Spend FSA dollars: Tools help find eligible items ahead of deadline
HOUSTON - Time is running out if you have money left in your Flex Spending Account. FSA funds must be spent on eligible health-related items and services before January 1, or you lose them.
About half of all FSA account holders leave money on the table every year, at an average of $339 to $408, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. It's expected to total $3 billion nationwide this year.
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It's not only money you can use to pay for health-related items and expenses, such as medicine, sunscreen, and doctor co-pays, but you can essentially get them for 20% to 40% off because these are pre-tax dollars.
"Of course, the FSA is the Flexible Spending Account. It's something you set up through your employer and there's a use-it-or-lose-it rule. And so we only have a few days left if you still have any money in your plan," explained Certified Public Accountant Ed Gardner.
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FSA funds must be spent before January 1. Unlike Health Savings Accounts, FSA funds can't be carried over to the next year.
The money can be used for a wide variety of health related things, such as medical treatments, insurance deductibles, co-pays, medicine, sunscreen, ear plugs, and fertility trackers.
"If you haven't made appointments with your doctors who have co-pays, there are different things that you can do, you know. You can buy cold and flu medicine. You can have skin care items, you can have eye care, you know, where maybe you get glasses," said Gardner.
New tools can help you spend the money fast.
The FSA Store is an online marketplace of 2,500 FSA eligible items.
Plus, Amazon and Walmart offer online FSA stores, too.
And the Instacart app and website now let shoppers use FSA and HSA cards to pay for eligible items from thousands of retailers that can then be delivered to you the same day.
"Maybe a customer is shopping for groceries and want to figure out which items qualify. Just search for FSA in the search bar. We’ll pull up qualifying items," explained Instacart's Laurentia Romaniuk.
A service called Truemed helps customers determine if they're eligible to spend FSA and HSA funds with businesses that offer health-related products and services, such as meal plans with Daily Harvest, or fitness companies like CrossFit and CorePower Yoga. Truemed's website says it works with a network of doctors to validate the purchase for the consumer's FSA or HSA funds.