This morning, I am going through the 2022 benefits guide put out by my company (I've become the de facto housekeeping/culture/HR person on my team haha, so I was adding some info to slides for our monthly meeting tomorrow).
I was surprised (in a good way) to realize that by the time I need to take short term disability for my surgery (or surgeries, which is yet TBD), I will be eligible for 26 weeks at full pay. It really doesn't make a difference, as I was already eligible for 20 weeks, and I wouldn't need nearly that much time (if I do one round, I will take 3 months. If I do two rounds, I will take 2 months for first, and 1 month for second). But it's nice to know!
Whenever someone asks me what my 401k match is, I can never remember. Documenting here....100% match on first 3% contributed, and 50% on next 2%. I started out contributing 8% (I think) when I joined 4.5 years ago, so I have always gotten max match. I am currently at 10%, but will be bumping up to 12-13% at the start of the new year. I'll update my election sometime in December, not sure how many pay periods it will take to kick in. They match on a per pay period basis, but they do an annual true up in the first quarter as long as you are employed on Dec 31, which answers some questions as I will be able to max in the next year or two, but it's challenging to get it right on the mark in 24 pay periods. Now I can rest assured that if the percentage I elect causes me to max early, I will still get my full match. It looks like, at my current salary, 18% brings me a few hundred over the 2022 max of $20,500 (I can only elect in whole percentages, not dollars). Have a little more digging to do but since I won't be maxing for a few years unless I get that next big promo and the salary is where I'm anticipating....I have time I'm still not sure I understand true up provisions but that'll be a Google rabbit hole for another day.
I'm electing into an FSA for the first time. I'm going to max it, as I do have a lot of eligible expenses thrughout the year. I'll have to keep an eye on it, to make sure I don't end up with a lot left in December, because that would be a waste. But I did see that massage is eligible as long as you have a prescription, so that's helpful haha. I'm not worried about spending it all, though.
Pre-pandemic, I was also contributing $270 a month to my transit spending account. My monthly train ticket was $246, plus I paid $2.75 each way for the subway once I got off my commuter train. I don't believe I ever had to pay out of pocket for transit, but I moved to my suburb about 5 months prior to everything shutting down, so don't have long term data. Once we got sent home, I reduced my contribution to $5 a paycheck, just to keep the account active. I don't think we actually need to make a contribution to stay active at this point, but I don't notice $5 a check. At current time, my account has almost $600 in it....I have gone to my local office 3 times, and our Philadelphia office once. I used to drive to Philly, but took the train when I went since I could just buy the train ticket from this account. I can go to the NYC office 33 more times with the current balance in the account haha. We are not discussing returning to the office until January, and even at that, I don't think I will be in more than once every two weeks at a maximum. I'm likely to be in Philly more often based on who I work with. As time moves on, I will revisit upping this back to where it was, but for now, it covers my needs. I think I forfeit any remaining balance if I leave my company, so don't want to build it up to a level where I can't reasonably spend it.
There will be a slight increase to medical and dental options in 2022. On our enrollment site, I'm not sure if the cost per pay period (medical, dental, FSA and transit) reflects the increase, but as of right now, it's showing $232.11 per pay period (semi-monthly, 24 pay periods per year).
There will be a lot of changes to my net pay in January, so I'll just add this to the list.