How Much are Your Employee Benefits Worth?

Employee benefits vary across companies but typically include things like your health plans, disability benefits, life insurance options, and your retirement benefits.

The amount your company pays for those health benefits and employee insurance packages can be substantial and is something that you should factor into any job search in addition to your salary. The value of your medical benefits, dental plans, flexible spending accounts, etc can be hard to quantify since premiums, coverage, and types of benefits can vary so widely from company to company.

Estimating Employee Benefits

One thing you can probably do is to find out what dollar value your current employer puts on your benefit package. Of course not all companies have this information available but you can check out your employee payroll system, employee handbook, or your human resources system to see if they publish those numbers anywhere.

My company recently published that information, personalized for each employee, and pointed out that company paid benefits, payroll taxes, and additional compensation add about 50% to my regular pay. Of course, their goal was to show employees how much they invest in us each year so can’t the numbers at face value but they can be used as a starting point for estimates.

Here’s how they broke out our employee benefits, when you’re calculating the value of your benefit package, you can use these categories to help guide your estimate.

Compensation

• Regular Pay
• Bonus
• Sick Pay Used
• Holiday Pay Used
• Paid Time Off Used

Payroll Taxes

• Social Security
• Medicare
• Federal Unemployment
• State Unemployment

Company Paid Benefits

• Medical/Dental Insurance
• Life and AD&D Insurance
• Retirement Contributions
• Long Term Disability Insurance

Additional Benefits

• Vision Plan
• Health Care Flexible Spending Account
• Dependent Day Care Flexible Spending Account
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Adoption Assistance
• Pre-Tax Commuter Benefit

Ben Edwards, the founder of Money Smart Life, saved up enough to buy a Nintendo back when he was 12 years old. When he used the money to buy shares of Wal-Mart stock instead, he knew he wasn't like the other kids... His addiction to personal finance has paid off for his family and now he's helping you to afford the life that you want. Check him out on the web at Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

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