Ferreting out hidden benefits and savings
August 20, 2012
In one of those scenarios bound to make me even more neurotic about benefits come Open Enrollment, we recently discovered by word of mouth that PiC’s company covers an initial sum of transit benefits before employees have to pay out of pocket for their transit costs.
I’ve been paying over $100/month, pretax into my own company’s program this entire time – we could have halved or cleared that cost to the household entirely.
Once we heard that, he applied for the new card and I cancelled my contributions shortly afterward. An equivalent amount, rounded up, has now been routed directly to savings to salve my bruised financial blogging pride.
For the record – I found the Open Enrollment booklet for last year’s term tonight and pored through it twice. There was absolutely zero mention of this additional tidbit in the benefit.
Perhaps the employee had to log into his or her account to find it? I really wish he’d asked his colleague how he or she knew about it so I could do some more investigation and see if there’s anything else we’re missing. Nosy as I am, I would have asked.
With benefits, I always worry about picking the right plan/amounts, or that I might not be taking advantage of it. Live and learn. I always either put way too much or not nearly enough into my FSA.
I’m confused as to why that wasn’t listed in the booklet. Very weird. I’d ask HR what other stuff they’re hiding from you!
At least you know now! I figured out a bunch of this kind of stuff my third year on the job when I finally had some time to poke around.
Grr, why make employee perks and benefits so obscure? Tell PiC he has some sleuthing to do, pronto.
I’m now curious… What else is covered but not mentioned that you can possibly claim? o_O