One missing piece of crucial information

I'm all about becoming a money person lately. To me, this means understanding our accounts, paying attention to and searching for ways to save dollars here and there (like trading time for fitness, utilizing the flexible spending account, etc.), and keeping track of spending. You know, stuff along those lines.

To that end, I've taken small steps to pay attention and be active. (And, I am talking small steps, here). In the last few months I have organized a filing cabinet and actually read through what I was filing, actually read our insurance policies and considered their costs, actually read my benefits statement from work, met with our financial dude after actually reading our statements and asked questions rather than just saying "oh, okay," and started checking in once in awhile at Yahoo Finance. Boring, small steps, but necessary stuff.

So, operating in this gung-ho mode I decided to actually attend a benefits-related meeting this morning on the health care savings plan. I got there a minute after they started, but I jumped right into learning mode. I learned about the plan (that contributed funds are invested in the stock market but that I could diversify as I saw fit, that the employer would not have to pay FICA taxes on those funds, that if a percent of the salary is contributed, the percentage of the employer's contributions to the 401 plan would be affected), thought about tax implications, started doing mental calculations, etc.

And I'm thinking I did a pretty good job in my newly formed vision of myself as "money person."

Oh, and that missing piece of crucial information? That fact that was mentioned in the first minute of the meeting before I got there, and presumably mentioned in the emails announcing this meeting?

The meeting was for non-unionized people, i.e. NOT ME.

Oooooo, I was ticked at myself. I needed that hour and a half to plan storytime! One of my coworkers said that I might have to do this plan at some point, so it isn't completely wasted time. And I did get a blog post out of it, so...