Massage Gun? Genetic Testing? How to Spend Your FSA Before It's Gone
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Here's your Money Briefing for Monday, December 12th. I'm Daniela Cheslow for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whelan. Millions of American workers have health care flexible spending accounts, or FSAs. That's a place where you can put away income before taxes and then spend it on things like doctor's appointments. That money usually expires every year, which means now is the time to spend it down. And there are some ways to spend an FSA that are out of the box.
23andMe was one of the things that I thought was kind of surprising. I haven't done it myself, but generally I feel like genetic testing is not one of those things that would necessarily qualify as a medical expense.
On today's show, we'll hear from The Wall Street Journal's Matthew Riva, who's been looking into lesser-known ways you can spend your FSA dollars before they go away.
This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cyber criminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. ReliaQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest, agentic defense for the enterprise. Learn more at ReliaQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T dot com. After the break.
People give up hundreds of FSA dollars each year. In 2019, nearly half of workers forfeited some FSA money and the average amount lost was $369. That's according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. If you don't want to give up your FSA money, Matthew Riva has been pulling together a guide to what you can buy with that cash.
What is an FSA and why might you lose money in it this year?
Hi, Matthew.
Hi, how's it going?
Great. Thanks for being here. Walk me through, how do people wind up with extra FSA money and why do they end up losing it?
An FSA, or Healthcare Flexible Spending Account, is a way for people to allocate pre-tax dollars to healthcare expenses. It could be medical goods or services. During the three years of the pandemic, you were allowed to, in most cases, roll over your money from year over year. It's not typically the case. And now this year, that money expires and goes back to your employer if you don't use it by December 31st. Theoretically, if you had contributed the maximum amount, you could have more than $8,000 in your account.
Wow. All right. So this is a pile of money that's use it or lose it.
Correct.
How can a person find out what's eligible and what isn't?
The IRS website has a bunch of listings on what is and what is not eligible. But we found in our reporting that some of those can be a little confusing or ill-defined.
It's a lot for people to keep track of. Are there places where they can see all of the options for what to buy in one spot?
Standard retailers like CVS and Walgreens have the option, usually on their websites, to sort by things that are FSA eligible. And you can also go on specialty retailers that only have FSA or HSA items eligible that they have vetted. Some of those include the website FSA Store, for instance, where you can go on and they'll have a guarantee that says everything on this website we believe to be eligible.
What was the thing that most surprised you that qualifies for FSA reimbursement?
23andMe was one of the things that I thought was kind of surprising. I haven't done it myself, but generally I feel like genetic testing is not one of those things that would necessarily qualify as a medical expense.
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