It’s that time of year again. Holiday cheer, Christmas shopping in conjunction with raiding the left over Halloween candy isle at the grocery store, and oh yeah, open enrollment for benefits at work. Blehhhh.

That’s probably my least favorite administrative task at work. Pick a health plan. There’s only three, they’re all free, but if you foresee yourself needing this little benefit in fine print, you need the “premier blue” plan, but that comes with an additional $500 deductible, a smaller approved doctors lists…

…and this is where I lose interest.

To its credit, my company spends a lot of time and money making sure I know how to best take advantage of the benefits plan. Seminars for health, dental, vision, employee stock purchase plan, 401(k), pension, flexible spending accounts. You name it, there’s an informative meeting on it.

I don’t mean to belittle the process, it just seems that I spend an awful lot of time trying to determine whether I need to change things up a bit, only to leave them the same.

Ironically, I was browsing through the online Journal this morning and came across an article by Terri Cullen concerning this very subject.

She says that the biggest mistake many employees make is that when faced with a decision on which health plan to pick, they don’t pick any of them. That mistake could leave them with no coverage for an entire year, regardless of the differences in copay.

Incidentally, Cullen mentions that the biggest reason that companies are pushing their employees to be more up to speed on their benefits options is because they’re pushing more of the health care costs on to the employees themselves. Plan deductibles are rising, and many companies are providing a health savings account plan.

I understand that health care costs are rising, and I don’t necessarily expect the employer to absorb all of the cost increases. However, it does force one to look farther out into the future and try to account for events that may ding your wallet, aside from the typical doctors visit or late night trip to the ER for a broken wrist.

An interesting change change of the times indeed, and perhaps more a reason to pay attention in those open-enrollment seminars.

Business, Health and Fitness, Insurance 401(k), bennies, Business, health plans, health savings account, work, work benefits

I’ve been battling the precursor to a cold for the last week or so. I call it a precursor because it’s not a full blown cold just yet, but I can tell my body is working overtime to fend something off.

I’ve always been a big fan of Sudafed, but regardless of the marketing to the contrary, Sudafed seems to throw my brain into a fog, but it does seem to work.

Since I don’t want to be completely worthless for the next few days, I want to stay away from the Sudafed till I really need it.

Yesterday during lunch I went out and bought a big jug of Vitamin C tablets. Today, on a similar mission I bought a small bottle of Zicam.

For over $10 I bought a small bottle with just 25 tablets. Taking the tablets as directed means my $10 bottle of Zicam will last me just 5 days.

After only having taken 4 tablets so far, I can’t say I’m getting any better, but I’m not feeling any worse either.

Does anyone have experience with Zicam? What’s your “guaranteed to work” cold remedy? I’m open for suggestions!

Health and Fitness

I don’t write about health and fitness very often (or at all, for that matter), but I had a revelation that I found very interesting after a trip to the gym and a freak encounter with an unopened bag of Oreo’s.

After going about a mile on the treadmill, the fancy computer told me that I burned about 160 calories as a result of my efforts. Muscles aching and sweating profusely, I left the gym and went home. When I walked through the kitchen, a brand new bag of Oreo’s was calling my name.

Knowing I’d feel guilty about snarfing down some Oreo’s after I’d just got some exercise, I looked at the nutritional information on the back panel of the bag of cookies.

Conveniently, a serving of Oreo’s is only 3 cookies.

The price you pay for eating those 3 cookies? 160 calories.

I could have wiped out my entire workout by simply eating 3 cookies!

And that’s not counting the milk!

Health and Fitness