
Across the U.S. everyone is getting notifications to renew benefits for 2021 and here is a quick rundown of how mine has panned out. For my benefit selection I elected to maintain the exact same coverage as 2020:
Benefit | Increase (decrease) |
Medical Insurance | +5.18% |
Dental Insurance | +3.01% |
Long Term Disability | +3.74% |
Life Insurance | +3.95% |
Spouse Life Insurance | +3.69% |
Overall | +4.45% |
I am far from being an actuary with understanding risk pools, distributions, risk profiles, etc… to make a determination if this is good or bad but its just another thing to plan for. Two friends of mine tell me their medical insurance increased 10% and 14%, I guess I’m lucky in that regards. Overall the rise in benefit costs will decrease my weekly paycheck by $5.54 or annually $288.
From a Presidential election perspective, I see neither candidate impacting my insurance benefits however there is a Biden proposal that may impact my 401K contribution benefit. Biden’s proposal is to remove the pre-tax 401K benefit and instead provide a flat tax credit when you file your annual tax return. This may or may not be a wash but from a weekly perspective this will impact my take home pay. Accounting for the pretax loss my weekly paycheck will decrease an additional $31.35 weekly or $1630 annually. Whether or not this happens does not matter but I will plan for it accordingly to be conservative. This brings my total weekly take home paycheck reduction to $36.89.
They never seem to go down do they and always more than inflation. Health insurance in particular I see being a huge hurtle for anyone who wants to retire a bit early and keep a good insurance policy.
BTW – nice set up on the new site !
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A rise in health insurance is as guaranteed as paying taxes and death. As long as we keep aging we become more of a risk so costs go up.
Thanks for the compliment on the new site. WordPress has a couple of nice features and I love the Reader function for following other blogs. Only thing I don’t like is I don’t have the ability to create or modify templates using the free account, maybe one day I won’t be so frugal and upgrade (lol)
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