Family Bonus

I was wandering through the HR site yesterday, and came upon a benefits calculator.  You type in the salary you estimate, and whether you're on the single or family health plan, and whether you're on a local or national (more expensive) health plan.

At a given salary, the Social Security and retirement benefits are the same for both.

Not so the health plan.  Here's the single plan and the family plan (local health plan):

Employer part             Employee part

$8,011.08

$1,032.00

$19,900.68

$2,604.00

That's right, people on the family plan pay about $1600 for the extra person/people on the health plan (it's the same if you've got a single extra person or a number of extra people).

Our employer, though, pays an extra $11, 000.  That's an untaxed benefit of $11,000 extra.  Wow.

When we talk about benefits (say, in union discussions when we're fantasizing), folks with kids often complain that they should get free or subsidized tuition, or free childcare or after-school care (child care is subsidized on campus: 7am-5:30pm costs $40/day for up to 3 year olds, for faculty; it's cheaper for students, more expensive for community members).

Benefits are part of the costs to employers that they have to figure when they're employing someone, and so, in reality, we get less take-home pay because of our benefits.  That's fine.  At least, it's fine inasmuch as we all have access to benefits.  It would be nice if we had more equal access.

But an extra $11K for family plan folks?  I blame the patriarchy. 

(And it's only very recently that same sex married folks could claim the untaxed benefit, though there was a time when same sex partner could get the benefit if they met all sorts of qualifiers that married folks didn't have to meet, but they had to pay taxes on it because they couldn't legally be married.  I'm not sure how it works for unmarried partners now.)

It would be nice if I could get my hands on an extra $11k untaxed benefits.  Maybe they could put more into my retirement?   (Think how much faster that would add up!)

It's hard for me to think of another benefit that would be as helpful to a non-family benefitting person here.

(Yes, I realize I'm privileged to have a job, and I'm happy to pay my taxes, especially for schools, libraries, roads, social services, and such, happy to support subsidized childcare on campus.  And I would be super duper happy if we'd move to a single-payer non-employer linked health insurance system!)

Retirement and Educational Opportunities

I was following link bait from effbee earlier today, and read an article about retiring near college campuses to communities with close ties to those colleges, including opportunities to audit classes and so on.

In the comments, people talked about wanting, during retirement, to audit for free, or take a BA for free, and complaining about the costs of doing so.  Some states do have laws that allow people over 60 to audit classes for free, just as some states have laws that allow veterans to take classes with free or reduced tuition.  (In my state, the legislature basically said, you have to have veterans, and provide appropriate special services, but you can't charge tuition, and no, the state isn't going to make up the difference.)

The long answer, at least for state schools, is that as state (tax) support for schools has gone down, tuition and fees have gone up.  The voters have long voted for politicians who promise lower taxes in all sorts of ways, and keep voting for those politicians.  They argue that education is a private good, and we state taxpayers shouldn't pay for it, and so we pay less for it (as taxpayers) and students pay more individually.  It's no secret that I don't like any of this.  I'd happily pay a lot more in taxes for well-supported schools (at all levels, from pre-school to graduate programs), universal health care, and better social services of all sorts.  And I vote that way when I can (though finding any politician to vote for who will promise to raise taxes to support schools seems pretty impossible).

So, should seniors get reduced or free tuition or auditing privileges at state schools?

I think no.  And I know not all seniors have had opportunities, and I want them to, but these folks have been voting for a long time, and their collective votes have put into office politicians who've consistently voted to lower taxes and lower the support for public schools (at all levels).  That hurts almost everyone who wants to attend public schools, and it especially hurts younger students who are taking on serious loan debt, even at schools such as my own, which charges under $10K tuition/year. (Yes, there are other fees, and no, that doesn't count housing, books, etc.)

What about you folks?  What do you think?

Check Up

Last year, I thought about retirement issues and actually went and talked to the campus retirement person. I've waiting until I got home to do some more thinking about my retirement preparation, and it seemed to me that one scary thing is that my mortgage (a 30 year, quite conservative mortgage with a fixed rate) was slated to run well into my 70s. (I say "was" because I've made a practice of paying a bit extra on my mortgage, and so it won't quite run that long. I switched that off for my Japan semester, so that I'd have the extra cash if I needed it. Now I want to decide whether to use that extra for my 403b, the mortgage, or ? Yeah, I'm a wild woman about a little spare money.)

I was a little older going in than most academics, but I probably came out with fewer student loans than most. At best, though, with the average time to degree in English running about 8.4 years, your average English phud is 30 before s/he starts earning a basic salary. That's basic, as opposed to six figure. So then there's time to pay off the student loan(s) and save for a down payment. (Remember when Bitch PhD was talking about trying to get a house loan without a down payment, and coming up against the tough reality that even with a six figure household income, banks weren't welcoming?) I saved a full ten percent of what I thought my first house would be before I talked to a bank or thought about looking for a house (and, of course, I was looking at GI Bill houses in the midwest; seriously, the ultimate starter house in a neighborhood with streets named after the heroes of WWII and various presidents). It was GREAT to be able to look for a house that way, too.

Unlike most(?) folks, even academics, I'm single, so I don't have a double income to help with mortgages and such. (Nor do I live in the double income neighborhood near campus. My neighborhood has single moms, and families with one income producer and one person doing childcare--usually a woman, but sometimes a man--and some retired folks. And me.)

What I'm getting at is that academics are often (1) late getting started building equity and retirement and such, and (2) earning not great money, and (3) need to do some serious planning for such things.

On the other hand, I earn a pretty darned good income if you compare my income and lifestyle to the average American family. And I live in an area where housing is relatively inexpensive (though heating costs suck big time). Seriously, that's something to keep the whining in check, isn't it?

I set up a mortgage calculator on an excel spreadsheet the other day, so that I can see pretty closely (and easily make changes) what happens if I add an extra amount to the monthly mortgage payment, and what happens if I move some money from the emergency savings account to pay off the mortgage, and so on. It's really helpful to be able to see the results of an extra hunk of money every month 20 years down the line. I'd really like to be able to pay off the mortgage by the time I'm 65, so that if I want to retire then, the mortgage won't be a worry. But then there's the question of paying later with inflated dollars, except that my state's pay plan hasn't managed to actually keep up with inflation for some years now, so inflation really hurts more than otherwise.

I'm thinking about moving some money from my savings (the savings that covers emergencies when I have one), and trying to decide how much I should keep in that account, as opposed to elsewhere.

I really should go find an investment counseling person, but it's embarrassing. Of course, it will get more embarrassing, won't it?

I'm listening to a book on CD from the library lately, Min Jin Lee's Free Food for Millionaires. It's about a young woman recently graduated from Princeton, finding her way around Wall Street, and such in the early 80s. (Her parents are from Korea, which is important, but way less exotic than the whole Princeton/Wall Street, money thing.) It's weird, how much money she's talking about these folks throwing around. (I'm not really impressed with the book, though. It seems contrived, in ways that irritate me. For example, I'm about a third in, and suddenly, after following this character for three or more years, there's a golf thing, and lo and behold she's some sort of semi-great golfer after picking the sport up in college and not playing for many years, because, hey, that's handy!)

Me? In the early 80s, about the time this book was set, I was living in a rain forest community in South America on a stipend of about $80 per month, and doing well on that, too.

And that's important, because I really value my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and I value what I do for a living, and how I enjoy my life. I don't want to obsess about the whole retirement thing (because the way I ride, I could fall off and break my neck this afternoon, and the whole retirement thing would be silly). I want to enjoy life now (because I finally have the income and freedom, or at least the perception of both), and also be reasonable about saving for retirement and such. It's a hard balance!