Financially Independent Teachers
Sep 20, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 10 segments
Send us Fan Mail The Durham All-Star team is here to discuss health benefits. Retired NC teacher and coach, David Norman, and former principal and classroom teacher, Greg Mitchell, have over 55 years…
The other thing I wanted to add, Dave is like, I think it's helpful to look at your open enrollment selection for health insurance kind of in tandem with your open enrollment selections for what we'll call cafeteria benefit plans.
Dave Norman, that's not cafeteria plans where they serve potatoes that are smiley faces.
And I think this is I've worked in three school systems locally in the triangle, and all three of them have typically sync up their district open enrollments for these cafeteria benefits along with the state.
Dave Fleischer, it seems like in Jacksonville, they're kind of at distinct times.
But the reason why I think it's helpful to look at them in tandem is that if you know, let's say most of your doctors are going to be in this non-preferred tier system, you're going to be paying out-of-pocket medical expenses and you're willing to do that because you want to stay with your doctors.
Well, then you might want to look at putting significant amounts of money in free tax, a flexible spending account, which then you can use to pay for health care-related expenses.
So that's something that I think is helpful to kind of have those two things next to each other so you can use one to help you with the other.
It almost makes me I don't want to say angry, but, you know, to have them going on at the same time versus, OK, I'm going to sign up for the North Carolina health care plan in October and then in Onzo County.
And then they don't really know what out of pocket maxes are or other things like that.
And this is the I don't know if you can see it kind of going away with the background.
Is there anything more intimidating for a first year teacher than them saying, Hey, you have to have this scheduled meeting.
And there's 60 pages of stuff that nobody ever taught you about in high school or college.
The other thing I wanted to add, Dave is like, I think it's helpful to look at your open enrollment selection for health insurance kind of in tandem with your open enrollment selections for what we'll call cafeteria benefit plans.
Dave Norman, that's not cafeteria plans where they serve potatoes that are smiley faces.
And I think this is I've worked in three school systems locally in the triangle, and all three of them have typically sync up their district open enrollments for these cafeteria benefits along with the state.
Dave Fleischer, it seems like in Jacksonville, they're kind of at distinct times.
But the reason why I think it's helpful to look at them in tandem is that if you know, let's say most of your doctors are going to be in this non-preferred tier system, you're going to be paying out-of-pocket medical expenses and you're willing to do that because you want to stay with your doctors.
Well, then you might want to look at putting significant amounts of money in free tax, a flexible spending account, which then you can use to pay for health care-related expenses.
So that's something that I think is helpful to kind of have those two things next to each other so you can use one to help you with the other.
It almost makes me I don't want to say angry, but, you know, to have them going on at the same time versus, OK, I'm going to sign up for the North Carolina health care plan in October and then in Onzo County.
And then they don't really know what out of pocket maxes are or other things like that.
And this is the I don't know if you can see it kind of going away with the background.
Is there anything more intimidating for a first year teacher than them saying, Hey, you have to have this scheduled meeting.
And there's 60 pages of stuff that nobody ever taught you about in high school or college.
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