This company is awful. But to add insult to injury they slap this fee on your account monthly as their investment admin fee. It’s an HSA through my employer so I’m stuck with it. But just wanted to make others aware of this fee.
Degenerate investor here. Is it time for me to stop contributing? Also is there a high score leaderboard for HSA accounts?
I am still looking at what options are out there.
Went back through a year of CVS / Amazon / Walmart receipts and realized I'd been leaving real money on the table by not knowing what actually counts.
Sharing the surprising ones in case anyone else is sitting on a drawer of receipts:
☀️ Sunscreen (SPF 15+) — fully eligible, no doctor's note needed.
💄 Lip balm with SPF — same. Often missed because it rings up as "cosmetics."
🦷 Medicated toothpaste (Sensodyne, prescription fluoride) - eligible. Regular toothpaste is not.
🤱 Breast pumps + accessories (Elvie, Willow, replacement parts) — eligible.
🧴 Acne treatments (benzoyl peroxide, adapalene) — yes, even OTC, since the 2020 CARES Act.
🩸 Period products (tampons, pads, cups, period underwear) — also CARES Act.
🏋️ Gym membership / Peloton / treadmill — eligible with a Letter of Medical Necessity. Obesity, hypertension, and diabetes risk are common qualifying conditions.
💆 Massage therapy — same: needs an LMN tied to a specific condition (back pain, migraines).
🩹 First aid kits, thermometers, blood pressure cuffs — all eligible, almost never claimed.
⏳ The HSA play that took me too long to internalize:
You don't have to reimburse yourself now. Pay out of pocket, let the HSA compound tax-free for years, then reimburse yourself in 10 / 20 / 30 years with the original receipts as proof. The IRS has no statute of limitations on reimbursement as long as the expense was incurred after the HSA was opened.
🛠️ Which is why I got annoyed enough to build a small tool to track all this. Runs entirely in your browser. No account. No server. Nothing leaves your device.
Snap a receipt, it classifies each line, you keep the receipts forever. Built it because I didn't trust uploading years of medical receipts to a SaaS.
💬 What eligible items do you all wish you'd known about sooner?
I am shopping for a new bank for my HSA. I need to leave Optum. Always planned to move my balance once I retired but my job switched to a new bank that I’ve never heard of (Alight Smart Choice) and I’ve got 75k in investments with Optum that I won’t move to this new bank with such a sketchy name.
Where is your HSA at and would you recommend it?
As the title says, my company provides a retirement HSA that they kick $1,000 into each year. I have zero access to this money until after I’m no longer with the company (retired/fired/quit).
As soon as I retire from the company, am I able to reimburse myself for my out of pocket expenses I’m currently shoe boxing or since I’m not able to access the funds currently, would it only be eligible for qualified expenses incurred after I have access?
For reference, it’s through WEX and not as easy to access as the HSA I’m funding through Fidelity. Ideally, I’d like to clean out the WEX one as soon as I’m eligible and it’d be a lot easier to empty it than transfer it to Fidelity.
I started an HSA when I was single many years ago. My previous employer had a decent match like $1500 per year. I didn’t touch it. Now I have this and a few thousand sitting in cash for expenses should I need it but I typically just bank the receipts (lively). I like dividends and buying other things or just having the option to use the cash (for my medical stuff). Anyway hope y’all max out and invest
Hi all, I’m new to having an HSA (WEX) and a little confused on where to keep my receipts since I assume I’ll need those just in case. Where do you guys store your receipts from eligible expenses? Is there an app or something or do I need to just use Google drive? Appreciate any help here cus I’m a bit lost
I live in NJ and started HSA a bit more than a year ago, family plan. We both in 30th and relatively healthy, thinking about having a baby in a few years.
My plan has $3500 deductible, $6000 OOM (in-network), and $16000 OOM (out-of-network).
So far I’ve saved $11500 in HSA, of it $2000 cash minimum by Optum, the rest $9500 in the Vanguard U.S. Treasures to get higher return than cash and don’t deal with bookkeeping in NJ. I’m maxing my contributions.
I’ve thinking when it’d be time to start contributing to SP500 or something like this. I am thinking about:
What is your conservative setup? I DO plan on using HSA for high expenses (baby delivery, surgery, anything more $1-2k).
Hello! In 2025 I elected the HSA plan and was making contributions to clarity and the total amount was about $260 by the end of the year but I never got any tax papers from clarity. Was I supposed to get anything? I know the time to file tax is over but I just remembered this after getting an email form clarity about an update or sorts to their system. I never used any funds last year, but I was planning to use it soon because I don’t want the money to keep collecting interest and I just want to forget about the account. I did not elect the HSA plan for 2026. Any advice you guys can give would be much appreciated. This is my first adult job so I was very clueless about which medical plan to select 🥲
Saw this CNBC piece basically saying that while the "triple tax advantage" is the GOAT, the record-keeping is a total nightmare.
Most people know you can pay yourself back years later for a doctors visit you had today, but the catch is you gotta keep that receipt for like… 30 years? I can barely find my car keys most mornings. If the IRS audits you in 2050 and all you have is a faded piece of thermal paper that looks like a blank napkin, you're gonna have a bad time with that 20% penalty.
I actually got so annoyed with this that I ended up building an app to track mine because I knew I’d lose a physical folder. It's crazy that "investing your HSA" is the standard advice now, but nobody talks about the fact that you basically need to be a professional archivist to pull it off safely.
Anyone else actually doing the "shoebox method" or are we all just digital hoarding at this point?
Hi all,
Just looking for any tips or advice. I just enrolled into my company offered HSA. I set my contributions to $50 and they match $10. Not sure really at all what to do next. 28y/o not a frequent flyer to the doctor or anything outside of small things, a sore throat, plantar wart, small random things. Still active, workout, eat well, etc.
I have about $30k in an HSA with Health Equity. Their monthly fees suck and they just went up, I think. I have $8k not invested, and the rest invested in whatever they invest in when you are hands off paying the monthly fees. I want to be hands-off but spend less on fees.
I don't know the first thing about transferring.
I am guessing there is a fee. Does anyone know if it is based on the amount that is transferred?
Guessing what is invested needs to turn back into cash in the account first, right?
I'm not sure if my employer needs me to keep that health equity account open for some reason. They don't provide a match for my contributions due to the health plan I selected.
Any advice or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks
About 7-8 months ago I remembered I had an HSA bank, account with an old employer(who has stopped using HSA bank). I tried to withdraw the money because I no longer needed an HSA and was comfortable paying taxes on it. They were also charging me monthly fees this whole time. HSA bank Immediately froze my account for "suspected fraud". Then began the enormous waste of time that was trying to get this resolved. I was told countless time over the past 7+ month "We're waiting on a response from" or "I will call you back in two days with an update". This went no where and the account is still frozen. They sent the check anyway(some fraud protection), which I recently cashed.
My question is: as long as I pay the taxes on the disbursement, is there anyway they can come after me for, "unpaid account fees" or something?
I have an hsa account. It has 11k innvested and 1k in cash. I have not contributed my allowed $9500 this year (personal contribution) Should I do it now, should I move money aroud to max out the $9500? Should I spend the cash? Should I never touch it until I need it -- i'm 61yrs old. I know this is a valuable asset -- i just don't know how to maximize it.
Long story short, the company I work for makes ~$400 of contributions over the course of the year (paid biweekly) but they require those funds to be deposited into an account at our company (bank). That balance only earns 0.05% and I don't have the option to invest it.
I was wondering if I could open an HSA at another firm (Fidelity, Schwab, etc) and make contributions that way (so that I can invest the funds). I know that the contribution limit would apply to the sum of both accounts but am I okay to do this? The contributions to the second account would initially be after tax since I'd be contributing on my own so would I get a form come tax time so that I get the triple tax benefit?
Anything else that I am forgetting? Sounds like moving the funds from one account to the other might be a pain but I don't mind doing it just once a year. Thank you in advance for your advice!
Open an HSA with Fidelity and then do a "60-day rollover". This is the fastest way to move your money and can be done in less than a week.
This is the fastest, painless way to move to Fidelity HSA, and it involves ZERO fees. Per IRS guidelines, you can do this once during a 1-year period. Since you are pushing the money to Fidelity, there is no hold on the Fidelity side. The only person you have to talk to is the Fidelity HSA specialist, as the rollover cannot be done online. It has to be done via a phone call. Everything else can be done online.
34 and wife is 31, no kids yet. Both fairly healthy. PCP visits, gynecologist, some dermatologist visits and a few others. Looking at starting an HSA but was surprised to see that while deductible goes way up the premium doesn’t really drop. My current plan has $1000 deductible and has $50 specialist copay and is $1190 a month for the two of us. The high deductible $4000 plan is $1104 a month. So save only $86 a month between the two of us in premiums but have to pay out of pocket for every copay, blood work and medication etc up to the 4k deductible. Am I missing something? how is this financially a good move. I know you can save money in an HSA but if you do need it why pay the same for worse coverage?
Hey all,
My husband and I have separate HDHPs. His deductible is $3400 and we’ve pretty much hit it this year because of an issue he was having. The bills have been insane. Bills for services and then a week later, a bill for the doctor who performed the service. It’s been nonstop between the claims and then the bills, there’s a new one every week. Next year I’m adding him to my HDHP because our deductible will be $3000 together but wow this really has me evaluating if this is worth it. I normally pay the bills out of pocket and keep the receipts but I’m really tempted to just pay these out of the HSA. What’s everyone’s deductibles and how do you do it??