The below post is taken from the Video Blog, the Subject Matter Minute. If it’s a little hard to read, it’s because it’s taken from the spoken word. You can view the episode on YouTube if you would like. Find it here: Episode #12 – Full Benefit Package
If YouTube is blocked for you or your agency, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to view it from Google Drive. (I would prefer you view in YouTube, so I know how many people have watched)
You can also listen to an audio version.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the subject matter minute. I’m Matt Nagy, thanks for joining me! If you didn’t tune in last month, the subject was the 457 deferred compensation plan, which is basically a retirement plan that is kind of on the side of our normal pension. I got the information from Polly Scott from the Wyoming retirement system, and in the end, the bottom line is the state will match twenty dollars with twenty dollars. So get in there with twenty dollars so you get an extra free $20.
Before we get started with this month’s subject or topic I want to talk a little bit more about me… I guess. One of the things I used to do as a youth a lot, and actually it probably continued on well past my youth, or at least past college, is I played a lot of hacky sack. I don’t know if any of you guys did it… seemed big, at least in Lander. In Lander it was quite big. It seemed like at least all the dudes played hacky sack. Every once in a while you get a girl in the loop, but it was mostly a bunch of dudes. We played it a lot. In fact it was kind of weird, and seemed like in high school and college summers at least, we played it a ton, and I was wondering where we got all that time. I guess maybe we just did it whenever we had free time. We were all very good and we would do tricks and stuff, and we could keep it going for a long time. On my peak, playing by myself, I actually got 300 consecutive kicks. That would be bragging except for I really don’t think anyone cares about hacky sack anymore, so take it for what it is. I was proud of it, it was fun, got some good exercise out of it. Except for the three dudes I see in the park on Sunday morning… old hippie guys… I don’t see anybody playing hacky sack. I don’t know why. It’s a lot of fun, keeps you flexible, and I’m not sure why it died out.
The topic for today is probably something I should have gone over in the very first episode seeing as most of these, or a lot of these, have been about benefits that we get. Today I’m going to cover full-time employees benefit package.
Let’s talk about our general benefit package.. the thing that kind of made you truly decide to take the job. Right? Typically, the job pay is a little bit lower but the benefit package is amazing. First of all, you can find all of this on the A&I website. I gotta say that hopefully within about four months the website is going to be different because we are redesigning it right now, but right now it’s in this spot:
http://ai-hrd.wyo.gov/human-resources-division/employee-resources/benefits
It’s funny because the first thing they have listed on there is wages. I don’t
think we consider that a benefit so much as a standard. I mean, we better get paid! So we’re gonna skip that. In my opinion, the top two benefits we get as state employees are the healthcare and the annual leave, or the vacation days. Obviously, the health care is huge. I’m gonna go into that a little bit later. The list starts with vacation leave, so I’m gonna start with that.
You accrue more and more hours the longer you are with the state. So when you’re a new employee, up to four years, you get eight hours a day. That’s twelve days per year, which isn’t bad by itself, but then you tack on the nine days of holidays, and you’re getting, let’s see… let’s do math… 21 days a year of vacation, that’s pretty awesome. That’s just when you start off. If you happen to hang with the state for 19 years you will be making 16 hours per month. I know it’s kind of crazy to think of 19 years, but from my experience there are a ton of you out there who have worked here longer than that, so congratulations you’re making 16 hours per month. That puts you at 24 days per year plus your nine vacation days, so you got a little bit of work/life balance hopefully. Depending on how long you’ve worked for the state you can only accrue so many vacation days before you begin to lose it. Look in the personnel rules, chapter six, if you need more information on that.
I mentioned holidays. We get at least nine paid holidays per year. You can click on that link on the website to see what they are.
The next thing is sick leave. Same deal… that’s in the personnel rules chapter six. You get eight hours a month of sick leave. It never goes up, you always get eight hours. But, it also has unlimited accumulation, so you can accumulate that for hundreds if not a thousand or more hours. There are details when you retire and how much you can cash out, or if you can, but I’m not going to go into that. You can look in personnel rules chapter six to see. The bottom line is you get eight per month and you can use it for things like when your kids are sick, or when you’re sick obviously, or doctor’s appointments. Really nice benefit of course.
The next one is retirement. I’m definitely not going to go into the details of that because the details are complicated, but the bottom line is it’s a pension. So what that means is that after a certain amount of employment, which with the state is four years, you become vested. That means that when you reach retirement age… whatever the state of Wyoming considers the amount of years you worked plus your age to be a retirement age… when you reach that, you will get paid for the rest of your life a percentage of your best years as an employee. So your top three or your top five years pay averaged… you’ll get a percentage of that. That’s a pension. That’s what we get. Not many places give pensions anymore, so that’s a huge benefit, I believe.
The next one we talked about last episode on Episode 11 – Deferred Compensation. That’s just another retirement plan that you can use. This is not really a benefit except they will match twenty dollars. Like I mentioned earlier, get twenty dollars going in there so you can get that twenty dollars.
The next one is health insurance. This is a big one. Sometimes I hear grumblings about our coverage or how much it costs, and I just can’t believe it… kind of blows my mind. I was in the private market for years and basically what we would do is we would stick with a company until it got outrageous, and then we would switch companies. This, of course, only works if you don’t have a pre existing condition, so you can only play that game for so long. It’s really expensive out there, and ours is inexpensive. It depends on your deductible, but it you know the standard rules apply… you have certain deductibles, you pay more – you pay less. In my opinion, this is a really good benefit.
The next one on their list is life insurance. This one I don’t consider a benefit because they’re not paying for it at all. You can get reasonably priced life insurance through them, but again, you have to pay for it, so we’re gonna skip that one.
The next one is dental coverage. Now dental coverage you got to pay for as well, however, if you have health insurance, which I don’t know why you wouldn’t, through the state, you have to have the preventive dental. So it’s added on. You pay a little bit for it, and it’s not bad, but that gives you the preventive coverage. You also have the option of getting optional coverage, which would cover things like crowns and things like that, but that’s an add-on… not really a benefit.
The next thing is the flexible spending accounts. We covered that one in episode 6 and 7, if you need more details. Basically, it allows you to take out money pre-tax… reduces your taxable income… to pay for health related things and day care. It’s a good benefit in that it reduces your taxable income.
The next one is longevity pay, which is truly a benefit, and is the whole reason I got into doing this subject matter minute. That was episode number one if you need details on it, but the bottom line is every 5 years you get an extra $40 per month to your pay. So at 5 years you get 40, 10 years you get 80, 15 years you get 120, and so on. That’s a true benefit. They just give you a little bit of extra money for sticking around.
Another benefit is the state is open to alternative work schedules. They list this as one of the benefits. It is if you you have a job where that can work. Right? Not everyone can do that, but if you are in a situation where that might work, talk to your supervisor.
Finally, there’s one more you can do… automatic payroll deposit. That’s something I do for sure. It’s handy. You get paid at 12:01 a.m. on the day of pay day, so you get it as early as you possibly can.
That’s just a general overview of what full-time employees get for their benefit package. It’s pretty sweet. Sometimes we get paid a little bit less because they consider these benefits to be pretty good pay, and you know what? Honestly, the health care is substantial pay. Blows my mind when I look at how much the state pays for my family for our health insurance. I believe it’s like $1,700 a month, and I pay like $300 That’s a big chunk of change every month going to somebody.
I hope that’s helpful! Again, you can find the links down below to any of this information and to the previous episodes that cover the individual items, and we’ll continue covering things. We will hit healthcare, will hit the retirement pension at some point, too. Thanks for hanging in there, and we’ll see you next time on the Subject Matter Minute