September 8, 2009

Perks at Work I Was Unaware Of

The other day a friend of mine mentioned that he had attended a free financial planning session hosted at our place of employment. I had vaguely recalled something about some financial services available at work but didn't remember the specifics. Apparently you can call them up and get a free appointment anytime. So after hearing about this I decided to go see if there were other benefits through work that I wasn't aware of.

Here are some free work benefits that I didn't know about:

Free Financial Planning : Like my friend told me, you can get an appointment with a financial planner for free.

Adoption Assistance : They will pay up to $5000 towards the cost of adopting a child.

Scholarships for children: Children of employees are eligible to apply for college scholarships worth up to a few thousand dollars.

Pizza Discounts : I can get 20% off at our favorite pizza place.

Best Buy discount : I also apparently get 10% off at Best Buy.

Flexible Spending Accounts : A flexible spending account lets you pay for certain things like out of pocket medical expenses with pre-tax dollars. I didn't know my work offered these. However, I've got an HSA so I can't do both.


The benefit that will probably save me and my wife the most is probably the 20% off on pizza. We spend about $20 on pizza roughly once a month so 20% off will save us around $48 a year give or take. Finding out about that benefit easily makes this exercise worth my time.

Maybe you've got some benefits at work that you aren't aware of. Why not go ahead and check. Look through your HR dept. benefits documentation or ask your manager about information on benefits.


edit: Just to clarify, the discount on pizza and Best Buy are provided by the merchants for people that work at my company. Its not provided directly by my place of employment. Some large employers will get promotional discounts from merchants but I'm not sure how common it is.

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