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Flex-Ed: Getting to know enrollment periods, cutoff dates and qualifying life events
When you decide to contribute to a FSA, whatever you select as your contribution amount stays the same throughout the year. That means if you change your mind, there really is no going back. In other words, it's crucial that you budget carefully so that you'll be able to use up the amount you put into your FSA or else you'll risk forfeiting the cash.
But there are exceptions to the rule. If you experience what's known as a qualifying life event, your employer may let make changes to your FSA. This includes changes in marital status, employment and the birth of a child.
What if these qualifying life events happen after you make your FSA elections? The short answer is that you should be able to make changes during what's known as a special enrollment period.
What is a special enrollment period?
A special enrollment period is a set amount of time outside of the open enrollment period (which is typically around November 1 to December 15) where you can make changes to your health plan, including your FSA contributions.
You can only take advantage of a special enrollment period if you have a qualifying event or experience a complex issue and if your plan allows for the change. If eligible, you'll typically have 30 to 60 days from the date of the special circumstance or qualifying life event to make changes to your FSA. It's best to check with your FSA provider for the specifics.
How do I know what my cutoff date is?
Let's say you've been contributing about $150 a month towards your FSA for you and your spouse's medical expenses. Unfortunately, you both decide to break things off and begin the paperwork in November of this year and your divorce won't be finalized until January 12, 2019. This counts as a qualifying life event, so you qualify for the special enrollment 60 day from the date you finalized the divorce.
Another common qualifying event is if you become a parent or gain a new dependent. You adopted a child and the adoption date as defined by the course is February 12, 2019. You may be able to increase your FSA contributions and \make changes 30-60 days from that date. Or, your child turns 27 halfway through next year and you want to decrease your FSA contributions, you have 30-60 days from your child's 27th birthday.
There may be some exceptions to the cutoff date, such as when it comes to the dependent care FSA (DCFSA). For example, the DCFSA is only for certain expenses for dependents 12 and under. If your child turns 13 halfway through 2019, you may be able to make changes 30 days from their 13th birthday.
Significant changes in dependent care could also qualify for the special enrollment period. If you switch daycare providers, there was a significant price change or both parents aren't employed (or a student) anymore, you may be able to increase, decrease or stop your DCFSA contributions (consistent with the qualifying event).
As mentioned earlier, your FSA provider may not allow you to make changes outside of the enrollment period or their cutoff dates differ than what we've indicated. Your best bet is to contact your provider and explain your specific situation to find out what your options are.
Everyday needs
What are these "complex issues" you speak of?
Healthcare.gov mentions there are a few special cases in which you may be able to change your FSA plan. If you went through a natural disaster or serious medical condition that prevented you from enrolling - like an earthquake or unexpected major surgery - you may be able to petition to make changes.
When my husband and I signed up for a DCFSA when he switched jobs, the system had a major glitch and had it so that $1,650 would be deducted from each paycheck instead of $300. When we saw the paperwork, we were able to change it even though we were well past the open enrollment period.
Of course, all of the above are hypothetical scenarios and may not apply to you. It's always a good idea to call your FSA administrator before or as soon as any any qualifying event or special circumstances so that you can make any necessary changes within the cutoff date.
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New to FSAs? Need a refresher course in all things flex spending? Our weekly Flex-Ed column gives you a weekly dose of FSA Living 101, offering tips for making the most of your tax-free funds. Look for it every Thursday, exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center.
Flex-Ed: Staying ahead of your year-end FSA deadlines
You had the best intentions when you put money into your flexible spending account (FSA). But as the calendar winds down (and don't be afraid, but November is already here!) the holidays can disrupt your to-do list, and that money could easily go to waste. Luckily, there's still plenty of time to make smart year-end FSA spending decisions. We'll cover how to make the most of your money — while avoiding IRS scrutiny.
Know these key dates
When it comes to maximizing your FSA, knowledge is power. Start by asking your plan administrator for details about your key FSA deadlines (and know the difference between them!). These may include:
- Rollover - If your company offers a rollover, you'll have an opportunity to keep $500 in your account from the previous year.
- Grace period - Some employers offer up to 2½ extra months after the annual deadline to use your FSA money. If the annual deadline is December 31, a grace period extends your deadline to March 15.
- Run-out period - This is your deadline to submit receipts from the previous year. Most companies offer a 90-day run-off period after the deadline. If your plan's deadline is December 31, you'll have until March 31 to be reimbursed.
Before crafting your FSA spending plan, it's critical to know these deadlines. Your company could offer a rollover, grace period, or hard deadline on December 31. Once you know your plan's deadlines, set more than one reminder to avoid surprises.
Where can you spend your FSA money?
If you're taxing your brain, it may be worth revisiting what you purchased over the past year. Now is the perfect time to reimburse yourself for an FSA-eligible expense you may have missed.
Taking inventory of the past couple years of spending may also jog your memory. Are you overdue for an eye exam? Have you been putting off a specialist visit? Did you skip your annual trip to the dermatologist? Time slips away faster than you may expect. You may be able to use your extra FSA money on basic necessities.
If you're still feeling nervous, our foolproof list of FSA-eligible products and services has you covered.
Resist the urge to stockpile
We've said it before, but it's worth mentioning again - try not to "stockpile" FSA-eligible products. There's no hard and fast rule about this, but being too frivolous with these funds can trigger some unwanted IRS attention.
Look, we get it. Things happen — the holidays creep in and before you know it, you're up against the FSA spending deadline. While it may be tempting to splurge on a lifetime supply of gauze, experts urge against it.
If you're trying to follow the rules — and you should be — FSA purchases should cover your current needs. This means things you need through the end of the year. Does that mean your administrator will show up to inspect your bottle of nasal spray? Probably not.
But buying three bottles in December could trigger a red flag. If that happens, it's possible your administrator won't reimburse you. Then you're stuck with too much nasal spray and you spent money unnecessarily.
If your plan offers a rollover or grace period, it may be easier to avoid the temptation to stockpile. Plus, you'll have extra time to plan for the medical expenses you actually need.
Be smart with year-end FSA spending
One of the best things about your FSA is spending pre-tax money on medical necessities. But if you're not careful, you may have to surrender the unused funds. Unless you're flush with cash, returning FSA money to your employer at the end of the year is less than ideal.
The good news is you can use this year's missteps to plan for next year's FSA spending. Planning ahead may help you avoid the same trouble next December.
Start here!
MedAngel ONE Wireless Thermometer
MedAngel ONE is the perfect companion for your medications. The Bluetooth thermometer is easy-to-use, compact, and connects to your smartphone.
Caring Mill™ Essential First Aid Kit 160pc
This is a great every day first-aid kit that offers a variety of bandages and medical supplies to cover the most common medical situations.
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New to FSAs? Need a refresher course in all things flex spending? Our weekly Flex-Ed column gives you a weekly dose of FSA Living 101, offering tips for making the most of your tax-free funds. Look for it every Thursday, exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center.
Flex-Ed: Mistakes during open enrollment - can you change elections?
Mistakes happen -- and it happens more than it probably should when people are choosing health insurance. Between having multiple options, confusing plan descriptions, debating voluntary benefits and a tight open enrollment deadlines, it's pretty easy to see how things might get confused.
You could have misread a question, be forced to rush through the process, or even miscalculated how much money would be coming out of your paycheck every week. Whatever the case, if you made a mistake during open enrollment, you're probably wondering if there's a way to make changes to your elections later on in the year.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but no, once you make your open enrollment elections, you don't have the option to change them later in the year unless you experience a qualifying life event. (Or in the event of very rare circumstances, such as a legitimate error in which your administrator may or may not be able to allow you to fix)
Your employer is not legally obligated to allow you to make changes to your elections after the open enrollment period has ended. In fact, there's a good chance that the terms of your employer's benefit plan don't allow any exceptions or changes for employees who make mistakes or miss the open enrollment period altogether.
Qualifying life events change that answer...
After open enrollment ends, you can only make changes to your elections if you've experienced a qualifying life event. The IRS and FSA administrators understand that life changes and that you may need to make adjustments to your elections to accommodate for those changes.
Common qualifying life events include:
- Changes in marital status - Getting married, divorced, separated, or if your spouse passes away.
- Changes in number of dependents - if you have a child, adopt a child, or if a child passes away.
- Changes in dependent status - children can age out of dependent status or become eligible for dependent status during the year.
- Changes in employment - this can mean starting a new job, quitting, or a transition from part-time to full-time work status.
- COBRA - If you lose your job and elect to continue receiving benefits from your employer.
- Relocation - Moving won't always affect your eligibility, but sometimes moving to a new home address or a new work site can, especially if it's in a new state with different regulations.
Not all plans allow for mid-year changes, but you'll find that most do. If you experience one of these life events, you'll want to get in touch with your FSA administrator within 30 days of the event to find out if you are eligible to make changes to your plan.
What else can I do?
When it comes to your open enrollment elections, the best thing you can do is take your time and be thorough to minimize the chance of making mistakes. Don't leave your elections for the last minute as that can make you rush the process and leave you more susceptible to mistakes.
If you're married, discuss your elections with your spouse to ensure that the whole family is on the same page for the upcoming benefit year.
And if you have any questions or are uncertain about anything in the process, contact your HR department - they'll help you navigate the open enrollment steps and clarify anything you don't understand. Many employers even offer benefits education during open enrollment to help employees understand their options and make informed decisions.
Eligible everyday necessities
Caring Mill Assorted Variety Bandages, 280 ea
This is a great bandage set that offers a variety of sizes to cover the most common medical situations.
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New to FSAs? Need a refresher course in all things flex spending? Our weekly Flex-Ed column gives you a weekly dose of FSA Living 101, offering tips for making the most of your tax-free funds. Look for it every Thursday, exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center.
Flex-Ed: How to fix mistakes with FSA funding and reimbursements
Mistakes are common. But when you make a mistake with your FSA reimbursements or funding, you need to be able to fix them ASAP, so you're not caught paying for them later. As in, you want to be sure that you're using your FSA correctly so that you're not required to pay your reimbursements back or stuck with money you can't use.
Sure, you can have the best-laid plans, but stuff happens. Instead, take a look at the following scenarios in case you made one of those mistakes, and what you can do about it.
Your receipts weren't clear
Just because you know what you spent your money on, doesn't mean your FSA administrator is clear on it. Yes, you have receipts backing up your purchase but that doesn't mean it automatically counts as solid proof.
Let's say you purchased got a prescription for a bunch of antibiotics at the pharmacy. You decided to submit the credit card receipt to your FSA provider. Unfortunately, that's not enough proof because the IRS requires you have an itemized receipt.
If your FSA administrator comes back to you and says your original receipt isn't acceptable proof, you should be able to resubmit. Now's the time to find that itemized receipt — whether it's your prescription with the price on it, or go back to the pharmacy if you need to and see if they'll print another one for you.
Otherwise, you can submit what's called an Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) that you'll receive in the mail from your health insurance provider -- basically, a fancy way of explaining a part of your transaction. What it needs to include is your name, date of purchase, the provider/retailer's name, price of the item, and the name of the item or service. Don't worry though - this is standard information to be included on all EOBs.
Even if you made the initial mistake, you can still fix it as long as you provide ample proof as quickly as possible.
You overallocated your FSA
Maybe you overestimated how much you'll need and you contributed a bunch of extra money to your FSA. Now you realize, you may not have enough qualified medical expenses to spend it all. The good news is that it's still your money. The bad news is that you're at risk of losing it of you don't take action.
Before assuming you don't have enough qualified medical expenses, make a list of things you may need. Perhaps it's time to replace your broken pair of glasses, or you're eyeing that foot circulator but were scared to make the purchase. Be strategic about what you want to purchase and make sure it's something you need, and you're not spending money just to spend it.
Something else to consider is looking into your FSA plan to see if there's a rollover option — typically up to $500 per year — or you may be able to take advantage of a Grace Period, if you have one, giving you extra time to spend down your funds. This way, you can still keep your cash longer without feeling like you have to buy things you don't need (which you shouldn't do, anyway).
Keep in mind that you won't have both the rollover and Grace Period option, and plans are not required to offer either so map out your purchases depending on what your plan offers.
You submitted an incorrect claim form or have no matching receipts
Don't freak out. If you submitted the wrong form, contact your FSA provider right away and see if you can resubmit. It's as simple as that. However, if you make a purchase and don't have a matching receipt, you may be able to substitute one from another qualified transaction.
Let's say you purchased prenatal vitamins and sunscreen and realized you don't have the receipt. Instead, you may be able to find another receipt for a qualified purchase to offset your original purchase. Maybe you buy additional sunscreen or more prenatal vitamins at a different store and submit that receipt, instead. Note that not all administrators will allow this, so you'll want to contact them to find out about your options.
In some cases you may not even need to submit a receipt, although we always advise that you keep them just in case. For example if you used your FSA debit card to make a payment and at a qualified merchant with the proper system in place, your expense may even be automatically approved without the need for documentation.
Mistakes happen to the best of us. The important thing is to recognize them when they happen, correct course and try not to let it happen again.
Buy with your FSA card!
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New to FSAs? Need a refresher course in all things flex spending? Our weekly Flex-Ed column gives you a weekly dose of FSA Living 101, offering tips for making the most of your tax-free funds. Look for it every Thursday, exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center.
Flex-Ed: Speaking to millennials at open enrollment
Raise your hand if this sounds familiar. You spend hours preparing for a company meeting on employee benefits. But when it's time to share information, some employees are visibly less interested. By the end of the meeting, eyes have glazed over, and attention has disappeared.
Fast forward to open enrollment. Maybe it's a little early to tackle this, but this same group of employees is pretty disengaged. And they are less likely to understand what your company offers. So it's better to start now and avoid confusion later.
Millennials may be first to say, "I've got this." But the truth is, open enrollment can be confusing and stressful. Key details may be glossed over. And as a result, they may be less likely to opt in. Here are some tips on how to spark interest before the onslaught of paperwork begins.
Communication matters
If you're offering the types of benefits millennials value most — great. But do they actually understand what you offer? Communication is critical. Try going beyond in-person meetings, letters, or emails. Share the message in bite-sized pieces through texts, blog posts, or videos. Repeating what matters may be the key to boosting millennial engagement.
Highlight ways to save
Millennials may have a reputation for frivolous spending. But that's not the case with healthcare. Research has revealed nearly half of millennials have skipped or delayed care to save money. Become a trusted resource and advocate by making benefits easier to understand. Break healthcare benefits down into manageable chunks.
Oh, be sure to ditch the industry jargon. These might be common terms to some, but it always helps to decipher things like coinsurance, copayment, or out-of-pocket maximum, providing real-world examples of how each of these will impact their wallets.
Flexible spending accounts (FSAs) are another way to save on taxes. Money shifts into a special account before being paid. Explain the "use it or lose it" rules and why it requires some extra planning. There's no "magic number" that works for all employees. Everyone's needs are different. Ask these questions to guide them through the decision process:
- How much money did you spend last year? Sifting through old receipts can be a snooze, but it's helpful to have a baseline for planning purposes.
- Do you have any major health expenses planned? Time to stop putting off that root canal? Or is your family expecting a baby? You're likely to use 100% of the year's FSA money — and more. But if you're expecting routine check-ups, contributing the full amount may not make sense.
- Does your company offer a high-deductible health plan? A recent survey found most millennials don't understand how they work. To make matters worse, 70% waste up to $750 because of mistakes at open enrollment. Maybe a health savings account (HSA) is a viable alternative.
Grab attention before open enrollment
No one wants to read a stack of papers. Try delivering the information other ways. Consider which benefits are most valuable to millennials and highlight them — more than once. Helping your employees make the most of their benefits could save them a lot of money. Best of all, they may want to stick around longer.
New FSA-eligible arrivals...
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New to FSAs? Need a refresher course in all things flex spending? Our weekly Flex-Ed column gives you a weekly dose of FSA Living 101, offering tips for making the most of your tax-free funds. Look for it every Thursday, exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center.
Flex-Ed: How my FSA paid for my son's birth
With a flexible spending account (FSA) it's usually required that you use your FSA funds within the plan year for which you contribute them, which can be a tough sell if you're generally healthy and don't have any planned health care needs.
But if you typically spend a lot on health care costs or you're already working on saving for a major surgery or procedure, it could be a no-brainer.
That was the case for me in 2015 when my son was born. By using an FSA to cover most of the hospital costs, it not only saved us money on taxes but it also simplified the payment process.
My story
Leading up to my son's birth, my wife and I weren't financially prepared. We had been saving up for over a year to pay for the hospital bill. But we didn't anticipate how much it would cost for regular trips to the OB/GYN and other common expenses you incur as you get ready for a new child.
As my wife's due date grew closer, I began to panic. In November 2014, however, I learned that my company offered an FSA. As I did some research, I also learned that you can use these pre-tax FSA funds to pay for certain eligible medical expenses. These expenses include the costs of my wife's delivery and hospital stay.
In 2015, you could contribute up to $2,550 to an FSA (the FSA contribution limit is $2,700 in 2019) and my employer at the time offered to match up to $1,000 in my contributions (which could be in excess of the limit, although I stuck with the $2,550).
I'd get the $2,550 up front in an account with a debit card, and I'd make my portion of the contributions over the course of the year. This meant that my employer would deduct $129.17 from my paychecks every month to "fund" the account (based on my portion of $1,550).
My son was born in February of that year, and after we drained our FSA, we were only on the hook for a few hundred dollars more. Fortunately, we had enough cash in the bank to pay the remainder of the bill.
Because of the way FSAs are designed — we got the full $2,550 at the beginning of the year — paying for my son's birth was a lot less stressful.
If we didn't have an FSA, we would have needed to get on a payment plan with the hospital. This process would have required us to shift around our budget and remember to make payments each month.
But with the FSA, I was able to pay the bill in full as soon as I got it. And while we were still technically making "monthly payments" through the FSA contribution from my paycheck, we had already adjusted our budget to accommodate the deduction.
That's not even mentioning the fact that the FSA funds were from pre-tax contributions, which saved us a few hundred dollars in taxes.
The bottom line
FSAs aren't for everyone, but the way they're designed can make it easy to manage your medical bills. By getting access to the full annual contribution at the beginning of the year, you don't have to worry about how you're going to cover unexpected health care costs. And if you're already anticipating some health care costs, it can make it easier to plan for them.
In the end, the important thing is that you can afford your medical bills, and an FSA can help you do that.
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New to FSAs? Need a refresher course in all things flex spending? Our Flex-Ed column gives you a dose of FSA Living 101, offering tips for making the most of your tax-free funds. Look for it every Thursday, exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center.
Raybaby Non-Contact Sleep and Breathing Baby Monitor with Video
Track your baby's sleep and breathing from a distance.
Boogie Wipes Saline Nose Wipes
A gentle, easy alternative to dry tissues.
