best extent that you can. 

The first one that comes to mind, and rightfully so, is health insurance.

Health Insurance Employee Benefits

Health insurance is one of the mote valuable employee benefits we receive. If you are curious, you can actually see how much your employer contributes for your coverage on your W2. 

You are looking for code DD and the number following it is how much they are putting in for your coverage. 

So when we are looking at health insurance, there are three things to be looking out for when selecting your plan.

Deductible 

First is your deductible. In other words, how much are you paying before the insurance company starts coming in and paying for things along side of you. 

Out Of Pocket

Secondly we are looking at our out of pocket maximums. This is how much you are on the hook for throughout the year before the insurance company will take over 100% of any additional bills that you may incur. 

Premium

Finally is the premium and how much you are paying for coverage. So this is what you typically see on your paycheck on a day-to-day basis. This can be a large influencer if this is expensive coverage or if it is not.

Disability Coverage Employee Benefits

The next benefit we want to talk about is disability coverage.  This is sometimes overshadowed from life insurance, but the reality is we are much more likely to claim on disability than we are on life insurance.

Now most employers don’t give you many choices when it comes to choosing how much disability coverage you want to elect. Often times you only get the chance to say, “Yes, I want to participate.” Or “No, I don’t.”

If you are given the choice to participate, we recommend you do so. If you have the option to pay for the premiums or the premium taxes, we would also recommend you do that as well. Doing so allows you to make sure any benefits you might claim on disability are tax free.