Maximizing Employer-Provided Perks: A Guide to Your Benefits
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Hello, listener's is shown with a quick announcement before we get into the show today. And this month we're uprising, a special series we brought you last year on open enrollment. IT was such a comprehensive look at all the decisions that people have to make at the time of year that we decided to run us again.

Our guest was my former and now retired cohoes lizz. n. So she's back kind of anyway, thank you for listening, and good luck with your open enrollment decisions.

Welcomes to nerve lets smart money podcast i'm shang piles and .

I was western this episode .

wraps up our nerdy deep dive into open enrolment ment season. We've covered health, life and disability insurance, and today we're going to talk about the rest of the benefits you might be offered by your employer and how to decide what to take advantage of.

Yeah, we're gona talk about everything from legal assistance to financial planning sessions too. Yes, pet insurance.

pepper, argus and aussie are going to be all years for that segment. Although I am skeptical that I can actually find a pettance policy that will cover my twenty two year old letter. D geo.

maybe not, but you're talking to somebody who once took a three dollar mouse and it's crying. Seven year old owner to event emergency room in the middle the night. I know that you do what you must for the ones that you love and pet insurance can help, but that's just one of the many benefits that employers offer as a way to attract job candidates and keep the people that they have. We're going to go through some of the most popular benefits and explain what they are and how you can take advantage of them.

I know gym memberships are a popular one. And if you go into an office, hopefully free coffee. No.

well, gm memberships are almost standard these days. Free coffee doesn't rely on open enrollment though.

Um true alright. Well we wanna hear what you think to listening ers share your stories of open enrollment. Us and maybe what you'd like to see offered as an employment benefit. Leave us a voice, male or a text. The earth hot line at nine o one seven three zero six three seven three that's nine o one seven three zero N E R D or email a voice memo to podcast at neurologic com. So this, who are we hearing from today?

Today's guest is Amber kate. She's the senior director of knowledge center Operations at the society for human resource management. By the way, they referred themselves as sham as H.

R. M. And you'll hear her say that that's coming up in the moment.

Stay with us.

So glad you could join us on smart money.

Oh.

thank you for having me. So we spent the last two episodes of the series talking about some of the really complex benefits that employees encounter during open and romance season. And now we want to talk with you about some of the decisions that may or may not be easier, but if you even have the decision to make, you're pretty fortunate. So let's start with dental and vision coverage. And I want to ask you write off about why are our eyes and teeth not considered part of our bodies? Why are they separated out?

That's a really good question. Some medical plans, health insurance plans actually do include some coverage for ice and teeth. Usually, though, IT is separated out to allow those employees to be able to select the cover or not select the coverage, some employers decide to give the supplemental coverage separate from the health just because they're able to provide more benefits like discounts on dental cleaning or on I exams. And they just an opportunity to be able to provide some additional thing through a separate dental and vision plan.

We should also point out the vision coverage work differently from health insurance in some ways. For example, dental and vision generally has maximum or caps on how much is covered, unlike most health insurance. But in other ways, the cover is similar.

You'll typically save money by using in newark providers right out. correct. absolutely. So this dive in a more detail and will start with dental. I know your organization did a survey in twenty three and found that most employers provide dennet coverage. So what do employers typically offer?

Sherman actually does a benefit study. We've been doing this for several years now. We did one and twenty, twenty three and ninety five percent of employers provide dental coverage. Typically, there are more than one teer r coverage. IT could be that they have a preferred provider organization of people and where employees can go to any dentist orthodontic in or out of the network.

IT might be a health maintenance organization, a chemo which tends to be less expensive and requires patients to see dentist, store organist or some of those other types of doctors within the network. But there are also some other ones too. There is a points service plane that actually combines aspects of the ppo and hmo.

And there's in deity where there is no network restrictions and the premiums may actually be hired just because of the flexibility of those planes. And there's exclusive provide or organizations epos that they only allow in network coverage. So their premiums tend to be a little bit lord.

And plus there may be plans based on who's covered. So IT could be an individual plan that just covers the employee could be employed plus one which might be a spouse or child or a family plan. So there's different levels are different tears that could be offered when IT comes to dental coverage.

What is typically covered and what is .

not covered plans very significantly. And many dental plans actually provide hundred percent coverage on the preventive care type measures. So things like the cleaning that someone might get for their teeth, outside of that, there might be a percentage ET employees would have to pay for other services like getting the x rays done or getting cavities filled. Things of that nature, they do very considerably.

What about orthur ic coverage, getting braces?

There are dental planes that do cover orthotic. Then of course, there are some that don't. And when IT comes to worth a donacha, there may be discounts on things like braces or in violin IT could also be that there's discounts on the x ray as well.

So some plans actually require a copy. Some might have a deductable where they have to meet a certain amount of money and water to get coverage for those things. And then some, as I mentioned, like a points service plan, you have to pay out a pocket a percent of whatever the plan require. So again, that that something that can vary too.

does dental insurance in general cover oral surgeries?

Typically doesn't cover oral surgeries. Something like oral surgeries that are medical necessary would probably need to go through your health insurance plan so you'd want to check with the health insurance plan to see what type coverage there is under that.

And how about cosmetic treatments? Tea, lightening the ears, all that good stuff.

If the cosmetic treatment is medical necessary, then it's possible IT could be covered under the dental plan. But again, medical plans, they typically cover those, for instance, of surgeons like a maxillofacial surgeon, might be covered under the health insurance plan. So if anything involving with the mouth and the jaw, any kind of surgeries that might be medical necessary, but things like teeth, White singer, likely not going to be covered by the plans.

Now let's talk about vision insurance. This is also something that most employers offer. According to the latest herm survey.

IT is our study show that ninety five percent of employers actually provide .

vision coverage. What does vision insurance usually cover?

IT usually covers I exams, eyeglasses, contacts and provides discounts of those.

And what if an exam turns up an issue that requires surgery or more? Test division plans generally covered that kind of follow up.

Again, if it's medical necessary, they could be covered under that like lick, for example, could potentially be covered under the vision plans, but also IT could for surgeries be covered under the plan. So you'd want to look at their medical plan to to see the coverage.

Well, ever. If your employer is one of the few that doesn't offer dental or vision care, what your options should you just pay out of pocket?

Again, checked medical plan because there could be some vision coverage there. You may be able to also get a supplemental vision coverage through your plan even though your empire doesn't offer IT. You can contact your health care provider and see if they have something that's a supplemental vision care that you can purchase outside of your employer, the A C A marketplace. IT may offer a vision coverage, but usually it's just for children in that adults. But again, you could look there and there's also Carriers like afflict, which provide vision insurance plans.

So like a standalone plan that you just pay for yourself, correct? okay. One thing we didn't cover when we are talking about vision plans is the obvious eyeglasses and contact lenses. So how much is generally covered? And what should .

you expect coverage, again, very significantly by plants. But again, you may have a copy that needs to be paid for ee exams. For example, there could be depending on the brand of contact lines in the brand of frames, IT could be pretty expensive.

And so the vision insurance playing could actually provide a discount. So for example, mine, I recently got progressive glasses. And for those people who may not know what they are, they are basically by focus, or try focus, but without the little line on the lens.

And mine cost about seven hundred dollars without the insurance. And IT was this kind of pretty significantly. IT was less than five hundred for me to get those. And then I use my health savings account plan to help pay for those as well. Yeah, we talked about .

health savings accounts earlier in the series, and they can be really helpful for covering those extra expenses.

Yes, they can.

No, you mentioned that A C, A policies cover pediatric vision care, but typically don't cover adults. What is the situation with dental care? Is this something that's part of an A C A policy?

Well, there's no requirement under the A, C, A to provide vision coverage or dental coverage. Usually, the aca doesn't have dental coverage. But again, you might wants to take a look at the marketplace in your state to see whether not there is any type of dental coverage because that could vary by state as well.

And again, you can purchase these policies separately if it's not covered under your health insurance. Absolutely right. Well, let's move on to long term care insurance. Can you explain for us what this is and what somebody might use IT for long .

term Carries usually associated with nursing care facilities, but that's not always the case. Yes, long term care insurance can help pay furnace sing care facilities, which can be really expensive, but IT can also provide benefits at home. For example, when your love one might need assistance with their daily activities, caregiving that could potentially be covered under a long term care as well.

How common is that for employers to offer this kind of coverage?

There are employers who do offer a long term care policies, but I wouldn't say that IT is at the high per cent that you see for dental envision coverage when i've .

gone shopping for long term care insurance, it's been pretty expensive. Is IT a Better deal if you get that through your employer?

IT can be a Better deal going through your employer. You have the tax savings where if you get the deduction from your check, if you're making contributions, the plan and the employer is not playing the full hundred percent of IT, that is pretext coming out to your check. If you go into the outside plan, of course, you'll need to pay for IT outside of your typical paycheck and you'd have to work with them on the the tax piece of IT. So IT could be less expensive going through the empire plan. The other piece to IT is that employers may get Better rates when they have more employees who sign up for the long term care plan.

We talk earlier in the series about how employer provided benefits like life insurance typically aren't portable. You can't take them with you when you leave your job. What about long term care policies?

They are portable, but you do again, need to check with your company's long term care plan. Sometimes IT does stop when you commented employment, but there are many that actually offer the portable plans that you can take when you leave the employer. A benefit of purchasing long term care outside of the employers plan is that you can actually get international plan or a national plan, which allows you to be able to move throughout the country and be able to still use that long term care plan where as an employer plan might be limited to a specific area. Oh.

that's really good to know.

Hey, listeners is strong, dropping in for a quick break in the conversation. This is back in a moment with more of our interview stay with us. Today's episode is supported by raindrops sport.

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Well, let's move on to something that's a lot more fun, which is our pets, fuzzy and otherwise. Yes, some employers are offering pet insurance these days. And as a pet over myself, I love this trend. But is the insurance worth the money? And how much of the tab do employers pick up or they just providing options?

There are employers who do provide this benefit to employees. And through our study, we found that IT was nine percent of employers who offer IT. Many don't pay the plans premiums, but they'll work with the Carrier to have some options available to employees and potentially provide some type of corporate discount.

So for me, I also have animals. I have two ten year old dogs, and I am so thankful that I bought head insurance because both of them have had more than one surgery and multiple E. R.

visit. And in my case, that was well worth IT. One surgery actually costs me ten thousand dollars to start, and they wanted the money up front.

So for me, it's been really beneficial. But there are people who purchase the insurance and may not needed at all. So it's really an option for employees to do that for their pets. But for me personally, it's worked out great. yeah.

And you can also obviously buy IT on your own. So you probably should shop around to make sure that what you're getting through your employer is actually a Better deal.

yes. And actually, I did purchase mine outside. I have purchased IT with the employer and I have purchased IT outside of the employer, just depending on the coverage that I would get. So talk your vet, maybe go to your local pet store if your employer doesn't offer IT. But definitely do some comparisons, some shopping around on on the peanuts.

Now a while back, we did a whole episode on the insurance, so we can link to that in the shown notes to get people up to speed. Another benefit we sometimes see from employers is prepaid legal service. How does that work? And what kind of cost are you looking at?

Well, our studies shows that forty two percent of employers actually provide some type of legal assistance for their employees. So most people, at some point, they're gona need some kind of legal help, whether it's for divorce or reviewing a contract or creating a will. And so providing legal assistance is a really good thing for employees.

And sometimes IT doesn't cost the employer anything because they can work with a legal services provider to be able to just have information resources and the ability to be able to purchase through the employer and have reached productions. But then there's also somewhere they'll pay prepaid legal assistant. So possibly having somebody come in maybe doing some legal advice training. I know we had that at one point. Worth and attorney came in to talk about wills and trust.

Yeah, we have this benefit at nerd wallet. And nerd wallet pays for IT. Sometimes there's an additional charge to do certain things, but I can be really handing, especially if you don't have any estate documents at all or just need simple help.

Yes, ability. Another benefit that .

seems to be growing bit lately is adoption assistance. We did a series back in the spring about the costs of parents od, and we heard about employers who provided good amounts of money to help employees with adoption. So how prevalent is this and what kind of benefits are generally offered?

Actually, it's a very small percent of employers who offer adoption assistance are a study showed that eight percent of employers offer IT. Now of course, that could increase over the years, but benefits typically include things like financial assistance or reimbursement ment for expenses. If somebody, let's say, goes to another country to adopt a child, some employers provide paid and unpaid leave and some provides information and referral services. So not a lot of employers, but I could see this growing in the future.

Some firms also offer financial wellness programs or financial planning. Can you describe that for us and whether it's something worth taking?

yeah. So our study showed that thirty one percent of employers offer non retirement financial advice. IT could be one of one visits with a financial planner or IT could be where they come in for a financial wellness sphere. Basically, what they're doing is they're looking at the financial situation of the employees and creating a plan to address these issues and to work on saving money, things of that nature. And it's really good because especially with financial planning and well as mental health can be affected by your financial well, bing, and we'll talk .

about mental health benefits in a moment. But I need to ask, how are these offerings bedded? Usually I A, C, F, P, N. I have to ask that question.

Now I understand, well, the plan administrators, the employers, they should ensure that their service providers maintain adequate internal controls. And the way that they sometimes do that, it'll ask for a service organization control reported as a sea report. And that's where an audit firm has actually assessed the providers of internal controls and making sure of that they are maintaining the integrity of the financial information. They're preventing fraud. So they really have to ask those questions of the providers before they bring the men to give financial advice to employees yeah because .

here in nerd wall that we constantly talk about the importance of getting fiduciary financial advice, meaning that the advisers are required to put your interest ahead of their own. So we'll just say again, make sure whoever you are talking to about your finances is a producer correct?

Also like physicians, I say you could also get a second opinion. You know you could talk to more than one financial plan or just to see what the advice is and what's being given. For me, that's always beneficial to be able to compare and contrast the advice that is being given.

Another benefit is becoming popular or husband popular for a while is gym memberships? I suppose it's a pretty simple decision to make, but how do you decide whether to take a image of that?

For me, it's a simple decision, but it's a hard decision to keep consistent on IT. I enroll in a gym membership. I use IT for like two weeks, stayed consistently.

And then I started to taper off because I just get tired and just don't want to go in. So that's prety bad. But if you care about your health and wellness, it's a great thing to join a gym.

M, if you have that opportunity. And many employers, actually, twenty three percent of them pay for offer discounts on off site gym memberships. Some companies do have on site gym memberships.

Some have where they have a trainer come in and theyll do some classes that might be for free or the employees have to pay for IT. So it's definitely something that many companies are doing because they know. So it's going to help reduce the health cost, health insurance plans and the cost for their employees if their healthier.

Let's circle back to mental health benefits, which I know are offered year around at many employers. For example, many companies offer employee assistance programs, which are voluntary and can help people with personal or work related problems. They provide assessment, short term counseling, referrals, and a lot of companies now have expanded their mental health offerings in recent years. You don't have to sign up for these at any specific time, but is IT a good idea that checked these out during open?

And romen IT, is mental health issues have been a trending topic, sends the beginning of the pandemic. And our research back in twenty twenty one, I believe IT was showed that one and four employees actually noted that they were burned out, stressed, depressed, alone.

And this is as a result of of what happened during the pandemic and being isolated or quarantine um at home, not seeing co workers, dealing with kids that are out of school and having to the virtual just I think you all know think everybody knows how difficult that whole period was for everyone. But with that said, we know that eighty nine percent of employers are offering some type of mental health coverage, which is great. Again, IT could be through those E A P, but also those medical plans.

Do you provide some coverage, but you can also supply minute with other online resources or activities like some employers have meditation or programs doing with stress and self care. So if you're not familiar with those types of benefits at your players offer, I would definitely say take a look at IT during open enrollment. And for employers, if they don't have IT already, they should be looking at IT already over.

Why do employers offer all these benefits? Why are they going to the effort and expense of doing this .

to be competitive? When they offer these benefits, especially if they're customized for their audience, they will tend to have a higher recruitment and retention rate. And when I say customize, thinking about not every employees going to enjoy the same benefit.

So if i'm A A Young person just coming out of college and I don't have kids or anything, I don't care about dependent care. Flexible spending accounts. I want student debt loan console lidity, you know so really trying to think looking at your population of your employees and determining you know what benefits they might be um interested in. Also some employers do benefit surveys of the employees to see what they might be interested in as well. I mean, so much as far as benefits that can be offered outside of what we've discuss today.

Oh, when you mention student loan assistance, and I realized we forgot to touch on that at all, do you have any statistics about how many employers are now offering that help?

Eight percent of employers offer company provided student learn repayment for the eight percent offer undergraduate and graduate tuition an assistance. And then there are nine percent that offer scholarships for members of employees families, and nine percent offer five hundred and nine plan payroll deduction and that attached status plan to encourage people to save for their college cost. Well.

IT sounds like it's definitely worth asking your employer about this.

absolutely. I mean, i've got if someone who works for me, she's been at term for probably twenty five years now. And SHE still has some student learned that, I mean, this can go on for years depending on the type of degree where they went to college. So if you're in that position and you need help, look to your empire benefits. And if they don't have IT, they could ask if they could get IT.

That's a really good point that if there's a benefit out there that you would really like to see your employer offer, you can always ask .

for IT doesn't hurt. Can they can just say no?

All right, well, Amber, thank you. I really appreciate all your help today.

Yeah, absolutely. I enjoyed being here.

Dental and vision coverage and their separation from regular health care and the fact that they are not covered under aca plans really encapsulates so much of what's chAllenging around getting care for our bodies and to someone who relies on glasses and had a rook al earlier this year out, I can a test to how expensive this stuff can get even with all is relatively generous benefits. So this is why it's really important for folks to review the specifics of a company's benefits package. When they're reviewing a job offers, they know what kind of coverage they would get and what expenses they might be on the hook for.

This is also important for anyone on medicare because traditional medicare doesn't cover vision, dental or hearing. And most people over sixty five need help with one or more of those. And john, I wanted to share a couple of other survey results of Amber mention to us.

These are kind of fun. Seventy two percent of companies they surveyed offered companies swag to employees. Forty four percent of her free snacks, twenty three percent match the charitable contributions of their employees, and four percent even pay for your dry cleaning. But so many of us work from home now or business casual that really don't need drag cleaning anymore.

Yeah, and I would love some free coffee, even though I work home .

a free copy for all. At least that's true at seventy nine percent of companies. I guess that means the other twenty one percent don't care about worker productivity.

guess so. So let's talk a little bit about ways people can prepare themselves. As for this whole process and get ready for all of these to do, what's your advice? Get out a large table and spread out all of your options, kind of like tax time.

You asking me to recommend a .

spread sheet, join perhaps.

well, at least put some time on your calendar to do a deep dive into what your choices are.

Well, is this has been an incredibly helpful and useful series. I feel like maybe I shouldn't dread open enrolling in anymore. And you know, we actually started episode one talking about how frough the process can be. Hopefully listeners have a tool kit they can take into IT now. So it's not so anxiety ty inducing yeah we talked .

about that study that showed eighty percent of employees at a fortuna hundred company picked the wrong plan for them in their families. Let's get that percentage down and not just for .

that company only you can prevent yourself from picking the wrong insurance plan, trying to channel my inner smoky the bear there.

Good job.

That's all we have in this episode. Do you have a money question of your own, turn to the nerves and call or text us your questions at nine zero one seven three zero 3。 That's nine zero one seven three zero N E R D. You can also e mail us at podcast at a nerd wallet dot com, also visit your wallet duck on sledge podcast for more information on this episode and remember to follow rate and review us wherever you're getting this podcast.

This episode was produced by test legal and and with ee helped with editing Cathy hinson helped with fact checking ing, Kevin tidmarsh mixed our audio and a big thank you to news editors for all their help.

And here's our brief, this claimer. We are not financial or investment advisers. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply your specific circumstances and .

what that said until next time turn into the nerds.

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