5 important HR things when you start your career

I am so happy and excited for my sister.  She's starting her first teaching job next Monday.  It's been a nervous summer beginning of school year.  Now, she's got a job and all the benefits to go with it.  She asked me to sit with her to go over hrr benefits(actually, I asked to sit with her first when I hear she got an offer). 

Here are a few HR things that I think are very important when you start your first job:

1. health insurance - this includes all the prescription drugs, vision, dental, and medical health insurance that are provided.  Get at least the basic ones.  It's a no brainer, I just had to explain the difference between HMO and POS  Al of that only cost her about $700 a year.
2. retirement plan - for this, she is offer 2 employer sponsered.  I asked her to put close to the max for each(15k each, max is 16.5k each).  I know she only makes a small amount right now($46k), but since she live at home and has no loans to pay off (good girl, sort of, because my 'rents paid for her school).  I also told her this is only for the first year, and she can change that any time she wants.  Also, I wanted her to not have too much money on hand all of a sudden so she'll learn to manage her money and think about what she wants to do with it. (I wish I had $30k to put away).
3. life insurance - she as a little confuse about life insurnace.  Since my parents had bought a policy for her, she wanted to know if she can still get one.  Even though, she doesn't have a lot of asset or debt to cover, the basic is soooooooo cheap, that I made her get it.  CHEAP meaning it is $0.02 per thousand of her income per paycheck and the paid out is 2x her income.
4. budgetting - so I went over with her how much money she can put away for retirement by looking at her spending:  I asked her what she spend her money on and so far it's only food and cell phone bill and she paid off her credit card bill every month which is around $250.  Let's double that which comes to $500 x12 months = $6k(this is mostly just spending money).  She wants to get new clothes for work, and she thinks it's $1000 (either that's some expensive stuff, or it's a lot of stuff, but ok whatevs).  Also, she wants to help my parents out by giving them $300 every month (good, since she lives with them).  So her expected expenses are $6k + $1k + $3.6k = $10300, plus the benefits she pays for $11000.  I said if she put $30k of her salary($46k) in the retirement accounts, she'll be paying taxes on $16k.  Her taxes will be $3110 (15% fed, $90 + 4.75% of anything over $3000).  So she'll have $12890 left, minus her expected expenses, she'll have $1890.  Which I suggested a Roth IRA, but we'll discuss that later.
5. spending tracking - I asked her to make a speardsheet on her spendings to see what she spend her money on.  I didn't ask her to do much of trimming or budgetting because she has an good idea what she want to buy.  However, I wanted her to see for herself of her spending is good or not.

Things we have not dicussed yet but will discuss in the future: emgerency fund(I know she should have one ASAP, but since she lives with my 'rents I can delay this a little tiny bit, plus I built in a padding into her spending money), Roth IRA, investments - both real estate and stocks, and the bank of little sister (just kdding), and large item money, i.e. vacations, computer, car.

Tax holidays

So my state is considering a tax holiday for July 4 and Labor day this year, meaning they will possibly not levy the $0.20+/gallon of gas during the holiday weekend.  That's a great relief. consider it's is about $4/gallon right now.  Of course this isn't the first that the tax holiday is in effect.  Usually you can find it near the time for school to start again.  It usually tax free week for school related stuff like clothing and paper products. 

I usually may or may not stock up on some stuff.  This year, probably kids clothing.  But if there is a tax holiday on gas, you bet I am stocking up on gas.  We usually have a few gas tanks we keep in the garage for stocking up gas in case a)we run low and have no time to go to t he cheap gas station, b) gas is getting crazy expensive so we buy some more when it's not as expensive, and c) during winter, a snow-in.  If there is a tax holiday, we'll be filling those up.

Hopefully our neighboring state will consider that too so our stations won't have crazy lines or maybe they'll consider it in the fall.

What would you do if there's a gas tax holiday?