The so-called "Flexible" Spending Account
Aug. 4th, 2010 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterA post-script to my last: I was thinking about it and I just realized: my health FSA (Flexible Spending Account) is basically a long-term TV game show challenge.
I have to guess, at the beginning of the year, how much money from my paycheck I'm going to want to set aside in a tax-free fund for medical expenses for the entire rest of the year. And I can't change it once I've set it. If I guess too low, then I don't get to tax-deduct additional medical expenses. If I guess too high, I lose the unspent money at the end of the year.
It's exactly the kind of either-way-you-lose challenge they like to hit those poor saps with on shows like Jeopardy or The Price is Right.
"Flexible"? Ha.
I'll grant that being able to set aside money for that kind of expenses is helpful. It's going to let me get some tax-free remedial dentistry done in September, and make my chiropractic visits deductible. But surely there could have been a more, well, flexible way to make that possible.
Who thought this was a good and helpful idea?
(I ask this elsewhere and a friend replies, "The insurance company that gets to keep the unspent money, at a guess." So much for rhetorical qustions.)
I have to guess, at the beginning of the year, how much money from my paycheck I'm going to want to set aside in a tax-free fund for medical expenses for the entire rest of the year. And I can't change it once I've set it. If I guess too low, then I don't get to tax-deduct additional medical expenses. If I guess too high, I lose the unspent money at the end of the year.
It's exactly the kind of either-way-you-lose challenge they like to hit those poor saps with on shows like Jeopardy or The Price is Right.
"Flexible"? Ha.
I'll grant that being able to set aside money for that kind of expenses is helpful. It's going to let me get some tax-free remedial dentistry done in September, and make my chiropractic visits deductible. But surely there could have been a more, well, flexible way to make that possible.
Who thought this was a good and helpful idea?
(I ask this elsewhere and a friend replies, "The insurance company that gets to keep the unspent money, at a guess." So much for rhetorical qustions.)
