Last year I posted a question on Quora asking what healthcare benefits and cost sharing were like at Google. A few answers of the "it's private" or "No, I can't say" variety soon surfaced. They have sense been oddly scrubbed from the site. Why the secrecy? Rich benefits are a given at Google. Time spent swerving through traffic to drop off dry cleaning, leaving work for lunch, or stressing about a $3,000 deductible cut into productivity. Amazon has rich health benefits and is open and post ...
It's the time of year for leaves, baseball, and 30-page open enrollment guides*. If you're a prospective employee, "we offer benefits" doesn't have the precision on the scale of value as does a first class flights to Europe. "We offer a free first class direct flight to London. Travel dates and times are flexible. Towels and champagne." Some could be peddling the 5-day steamship product as if in the same class. For 95% of people, what matters is the dollar value of healthcare benefits. How ...
Charles Schwab is an investment hero of mine. In 1975, when commissions were deregulated, he pounced at the opportunity to launch a discount brokerage. Discounts are now no longer enough. The line in the chart below extends to zero. This week Schwab announced $0 trading fees. How can they do it? Explicit trading fees are only 7% of Schwab's revenue and the move will surely attract more accounts. The firm followed the lead of the now (I have a hunch) deeply troubled Robinhood, a zero dollar Mille ...
