Thank you Joyce.

I will add to this thread a humorous story.  My eldest child, my daughter
Laura (of whom I am immensely proud), graduated summa cum laude in May with
a double major in Health Care Administration and Human Relations.  Her
first professional job is working for the insurance company Geico.  So she
is workin' for the Gecko, or Warren Buffett if you prefer.  She came to me
with the folder of benefits options from which she had to initially choose
and said Dad, can you explain this stuff to me?  I found it the height of
irony that HR is usually where you turn to get such explanations.  Laura
said her college courses were aimed at what items employers were required
by law to provide, not how to make personal choices.  So, that is really
what started my question.

I recall once showing my kids one of my pay stubs showing the various
deductions for taxes, health premiums, charity, etc., usually show how much
gross pay gets whittled down to net pay.


Doug Pauls
Principal Materials and Process Engineer
Rockwell Collins

On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Yuan-chia Joyce Koo <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> 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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>


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