Flex Spending Accounts (FSA) - Your Particular Plan

Before signing up for one of your employer's flex spending accounts, it is important to review your personal and family medical spending. An excellent place to start is to review last year's medical costs. You also may want to set aside money for your routine annual physical exams. A good financial and health care move is to cover this preventive type care with flex spending accounts since insurances usually only pay a limited amount. Bottom line, the best advice is to be conservative so you don't have unspent dollars at year end.

Flex spending account help

How much money could you potentially save?
Let this tool help you calculate flex spending accounts potential tax benefits to you.

http://www.flexadministrators.com/fsa/medcalc.html

Review your flex spending account details
If you are unsure about exactly what over the counter items your flex spending plan will cover, ask your benefits manager or the plan administrator. Your plan should also provide information on how to appeal if you believe the plan improperly denied a claim for reimbursement.  In most cases you have 180 days to appeal a denied claim.

Monitor your healthcare flexible spending accounts balance
An important point is to determine how much is in your health savings plan at any point in time. Many account holders don’t know how much money they have left towards the end of the year, which increases the likelihood that they will forfeit some of their money. Contact your HR department to see if they can provide that information. Most sizeable flex spending accounts offer on-line access to your personal account information and balances.

Check your flex spending account deadline for submitting receipts
Don't forget to confirm your flex spending account deadline date before you rush out to spend it.  Your plan will most likely require funds to be spent by December 31 but some flex spending accounts may have passed a plan amendment to extend that deadline to March 15.

Remember unspent money in healthcare flexible spending accounts revert back to the employer!