well what do do you think in terms of uh benefits
well personally you know i think you know of course i'm sure we're familiar with the exact same benefit package and i think that uh we've probably got one of the best around you know besides
they tend to offer adequate adequate vacation i guess and the paid time off is wonderful and uh
one of the things that we were just talking about as a matter of fact this week at work was the CODA Plan that is offered and i think that is just a a fabulous one so i don't know if you participate in that or not but
absolutely
isn't it great
it's just a it's just a miracle that how fast that adds up you know
well i have to agree with that you know i was thinking about um importance of benefits and that kind of thing other than salary while i was waiting for uh the system to find a a respondent
uh-huh
uh-huh
and i started thinking that over the years that importance has changed and i suspect that that's probably true for everyone
yeah
when i was much younger it was uh
less important to consider retirement and less important to consider medical benefits but as i grow older and my family grows it the medical benefits are more important and the retirement is more important
i had never really thought of it that way but i guess that's true i guess that's true i'm still young enough that that uh the vacation's real important to me and the paid time off is real important to me and and that kind of thing but uh
you know i was just as a matter of fact i just uh celebrated my fifth year at TI the end of last month and uh
kind of started looking through the the book because of that you know now that i'm a hundred percent vested you know you kind of look through the book and see well what exactly what does that mean and what is the pension all about and
you know when you're when you're you know in your i'm only in my late twenties now so you tend not to think about retirement but uh it's i guess now is the time to think about it so
does TI have a pretty good retirement package do you think
i think they have um
a one that we need to recognize that we're going to have to supplement ourselves and that's certainly one of the reasons that i'm sure that they've begun the
yeah
uh CODA Plan it's
uh-huh uh-huh
certainly a a supplemental way uh and i suppose if but maybe in in your instance if if you're started with TI in your
early to mid twenties and happen to stay with them until you're sixty five then you'll have a very good retirement plan
right
but i
had another career first and then came to TI a little later
uh-huh
so it's not uh all by itself it won't be adequate for for my situation
something to build up quite enough yeah
so i have to find a way to supplement that
yeah well they just they seem to make it so easy to save you know one of the things that we're doing which is probably
the worst investment in the world but i've got money coming out to buy savings bonds just coming straight out of my check and it's probably not a great investment but if i wasn't doing that
the money wouldn't be being saved anyway you know i kind of have to trade off you know if you never see it you don't spend it so and it's
i understand understand though it uh believe me i do that myself and i disagree with you i don't think it's the worst investment in the world
yeah
do you yeah
do you really not i i you know i i debate about whether it's really good or not you know
well it's in terms of guaranteed return on investment and maybe you don't start looking for that word guaranteed until later
yeah
yeah
uh it's shown a history that uh sure beats anything else
yeah that's true that's very true
over many many years
we went uh and did a a thing through IBS which is a like a financial consultant type thing here in Dallas
and uh one of the things that we talked about with the counselor there was you know they work up this whole big you know proposal profile for you that every all the things that you need to work on and you need to do
and then one of the things that we talked about with her was you know the need to save for our son's education we have a two year old you know and and you know we can't start saving for college when he's sixteen you know we have to do that now and and uh
they have a way that they can figure you know what you know and he's two now in sixteen years when he's ready to go to college this is how much it'll cost you know and it's just really scary the thought of how much it's going to it's
what it costs now is ridiculous what it's going to cost sixteen years from now is just
really scary and they sat down and figured up that we needed to save like fifteen between fifteen and seventeen hundred dollars a year at a oh you know six percent interest rate to be able to have
you know money for his college and that's exactly what we have coming out in saving bonds is is you know about fifteen hundred dollars a year so i guess it you know in that way at least we know that that's taken care of you know we we can worry about other things so
i understand that approach that's what that's exactly what's happening in my family
yeah yeah
is it really yeah
except that mine are a little bit older and and i've shown them the numbers and said
this is what's going to be available all this is going to do is give you a little spending money while you're there you better make sure that you've got a scholarship
uh-huh
that's right that's right well that's what she said to us she said now do you all want him to go to a a state college or a private college and
and our answer was that you know we will have enough money available for him to attend a state college and if he wants to go to a private college he can get a scholarship
to attend you know and that was kind of our view on it it just costs too much you just can't do it you know
so i don't know it's it's i don't uh it just amazing it amazes me how much the the costs are going to go up over the next ten or fifteen years i just don't know how anybody's going to do it
i know and boy it gets really scary when you start talking to them um
i have a an eleven year old daughter now who's saying gee dad i want to be an allergist and i said that's wonderful i applaud that let me explain to you how you get scholarships to do that
oh goodness
yeah
yeah exactly exactly
and then her little brother's only two years behind and he says well i don't know i think that i probably want to be a veterinarian and i said that's great let me explain to you how you get scholarships to do that
that's right that's right
well you know TI you know TI offers some good stuff and then i think there's i mean i think there's some negatives but there's going to be some negatives anywhere you know no matter where you go i have
you know all this is the first really large company i've worked for i've always been involved in little small you know individual privately owned owned firms and so i've never had the the big benefit package so i really don't know how to compare it to other big companies you know it
when i came on it was great see because i had never had anything even close to what what they offered so i've been real pleased
well that's fantastic and on whole on i would say that they're
yeah
equal to uh most of our competitors
think so
uh i can see some some potential changes that
probably are are would not cost very much but
might uh make things a little easier such as offering a a smorgasbord
um-hum
having a larger variety of benefits but here's the amount that that TI is going to pay for it now it's up to you it's menu selection so to speak
yeah
yeah and you can pick what you want and yeah
right that sounds really good i read a thing i don't even remember if it was in the Da llas Site or the Inside one about uh
companies allowing you and they said that TI was looking into it to purchase extra vacation days which i thought sounded like a good idea
you know if you've been there you know under five years and you get two weeks of vacation but that's really not enough and you want an extra week
then you can purchase an extra week of vacation by saying okay i'm going to want an extra five days this year and they'll take a set amount out of each paycheck you know and they're deducting it all along so
you you can have an extra five days off and be paid for them at the time you know you're you're really not being paid for them the money is actually coming out of your own pocket but it's coming out a little bit a t a time instead of all at once you know
so that is kind of an idea that that a lot of people sounded like that they were really interested in and TI said that they were looking into something like that so
well i could certainly personally stand seeing them go to a a standardized compensatory time for overtime
um-hum
um-hum
and i don't believe any of us would have to purchase any extra vacation days if they did that
well true true
uh
and and i would certainly support something like four to one or five to one or or you know maybe they want to get generous and make it three to one
um-hum
uh
as as a repayment for every three to five days that i work overtime there they should give me one day
yeah
yeah
yeah
but it should be a standard and and not left up to either the whim or the current overhead rate that's uh that's running in each department
um-hum well and yeah and and a lot of that is left up to whoever your supervisor happens to be and what type of relationship you have with that person and
you know i see a lot of differences but from one group to the next you know about who gets it and who doesn't get it you know but that's and that's that way with a lot of things you know
there it seems like it depends on what what group you happen to be in what what you're going to get and what you're not going to get so
well that's for sure
which is the same but but then it's probably that way anywhere you know that's
oh i'm sure personalities always come into play uh just in this size of organization
um-hum
