my long career span of many companies, usually, at old days (before  
the internet), the MIL  house provide the best info, like yours and  
David, lucky enough to have someone holding your hands... however,  
due to part of it as gov pension plan, you don't  have that much  
choice to make.  the salary was not high enough to let you choose  
extra... all the benefit a in packages, so it was easy... select the  
one max you can deduct but still left a beer or two.  The others,  
hand you a booklet or send you to a web site (worst) that poorly  
constructed by outside contractor with many, many (I mean more than  
12-15) web pages with pretty picture (old man with sunset or  
something) background plus excel sheet with automatic project your  
future return (if you are lucky to find that page, before you give  
up).  You sign up within a short "window" time and select your choice  
- (I have to admit, sometime, it was too much to go through 5 web  
pages to find  out what it really mean... i just click what appear to  
be mid-range).  I usually don't know what I signed up until I need to  
use it... (search for a claim paper is also a challenge - like find  
tin whiskers - you know what you are looking for, but don't  know  
what form, factor and exact "look".  Usually, it is much easy just to  
run down to the MFG floor to pick up a paper copy - there is no  
search button usually on those benefit website pages... a link buried  
somewhere.  You learn eventually (bad for me, I usually didn't got  
chance to perfect my skill to maximize benefit that before something  
happen to me... the new place would be a completely different web  
pages, equally badly constructed,  but different).
Lucky for those kids with your guidance.  You are doing a good deed.
        jk
On Jul 1, 2015, at 10:34 AM, Douglas Pauls wrote:

> Good morning all,
>
> A completely non-technical question for you this morning.  As many  
> of you
> know, my evil twin brother Dave Hillman and I have the great  
> privilege of
> mentoring and supervising our extremely bright co-op students and  
> interns
> (7 this summer).  We have found, over the years, that these  
> students do not
> get any kind of education or training on how to make intelligent  
> choices
> relevant to benefits.  Things like medical choices, HSA vs. FSA,  
> pre-tax
> vs. post-tax dollars, 401K options, etc.  None of the colleges I  
> know of
> have such a course for graduating seniors.  Rockwell Collins does  
> not have
> any such training, though it is being discussed for the future.
>
> So, I am wondering if any of your companies offer your new  
> professionals
> such training or know of good publicly available courses on the  
> topics?
>
> Doug Pauls
> Principal Materials and Process Engineer
> Rockwell Collins
>
>
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