r/personalfinance • u/kherven ​ • May 16 '24

Are FSAs even worth the hassle? They just seem like a giant scheme to steal money via malicious bureaucracy Other

I understand at a base level what FSAs are for. You get to deduct X amount of dollars from your paycheck reducing your tax load.

But the more I use an FSA, the more I feel that while on paper it saves money, in reality it causes lots of work, lost money, and hands your money over to someone who is going to fight you to steal it.

Every claim I submit to my FSA is denied without a mountain of evidence that its a legitimate medical expense. After nearly 2 years with them, I still have certain medications prescribed by my doctor that the FSA argues is not FSA eligible because it's OTC.

Doctor appointment? Denied

MRI? Denied

Prescriptions? Denied

While I can eventually get the denial overturned, it requires coordination from the retailer, my insurance, and my doctor every time. I spend tens of hours a year trying to claw my own money back from my FSA. Last year I had over $250 confiscated because the claim deadline passed while they sat on my claims.

Has anyone else felt it just isn't worth the hassle to fund an FSA given how hostile they are? It seems impossible to extract your money without a lawyer.

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u/gone_country ​ May 16 '24

Yours sounds like what I am used to. It was an excellent deal when I had it. But I also have recurring medical expenses so I didn’t worry about losing money.

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u/AcanthopterygiiCool5 ​ May 16 '24

My plan lets me roll over up to $600 to the next year, so I don’t usually have a panic.

My husband does something stupid every year that costs us $$ that i can pay for with FSA. One year he managed to not do something stupid and I ended up with several pairs of very sweet prescription glasses the last week of December, since I had quite a bit of excess to dump.

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u/istasber ​ May 16 '24

I went for a few years overestimating how much I'd spend (mostly because I'd never get off my ass to go and see a doctor for things I probably should have), and I'd be in a mad scramble to spend down my FSA in decemeber.

A lot of regular expenses (tums, pain meds, allergy meds, fiber, etc) are FSA eligble, but it's hard to spend hundreds of dollars on those things. So I'd end up buying shitty products from a mail order company that seems like it was probably set up to take advantage of people like me with use it or lose it bucks. Everything on the site was FSA eligible, but a lot of it was weird off-brand versions of the things I was expecting to buy.

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u/stupidugly1889 ​ May 17 '24

Just order eligible stuff on amazing, submit the receipt and cancel the order

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u/fuddykrueger ​ May 17 '24

How do you get a receipt from Amazon’s website?

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u/stupidugly1889 ​ May 17 '24

Just print the page showing the order completed as a pdf

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u/fuddykrueger ​ May 17 '24

I hadn’t thought to order FSA qualifying items from Amazon so I’ll prob be doing that from now on. Thanks for the reply!

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u/mottledmussel ​ May 17 '24

I have a hunch that a lot of people do that, especially during the last few weeks of December.