AptKeysWork · Your first weeks on the job
Choosing your benefits
You'll need
- Your benefits packet or enrollment website login
- Each health plan's Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC)
- A list of your doctors and prescriptions
- The retirement plan's Summary Plan Description, or a page explaining the match and vesting
Do it like this
- Find the enrollment deadline and calendar it. Outside your new-hire window and yearly open enrollment, you can generally only change plans after a life event like losing coverage, moving, marriage or a baby.
- Get the SBC for every health plan. Job-based plans must give you this short, plain-language summary so you can compare plans side by side.
- Compare the whole cost: premiums times 12, plus the deductible, copays, coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum. See Premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums for a worked comparison.
- Check the network. Ask whether you can keep your current doctors.
- Under 26? You can usually stay on a parent's plan until 26, even if you're married, not living at home, not claimed as a dependent, or turned down your own job's coverage.
- Join the retirement plan and get the full match. Your employer may add money by matching a percentage of what you put in.
- Know your vesting schedule. Your own contributions and their earnings are always yours.
- Look at the extras. A Flexible Spending Account (FSA) lets you set aside pre-tax money for deductibles, copays and prescriptions, up to $3,300 a year, but you generally lose what you don't spend by the end of the plan year (your employer may allow a grace period of up to 2½ months or a carryover of up to $660).
Watch out If your job offers affordable health coverage that meets minimum standards, you generally won't qualify for savings on a Marketplace plan instead. Most job-based plans meet those standards.
Dad note Read the benefits packet the first week. It's the most money you'll ever get for twenty minutes of reading.