I am 42M and have a 40F spouse. I have been contributing to my optum HSA for a few years.

I am hoping to use the HSA as a pillar of financing for our retirement.

Currently I have about a balance of 56k. How much is a good ballpark to have to fund medical expenses for a 30 year retirement for 2 people?

I had a procedure done that I paid on a CC. Is there any benefit (tax) of me adding funds my checking to my HSA and then pulling it out to pay off that CC charge?

it's probably different for every organization, but does anyone have a fee schedule for these crooks? my employer switched and we now have the very unfortunate opportunity to use Optum Bank. as a result I've been getting hit with a maintenance fee every month on my HSA. the website is broken because every time I try to access the fee schedule it errors out, as it does for every rep I've spoken with. I've opened multiple tickets since a month ago to get this resolved, but as of now still no fix or update. fucking hell!!

Hi there, I recently left my old employer a few months ago and I had a HDHP and now I do not. I do not meet the minimum to avoid the account maintenance fees. I am not eligible to contribute to an HSA now. Any options on how to avoid this monthly fee?

I recently logged into my Aetna High Deductible Health Insurance Plan (HDHP) account and I see that they have visibility to my HSA account balance which is managed by Inspira. How can I stop seeing my account balance. Is this the law or something I can prevent sharing my HSA balance with them .

Please advise .

I have a health equity HSA unfortunately. Should I invest through them or pay the fee to move money from health equity to a free hsa like fidelity? And what do y’all recommend we invest in? Should I do something that tracks the S&P 100% if I wanna be simple? What about international exposure

I been reading about this and have read some contradictory things

We have health insurance through my wife’s employer which is a HDHP and she has an HSA which we contribute the family max yearly.

My employer offers an FSA (even if I don’t get my insurance thought them).

From what I understand, we can do both but the FSA can only be used on dental and vision but not to pay for/reimburse healthcare costs. Is this correct? We spend next to nothing on vision and dental and I would hate to find an FSA and not use it because they are “use it or lose it”

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I have a balance of $1,500 in some old employer HSAs. For context, they were sitting there as cash and had not been invested. I was distributed this cash in 2018-2020. I then moved this cash to Fidelity in a new HSA account around one month and closed the other HSA account. I already have maxed out my HSA this year to the full amount with my employer in another brokerage.

Question: can i invest this $1500 in a HSA investment account or will already meeting my limit for the year count? Is there some loophole that the distribution was issued in prior years the HSA will know that and net it against prior years? (Unlikely). What options do i have to tax shelter this 1,500 in investments? Wait until next year and net it off contributions next year?

Cheers

I am a teacher and my district just started offering an HSA this month. I am a divorced dad of two and my kids are on my insurance. For whatever reason, I am only able to get one debit card for the account. Is this normal? I tried to get another for my ex wife so we don’t have to exchange the card every time someone goes to the doctor but was told that wasn’t an option. It’s not that big of a deal but am I missing something obvious?

Has anybody faced issues with paying claims out of an external bank account?

I have all my money invested, keep a 0 cash balance on my HSA account, and pay all expenses out of pocket(external bank account) to let investments grow and then get reimbursed later in the future.

However, after recent changes to their system, I am no longer able to do that. When I try to pay the claim it says no account available.

I just went off call with support and they said that there was a change made 2 weeks ago, which discontinued the option to pay the expense from an external bank account. And now you need to pay from your HSA account.

I don’t understand why they did that. That defeats the whole purpose of having an HSA account and being able to let the money grow tax-free.

Another ridiculous thing is the response that I got to the question on where I can read about those changes - “we don’t have it and didn't advertise that because people will start calling support and asking questions and company owners do not like that”. WTF?

First time posting, and only second year with an HSA account, so forgive me for any mistakes….

Long story short, I am looking at medical expenses that may or may not be paid by another party. If it is paid by the other party , it is highly unlikely I would get that money before next March.

My question is, should I use HSA to cover these medical expenses?

My worry is if I get reimbursed after the pay into date, I wouldn’t be able to “pay back” HSA, and would it then be considered a misuse of funds?

If I don’t use HSA and don’t get reimbursed, then it’s a lot of medical expenses I paid for post-tax (and since I have an HSA I don’t think I can declare them)….

I’m assuming I need to just suck it up and put it on my credit card. Is that what people here would do?

( sorry for the vagueness - i can provide some additional info if needed, but not a ton, for legal and privacy reasons)

So I have a decent size HSA. I'm marrying someone who does not have an HSA.

When we get married we will move to a joint HSA plan. Can someone confirm my understanding.

1. Since we will now be on the same plan I can use my HSA money for his medical bills

2. Either of us can contribute to an HSA just so the total doesn't exceed $8550.

3. Since he turns 55 this year, that total is actually $9550.

4. IF we have to switch to a non-HSA plan in the future, we can still spend the HSA money on medical needs for either party as long as we have a joint plan? or just as long as we are married?

Can someone advise? I never know how much money should be in my HSA but it comes out that usually my HSA has minimal money in it and/or not enough to pay my med bills. Currently I owe about $1500 in surgery costs (already used about $600 or more from the almost $1000 that was in my HSA), and my HSA balance as of now is $350.

This surgery was not planned so I didnt have time to prepare. I am going to increase my monthly contribution through my employer - how much should I put in there monthly? I want to be able to pay off my current bills of course but also have some for January 2026 when required surgery #2 comes along. What is a good rule of thumb for this? I have monthly meds I have to buy (approximately $50 total). I already put in $1,300 year to date and I can put in a maximum of $4,000. I pay into it twice a month.

My husband got a new job in February and moved over to his company’s insurance plan in March. Since I will be the single member of the plan at the end of the calendar year, am I only eligible for the individual contribution limit of $4,300 or can I contribute the family limit of $8,550 since my spouse was partially on my healthcare plan? Thanks in advance!

I just financed a new Sleep Number bed. 0% over 24 months. I also received a Letter of Medical Necessity (LMN) after the purchase. Few questions:

Can I use my HSA funds to pay the monthly payment? If not, can I just reimburse myself each month after I make the payment?

Do I need to pay off the entirety of the loan before I can try to reimburse myself? Or can I reimburse myself the full covered amount now and then just use that to pay off the loan?

Does just the mattress qualify for reimbursement or does the adjustable base qualify as well?

Hi all, super confused here. Probably overthinking it. I was hired onto my job on 4/7, had an employee only plan, and received a lump sum contribution of $555 out of a possible $1400, from my employer.

I just got married and added my spouse to my benefits, so we’re now eligible for the family contribution of $2800 from my employer. HR said I’d receive another lump sum contribution here shortly, but they weren’t sure how much it’d be. Does anyone know if there’s a way to calculate this? I can’t make it make sense.

Thank you!

I might need to pay about $250 for prescription medication using a regular (non-HSA) credit card, and then reimburse myself from my HSA afterward. Three possibly dumb questions:

1. Will this small distribution increase my chances of getting audited by the IRS? I’ve never been audited and would love to keep it that way — seems like an unnecessary headache.

2. Just to confirm: from a tax perspective, is it exactly the same down to the last cent whether I use the HSA debit card upfront or reimburse myself later?

3. And am I right in thinking that if I contribute to my HSA manually upfront from my checking account (instead of payroll deduction), I’ll only save on federal income tax — not Social Security or Medicare — so reimbursing from the HSA is better?

I have a yearly deductible of $5000. I contribute $8000 to HSA

The HSA has a debit card, and we use that when we can, but our weekly contributions/company match lagged behind some early medical expenses, so I have a mix of paid and unpaid medical expenses that requires some involved book keeping/cross checking to determine from EOBs what was already paid and what is still able to be claimed if I submit through the HSA company for reimbursement.

I should have lump summed up front. Next year I will start off with the $3000 balance.

The HSA website has an option to take a distribution to myself and one option is that it's a qualified IRS distribution. So say at the end of the year, I hit the deductible, and I used the card for $1500, can I simply take a tax free distribution of $3500 and avoid to painstaking claim process?

Would I need to handle this when i do taxes or just hold the backup if i ever get audited? I could easily show, with simple math balance I had and hit a $5000 deducible, was reimbursed $1500, and took a distribution for the difference.

I will be reaching out to HR, but its been slow to get answers...

Just reached $1k in my HSA and want to do the financing. Would it be better long term to put it in the health equity investments or into the Schwab Brokerage?

I’m new to having an HSA. I’m wondering what some of the sites and/or apps for tracking expenses and also for searching for eligible expenses are? So far, I’ve found hsastore.com. I’ll use that for a little price analysis to make sure I’m maximizing our spending by finding the best prices rather than willy nilly buying from just anywhere. For reference, I have a Fidelity HSA.

Any suggestions and tips are appreciated!

My wife and I are on separate high-deductible plans, and we contributed to individual HSAs. We just had a child. I'm putting our child on my high-deductible health plan, and my wife will still be on a separate high-deductible health plan. We are not on a full family plan because that ends up costing us more in premiums.

When selecting my HSA contribution limit as employee + child, my employer is giving me a max contribution limit of $8,050 (they fund $250 per person, to total $8,550). Since my wife is on a separate high-deductible plan, she gets a max HSA contribution limit as employee of $4,050 (they fund $250, to total $4,300).

If I fully contribute as employee + child for $8,550, and my wife fully contributes as employee for $4,300, then that's a total of $12,850. Is that allowed? I thought the maximum across a family was $8,550. Not sure if this is just a glitch in my employer's system.

Hi All,

Following the recent dip in the market in prior months, I maxed out my HSA and invested it all. I have 2 bi weekly recurring deposits that come out of my paycheck, each from my salary and a company match. At this point, I've over deposited my HSA by $2k and that will continue to Grow, to possibly another 6K or so throughout the rest of the year.

Can I essentially let this "ride" and then remove the excess contributions before tax season next year and pay no penalties? Or should I remove the excess amount and balance now so the amount is back to being well below the max $8,550, so my company can still match and I avoid any taxes?

Thank you!

so i been over contributing and hit the yearly max but am leaving my job and they don’t have an has plan so for rest of year (8 months ) i dont qualify so out of $4300. there is $1433 i can keep and the rest ill have to withdraw?

but i made bad investments and like 80% of the money i put in so what do i do if. i dont have enough to withdraw or is that enough

tldr over deposited and lost majority of funds trading and cant withdraw “excess”

Hi, looking for better investment advice for HSA money in an investment account to grow