Day#6: Identify Employment Benefits

Posted by on Nov 25, 2009 in 25 Days to Healthier Finances, Financial Tips | 4 comments

This is Day #6 of “25 Days to Healthier Finances”, a series of blog posts where Frugal Pinoy readers and myself work on 1 task a day to make our financial lives better. Please stay tuned for the next installment of this series, which will be up tomorrow.

Here’s today’s installment:

Today’s Task: Find out what your employment benefits are.

Most prospective employees often ask about the benefits before they accept a job offer. Not everyone knows the exact details of their employee benefits, however, so you may be overlooking something. It’s best to find out the exact benefits you’re entitled to. Here are some that you might already have:

  • Overtime pay
  • 13th month pay
  • Food, clothing, and transportation allowances
  • Medical and dental plans
  • Expense accounts
  • Allotted rest days
  • Paid vacation leave and sick leave
  • Lower interest rates on certain loans
  • Any product discounts/freebies from the company or its affiliates (such as gym memberships, etc.)

Also, check this list of mandatory employee benefits in the Philippines and see if your employer covers them all.

Apart from the benefits themselves, find out if any relatives or other dependents are covered for some of them. This is usually true of medical benefits.

So that’s our task for today. Find out your exact employee benefits and write them down. That’s the only way you can maximize them.

(Since I’m self-employed this doesn’t really apply to me, but for some of my contracts I’m allowed to get reimbursements for any extra expenses I incur that’s related to my work. So I suppose my task is to find out the exact amount and what types of expenses are covered.)

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