Tell me how you use your HSA?

[Anonymous]

I'm just curious to hear other's thoughts. Particularly if you've had an HSA for many years, what has worked well?

I contribute the max (with the help my company contributions), but I've only had it for a few years, so my total is around 15K. I invest most of it in the available index funds. I keep about 2K sitting, that is spendable if needed.

I'm mid thirties and healthy, with a healthy family. I do use the HSA for minor medical expenses, like $100 dr appointment or a $20 prescription or something like that. I like having the pot of money to pay for those things because it means that I don't have to think twice about dr appointments, and I don't have to budget the money anywhere else.

I know the smartest thing to do is invest it all and don't touch it.

But what do most of you do?

[Anonymous]

I use it because we need it. I hit my deductible this year - $6750.

[Anonymous]

We do not touch ours. It is a retirement tool for later use. All is invested.

Family of 4, two boys in sports. Have had our share of er visits. Still ends up cheaper than paying the high premiums for the no deductible plans.

[Anonymous]

So does it make sense to choose the HSA in the Fed plans? By comparison, BCBS Basic for a family is $177 per payperiod.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do not touch ours. It is a retirement tool for later use. All is invested.

Family of 4, two boys in sports. Have had our share of er visits. Still ends up cheaper than paying the high premiums for the no deductible plans.

Do you have a separate medical expense fund? Or do you just pull from emergency savings? Or have the expenses been minimal enough that it hasn't registered as an issue and you just use banking/credit?

I'm wondering for those who invest and don't touch the HSA, what do you use as your medical expense safety pot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So does it make sense to choose the HSA in the Fed plans? By comparison, BCBS Basic for a family is $177 per payperiod.

Whether or not you have a high deductible health plan is a separate question entirely, with many many variables to consider. I'm OP here and am crowdsourcing for those who do have HDHPs and thus HSAs, how do you spend/invest/save the money?

I'm more curious than needing advice. I don't know many people with these plans and wonder how they are generally treated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So does it make sense to choose the HSA in the Fed plans? By comparison, BCBS Basic for a family is $177 per payperiod.

Whether or not you have a high deductible health plan is a separate question entirely, with many many variables to consider. I'm OP here and am crowdsourcing for those who do have HDHPs and thus HSAs, how do you spend/invest/save the money?

I'm more curious than needing advice. I don't know many people with these plans and wonder how they are generally treated.

We generally do what you do, OP - maybe spend a little more of the HSA, have about $12,000 after 5 years. But, we hit our deductible every year. I would prefer to save it all, and this is a good reminder to set up a separate medical expense fund so that we can do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do not touch ours. It is a retirement tool for later use. All is invested.

Family of 4, two boys in sports. Have had our share of er visits. Still ends up cheaper than paying the high premiums for the no deductible plans.

Do you have a separate medical expense fund? Or do you just pull from emergency savings? Or have the expenses been minimal enough that it hasn't registered as an issue and you just use banking/credit?

I'm wondering for those who invest and don't touch the HSA, what do you use as your medical expense safety pot?

NP here. We bank all the HSA money. We just pay medical expenses out of pocket and count the HSA as part of savings. Money is fungible so it doesn't come from separate pots. Despite being called a high deductible plan the deductible has actually dropped each year over the last 3 so it's not that hard to hit it. Used to be $5000, now is $3000. We've hit out OOP max ($13k) a couple of times in the last 5 years and considered using the HSA for that but ultimately didn't need to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do not touch ours. It is a retirement tool for later use. All is invested.

Family of 4, two boys in sports. Have had our share of er visits. Still ends up cheaper than paying the high premiums for the no deductible plans.

Same here. I’ve got about $40k in it and, praying no medical issue that would require it’s use beforehand, it’s one of my retirement vehicles. I hope to use it to bridge expenses before I hit Medicare.

[Anonymous]

We blow through it by March or so each year. Deductible is $9850.
HSAs are mostly a polite tax advantage for the upper middle class. It's future in the tax code is quite secure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do not touch ours. It is a retirement tool for later use. All is invested.

Family of 4, two boys in sports. Have had our share of er visits. Still ends up cheaper than paying the high premiums for the no deductible plans.

+1 although obviously if something god-awful happened, it's nice to know there's some money we could draw upon.

[Anonymous]

what are the benefits of having one? can you take money out at any time for any reason?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do not touch ours. It is a retirement tool for later use. All is invested.

Family of 4, two boys in sports. Have had our share of er visits. Still ends up cheaper than paying the high premiums for the no deductible plans.

+1 although obviously if something god-awful happened, it's nice to know there's some money we could draw upon.

same here

[Anonymous]

Copay
Medication

[Anonymous]

We have about 40K in HSAs invested. Don't plan on touching it for medical expenses. We just pay out of pocket for medical expenses.

I love the HSA. It combines the best of a regular IRA and Roth IRA (tax free going in and tax free coming out) except that it's limited to medical expenses.

Here's the best part. The IRS does not really track how it is spent nor ask you to prove it was spent for medical expenses. For instance, about 3+ years ago, I withdrew $10K from that account to invest in the stock market by mistake (instead of liquidating a deposit account with the bank). The bank wouldn't "fix" my mistake because it was several months before I realized. The IRS did not come after me to prove I used it for medical expenses.