How FSAs Maximize Your Employment Benefits

How FSAs Maximize Yur Employment BenefitsHow FSAs Maximize Your Employment BenefitsWe all know that budgeting, saving, and investing are basic elements of sound financial planning, but sometimes we overlook things that can have a profound effect on our financial situation. Employer-provided benefits are a prime example. Flexible spending plans, 401(k) plans, Section 125 cafeteria plans (which have nothing to do with eating at work), group insurance plans, even vacation benefits must be understood in order to work to your best advantage, and therein lies the problem. These benefit plans can be complex and confusing, and our employers dont always explain them well enough to allow the average person to make the best choices for their personal situation. Lets demystify employment benefits, beginning with flexible spending plans. What Is a Flexible Spending Account? A Flexible Spending Account (FSA), also called a flex plan or reimbursement account is an employer-sponsored benefit tha t allows you to pay for eligible medical expenses on a pre-tax basis (there are also similar accounts for dependent and child-care expenses). If you expect to incur medical expenses that wont be reimbursed by your regular health insurance plan, you should be taking advantage of your employers FSA if one is offered. How Does an FSA Benefit You? An FSA saves you money by reducing your income taxes. The contributions you make to a Flexible Spending Account are deducted from your pay BEFORE your Federal, State, or Social Security Taxes are calculated and are never reported to the IRS. The end result is that you decrease your taxable income and increase your spendable income. You can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. How Does It Work? At the beginning of the plan year (which usually starts January 1st), your employer asks you how much money you want to contribute for the year (there are limits). You have only one opportunity a year to enroll unless you have a qua lified family status change, such as marriage, birth, divorce, or loss of a spouses insurance coverage. The amount you designate for the year is taken out of your paycheck in equal installments each pay period and placed in a special account by your employer. As you incur medical expenses that are not fully covered by your insurance, you submit a copy of the Explanation of Benefits or the providers invoice and proof of payment to the plan administrator, who will then issue you a reimbursement check. What Expenses Are Eligible for Reimbursement? Any expense that is considered a deductible medical expense by the Internal Revenue Service and is not reimbursed through your insurance can be reimbursed through the Flexible Spending Account. Examples include Fees paid to doctors, dentists, surgeons, chiropractors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and Christian Science practitionersContact lenses and eyeglassesFees for hospital services, qualified long-term care services, accident and heal th, and qualified long-term care insurance premiums, nursing services, laboratory fees, prescription medicines and drugs, and insulin.Acupuncture treatmentsInpatient treatment at a center for alcohol or drug addictionSmoking-cessation programs and prescribed drugs to help nicotine withdrawal False teeth, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, and guide dogs for the blind or deafFees in excess of reasonable and customary amounts allowed by your insuranceCost of vasectomies, hysterectomies and birth controlNon-elective cosmetic surgeryCo-payments on covered expensesDeductiblesBracesPrescription drugs or prescription co-pays How Do You Decide How Much to Contribute? Its important to give some thought to calculating how much money to contribute for the year because if you put in more money than you need, by law, you lose it. You have three months after the end of the calendar year to submit claims for eligible expenses incurred during the previous calendar year. Any money left in your account after the three months will be forfeited. To determine how much to contribute, make a list of the expected out-of-pocket medical expenses for you and your dependents for the next year. For example, if you always exceed your deductible, include the deductible amount in your calculation. Be conservative so you dont risk forfeiting any money.

How to decide which student loan should you pay off first

How to decide which student loan should you pay off firstHow to decide which student loan should you pay off firstWhats the best way to tackle multiple student loan payments? Should you pay a little extra on every loan, every month? Or is it better to focus yur attention on one loan at a time?Paying down high-interest loans first can save you more money, but tackling low-balance loans first can provide a powerful mental boost. Of course, federal and private loans may have different loan terms that are worth considering. Lets take a look at how to parse out whats right for you.Compare interest ratesWhen you have student loan debt, you want to work smarter, not harder. It seems like it would make sense to focus on the loans with highest interest rates first because they cost the most. In general, thats good advice except if you have variable interest rate loans.Even if the loan carries a lower interest rate now, it could balloon at any time. In fact, you should probably consider refin ancing anything with a variable interest rate to avoid this situation.Otherwise, order your loans into interest-rate order and start hacking away at the one with the highest interest rate.Make strategic paymentsThere are two common routes to paying off student loan debt.The debt avalanche method works by tackling the most intimidating figures first. When going the avalanche route, you would pay more toward the loan with the highest interest rate first while paying the minimum on the lower interest loans.The debt snowball method takes a different approach. This method is all about making yourself feel good. With this strategy, you organize your loans from smallest balance to the largest and work on paying the lowest first.The snowball method is awesome because it gives you a chance to see the process in action and feel more accomplished, knowing that you have reduced the number of loans you have left.Which method should you choose? They both work well, so select the one that you thin k will fit better with your personality.Should you pay off federal or private student loans first?Because private loans can be less flexible and lack the forgiveness andincome-based repayment optionsof federal loans, it may make sense to tackle private loans first.However, if your federal loans carry much-higher interest rates, you might want to go ahead and make those a priority.The fastest way to pay off student loan debtIf you qualify, refinancing may be the single-best thing you can do to get out of student loan debt faster.Not only can you reduce your monthly payments, you can probably also get a much-lower interest rate - so youll be paying less every month, while making faster progress on chipping away at your debt.You can refinance all of your debt, or just some of it. In any case, lower interest rates are going to save you a boatload of cash over the long run. (How much is a boatload? Our research tells us most people save close $16K over the life of their loans.)One cauti on refinancing federal loans may cause you to lose some benefits, so be sure to carefully weigh thepros and cons.Think of the futureStudent loans have the potential to affect more than how much school debt you carry.Reducing your debt-to-income ratio by lowering the amount of your monthly student loan payments can help make you appear more creditworthy if youre planning to get a mortgage or car loan.Many people are able to lower their student loan payments by more than $200 per month through refinancing. See how much you might be able to save by checking out ourStudent Loan Refinancing Calculator.This article first appeared on Comet.

4 Things You Need to Know As a Job-searching Student

4 Things You Need to Know As a Job-searching Student4 Things You Need to Know As a Job-searching StudentIn a world of unpaid internships, life after graduation may seem a bit tough for the average job-searching student. The thing is, the skills you pick up in the university are usually not the only thing youll need for career success writing papers and multiple choice tests is all fine and dandy, but that doesnt really predict yur success in the workplace. There are, however, some things you can learn which will make the job search much easier. 1. Focus on one job at a timeYoud be excited to hear that (or highly disappointed) when assessing a job-searching student, what the manager looks at is not your GPA. According to data-crunching done by Google, there is absolutely no correlation between a high GPA and workplace success. What they do look at, however, is how invested you are in your search. Whether the student is actually trying his best to get the specific job, or if hes just applying to a bunch of them, and hoping for the best. What this means for you, is to do your research. Before applying to a large company, you might want to find out how things are done there (the easiest way to do this is through GlassDoor.Learn about the company culture, the competition, and about the industry in general. You could check out the companys about us page for the general information, or for the specifics, comments on the company from ex-employees on GlassDoor. In addition, you could also look up the vorstellungsgesprchs of the founders the more you know the better. Theres a good chance that the interviewer might ask what aspect of their companys activities excite you the most and why. Even if that doesnt happen, youll still seem more knowledgeable and confident. In addition, rather than going wild and sending your resume to every job opening you find, you could focus on a handful per week. Tailoring your resume and cover letter for each position makes it much more li kely to get you hired.At , for our premium services, we ask our clients to name 3 of their favourite companies, and then tailor the resumes specifically for those. As a result, over 81% of our customers get invited to an interview in either their first or second choice just because we make that extra step of customizing the application for the specific company.2. Impress them with your resumeCrafting a resume is thenightmare for most job-searching students. While a minority of them have somework experience, the majority is stuck with some minor school projects and extracurricular activities. Staring at their blank resume in despair, thinking what else is there to fill besides their education? The answer to that comes off a bit surprising for most most employers arent really expecting a lot of work experience from a job-searching student. What they are looking for is willingness to learn, and for them to actually be a good culture fit for the company. That means that if you can pro perly show your personality through the resume, youre pretty much guaranteed an interview. There are a number of ways to do that, such as mentioning your key strengths, life principles, books that influenced you, etc.Anything goes, theres no set standard for a resume the only thing that counts is whether this really describes who you are. What you shouldnt do, however, is use fluff words. When you dont have a lot to fill in your resume, there might be a temptation to fill them with generalities, such as Great at critical thinking, open-minded or team-oriented. These words, as you already know, dont really mean anything. The HR also knows that, you know that, and so does literally anyone who looks at your resume. If you do want to include buzzwords, have something to back them up youre good at critical thinking, and youve done x, y, and z, which backs up your claim. In such a case, if you dont get hired, you shouldnt even be disappointed you probably just werent a good culture fit for the company, and wouldnt have liked working there anyway.3.Ace the interviewThis part may seem a bit scary for most job-searching students, especially the ones who dont have any previous job experience. Youd be surprised to learn, however, that most interviewers actually ask the same questions. For example, what would you consider your biggest strength and weakness? or even quirkier ones, if you had a choice, what would you pick as a superpower?. For the quirkier questions, you need to provide an even quirkier answer. Maybe mention how you would manipulate the stock market in the past using time travel to become the richest man in the world? Or you could use the power of mind-reading in order to achieve world dominion?Many career advice websites recommend being confident and in charge during an interview. Saying that, however, doesnt help one bit. You dont just grow confidence out of nowhere, right before an interview. Rather, be prepared. Prepare a list of the interview questi ons that theyre most likely to ask, and prepare set answers for them. Getting to rehearse the answers and the tone with someone you know beforehand can take you a long way. Even if you flunk an interview or two, youll have gained some experience with the process, highly increasing the chances of getting hired.4. Put yourself in the shoes of the employerThe formula for success with the job search is remembering the fact that the employers are people too. Before submitting your resume or cover letter anywhere, try re-reading it from a different perspective. Ask yourself, does this make sense? Is this original and novel? The usual answer for this is no, meaning that you need to do more research. In fact, while doing interviews for a small project, me and a co-worker discovered that out of 15 student, only 2 were decent. The rest of them had either very plain resumes, or cover letters copy pasted from Google. When you realize that most of your peers are as clueless as you, creating a re sume that stands out doesnt seem so hard anymore.Following all the above-mentioned advice may seem a bit hard at first, and it may take some practice to get the hang of everything. After all, reading an article doesnt instantly make you an expert at job-search. However, after an interview or two, youll be wondering how you had difficulties with the process in the first place. And finally, remember that going out of your way to look for advice online, already puts you one step ahead on the path to scoring that sweet sweet internship. We bet on that.Did we miss anything important? Feel free to drop us a line down in the comments below Else, like our Facebook page for your weekly dose of inspiration. Nick Zviadadze Certified Storyteller, Job Hunting Enhancer, Digital Marketer and a Coffee EnthusiastLeave a Reply Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *CommentName * Email * Website Subscribe now for moreSee more great content and inspiring examples of resumes done right each month. Subscribe Youre subscribed Latest posts See all posts by Eric D. Halsey The Resumes of Chernobyl by Eric D. Halsey 4 Ways Creativity Can Improve Your Resume by Katherine (Tori) LutzHow to Create a First Year Elementary School Teacher Resume