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You're right, I'm getting that crossed with an FSA. Thanks, I'll go ahead and put a few bucks into ours. Adhemar posted:If you can afford it, don’t use it to pay for healthcare expenses. Invest it, save receipts, and pay yourself back later. Could you elaborate on this please?
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Nov 15, 2019 21:57
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HSAs are way better but I have a chronic condition that costs $$$ in specialist appointments/prescriptions so I definitely am the ideal use case for the FSA that i do have access to.
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Nov 15, 2019 22:13
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Yeah, FSAs aren't bad, they're not just quality investment vehicles like HSAs. An FSA is basically just a discount on medical stuff, with the downside being you need to guess ahead of time how much you'll need for the year (a bit rolls over, but not much).
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Nov 15, 2019 23:10
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500 rolls over every year. Glasses qualify, as does first aid kits, other medical supplies, sun screen, condoms, and other health related items. It comes out to about a 30% discount which is a nice little bonus. Also, they refill at the start of the year and you pay it off every pay check. But if you leave the job before it's all paid off, it's still yours and you don't owe the remainder. While I would love to also have a hsa, my company only offers one if you also do a high deductible health care plan and duuuck that noise. Hmo all the way, even as a relatively healthy early thirties.
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Nov 16, 2019 00:32
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I have a friend who is living here on a way expired visa. She had a couple money orders either expire or get lost, I can't remember which, but I remember her asking how to fill out claim forms. Anyway, she received two checks for $1,000 to replace the money orders, and asked me if there's going to be any red flags depositing the money. Today I learned you can get a bank account without a SSN or residency, fancy that. She's been told that if her account goes over 5k, they have to report to the IRS, so I'm assuming it's safe to deposit the checks if she's below that? If not, could I just have her sign them over to me and give her the money? Spikes32 posted:500 rolls over every year. Glasses qualify, as does first aid kits, other medical supplies, sun screen, condoms, and other health related items. It comes out to about a 30% discount which is a nice little bonus. Also, they refill at the start of the year and you pay it off every pay check. But if you leave the job before it's all paid off, it's still yours and you don't owe the remainder. Only $500 for condoms? 
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Nov 16, 2019 01:23
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Please source you are quotes If you’re being serious, “structuring” (ie: performing financial operations in such a way as to avoid scrutiny from the government) is a federal crime.
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Nov 16, 2019 04:34
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Well, the account does exist, so there's that. It's the bank that has said if the bank balance goes over 5k, it gets reported. It's thankfully not going to be an ongoing thing. Just a couple money orders that had to be refunded. It's not like making repeated deposits of $9,999 and trying to launder money. I guess I'll at least not have them signed over to me.
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Nov 16, 2019 04:49
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Spikes32 posted:While I would love to also have a hsa, my company only offers one if you also do a high deductible health care plan and duuuck that noise. Hmo all the way, even as a relatively healthy early thirties.
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Nov 16, 2019 06:26
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C-Euro posted:You're right, I'm getting that crossed with an FSA. Thanks, I'll go ahead and put a few bucks into ours. HSA investments grow tax free and can be distributed to pay for medical expenses tax free, even for past ones. So you’re better off letting it grow and treating it like another retirement account if you can afford to pay for healthcare costs with non HSA funds. You just have to track your expenses so you can pay yourself back later. Most HSA accounts have a way to track expenses through their website for this purpose. Bonus points if you use a credit card for your current expenses so you can collect points (but don’t get into credit card debt for it obviously). Here’s an article about it: https://www.fool.com/retirement/2019/08/10/have-a-health-savings-account-dont-make-this-mista.aspx
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Nov 16, 2019 07:31
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Id personally consider an HSA, but with the caveat that I’d never recommend it to anyone who already isn’t in a good place financially and understands the risks to truly treat it like a retirement account. You’re basically making a bet you’ll be healthy in an given year and will have cash flow to cover 10k+ in medical bills. Of course you could still cash out, but that presumes the money going is there. I think this disqualifies it for 99% of the people I know.
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Nov 16, 2019 13:10
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So basically it's another mechanism for rich (and in this case, healthy) people to get richer.
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Nov 16, 2019 14:53
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:So basically it's another mechanism for rich (and in this case, healthy) people to get richer. Sorta. It does have a much better upside theoretically and in a few years if your company does provide a decent subsidy you’d have enough money to cover a bad year with just that. You could then switch to a more traditional plan if it was a lingering issue. That being said, I’d expect it to work like 401ks in the long run. A few get decent returns now and it’s used as a cudgel to gut more traditional plans like pensions. Edit: it also has a niche upside in that it’s more portable and the money you spend compounds year over year, so it somewhat removes your dependence on your employer. The scars of 2009 make me real nervous about that actually working out, cashing out an investment account when the economy implodes seems real dubious. freeasinbeer fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 15:27
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Where is adp getting $14,000/mo from in regards to my expected expenses upon retirement (still over 30 years away)? Inflation?
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Nov 16, 2019 15:31
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What are your candle purchasing habits?
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Nov 16, 2019 15:32
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freeasinbeer posted:Id personally consider an HSA, but with the caveat that I’d never recommend it to anyone who already isn’t in a good place financially and understands the risks to truly treat it like a retirement account. You’re basically making a bet you’ll be healthy in an given year and will have cash flow to cover 10k+ in medical bills. Of course you could still cash out, but that presumes the money going is there. I think this is pretty bad advice. Many people only have one health plan choice. HDHP with an HSA as an option. Then the plan will vary wildly depending on your employer. Some employers really help out with contributions. The list goes on. Even if you never use it as an investment if you have an HDHP you you should still use your HSA (the savings account side). You still benefit from 30% ish less taxes on the money to pay your medical bills.
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Nov 16, 2019 17:26
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spwrozek posted:I think this is pretty bad advice. Many people only have one health plan choice. HDHP with an HSA as an option. Then the plan will vary wildly depending on your employer. Some employers really help out with contributions. The list goes on. I don’t think that was the context it was presented in, as the absolute only options folks have. Maybe I’m hashtag blessed, but I can chose between a PPO and a HDHP, for a ton of my coworkers I don’t think it’s the slam dunk that’s being portrayed here. If you have the extra cash flow it’s a great place to stick more tax advantaged money, but most Americans don’t have that sort of extra cash to make a bet that stocks are gonna rise against their healthcare costs. If it’s your absolutely only option don’t like turn down the HSA, but it feels disingenuous to say it’s a slam dunk better option. With HDHP plans you should expect your point of use fees to jump and things like prescriptions to increase dramatically. These are significant changes for the vast majority of Americans and I’d be real wary of giving the blanket advice that they are uniformly awesome. For folks that do wander into BFC, you are likely doing better then the vast majority so maybe my caution is misplaced.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:35
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Fair points but ultimately comes down to many factors. I would be curious to see the numbers but ultimately more and more plans are shifting to HDHP and no other option. E: looks like I am not completely correct and you are not that blessed. Granted this is for large employers. Most people I know at Samantha places only have an hdhp since it shifts the cost away from the employer. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/high-deductible-plans-more-common-but-so-are-choices.aspx E2: more good info https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db317.htm spwrozek fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 20:11
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freeasinbeer posted:Id personally consider an HSA, but with the caveat that I’d never recommend it to anyone who already isn’t in a good place financially and understands the risks to truly treat it like a retirement account. You’re basically making a bet you’ll be healthy in an given year and will have cash flow to cover 10k+ in medical bills. Of course you could still cash out, but that presumes the money going is there. It depends, too, on what sort of plans are available to you and for what cost. "High deductible" isn't necessarily much higher than a traditional PPO anymore. PPO deductibles and out of pocket maximums have been creeping up every year. My company's options for HDHP is a 1.5k deductible and 4k OOP, versus the traditional PPO of 300 deductible and 3k OOP. The HDHP even has lower coinsurance for certain things. The employee share of monthly premium is pretty much the same (negligible), plus the company chips in almost $1k/yr in HSA money if you go HDHP. If you're in a position such that the $1200 deductible and 1k OOP difference isn't a fear factor, the HDHP seems like a no-brainer choice. That said, yes, using an HSA as an investment vehicle is a bit of a "rich people" thing to do. But using it to pay medical costs tax-free is also a very beneficial thing to do with it. It's a very very good type of account to have some money in regardless of how you use it. As always, there's no universal rule and whether it makes sense for your situation is going to be case by case. Guinness fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 21:22
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For those of you on the other side of marriage How did/do you pay for child care, assuming that one of you is not a full/part time stay at home parent, and you both work full time jobs, and you don't live in an area with super affordable housing I have an in-law mother 45 minutes north of here who works 4 days a week. With the ferries she could probably do one day a week out of the goodness of her heart. Bay area child care starts at $2400/month full time which is close to what we pay per month in rent I've heard of some people paying for childcare out of their 401k, as a necessity. I don't like the idea of debt financing child care but if it's for six years as a "one time cost"...? Thoughts? We are looking at buying a "nice" house at the top of our range, but the wife is very concerned we won't be able to afford mortgage + future child care for (6/30) years of our mortgage, which seems like we would ultimately make more on house appreciation vs "debt financing" our childcare in the "short term"
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Nov 18, 2019 08:08
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Hadlock posted:For those of you on the other side of marriage Making good money in an area with a reasonable cost of living is a pretty huge help. Making average money in a high cost of living area is just bad news all around, let alone once you add kids to the mix. Outside of that, there are incentives. Dependent Care FSAs (if your work offers them) give you up to $5k of tax-free day care. IIRC the child care tax deduction is up to $3k/kid (max $6k), but it CANNOT be double-dipped with a Dependent care FSA. So for 1 kid, use the FSA to get $5k, and for 2 kids you can use the FSA and still have $1k left on the deduction. And to be clear: a medical FSA and a dependent care FSA are different things. Hadlock posted:We are looking at buying a "nice" house at the top of our range, but the wife is very concerned we won't be able to afford mortgage + future child care for (6/30) years of our mortgage, which seems like we would ultimately make more on house appreciation vs "debt financing" our childcare in the "short term" I promise you this: If it's at the top of your affordability range right now, you WILL NOT be able to afford it once you have kids. At all. Ever. Do not buy more house than you can afford in general, but kids are expensive. If you know you're going to have kids, you need to include that in your budget before you buy a house. Also appreciation is relative. Houses on average appreciate BARELY higher than inflation. Just barely. So don't assume that by buying a more expensive house that you'll get your money back. It's a house, not an investment, so treat it that way. You're signing yourself up for 6-ish years of financial hell just so you can have a "nice" house. Don't forget that even once day care is done, kids still cost money. Summer camp, field trips, extra-curriculars, etc. etc. You'll spend less once they're in public school, but you won't be completely off the hook. I assume you're going to send them to public school, or else the "day care" cost never really goes away. An alternative would be to buy a house on the lower end of your range, use the additional funds for day care, and then once the kid(s) are out of day care you can buy a bigger house.
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Nov 18, 2019 14:35
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Thanks for the HSA advice, I'm early 30s and (fortunately) in good health so I don't think about these things in as much depth as I should. Until some physical therapy sessions this year I was basically doing two dental check-ups and one doctor's office trip per year. Not all of our health plan options offer the HSA but one of our CDHP options has an HSA with employer contributions that looks kind of tempting. "Free" money seems nice. E: The bummer is that I signed up for our cheapest health care plan when I started working here in September and immediately had a bunch of physical therapy appointments that cost me some money thanks to said cheap-o plan. Now we're in open enrollment so I'm eyeing our more expensive PPO plan...but my last scheduled PT appointment is the day after enrollment ends and I don't know if I'll need to go back after that. Picking a health care plan sucks, who knew? C-Euro fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 18, 2019 14:59
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We had some family help early on but my in-laws were getting older. We put our daughter into daycare once she was potty trained for a few days a week then went to 5 days if I remember correctly. I’m in a high-ish cost of living area (north jersey) so the cost wasn’t as bad and this was 16 years ago. If I remember I took advantage of the FSA and I went without a new car the whole time. Not shelling out 300-400 per month on a car payment went right towards the day care. Once she got into grade school it was a bit cheaper but we still needed after school care. The local boys & girls club had an after school program and we used that right through grade 5.
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Nov 18, 2019 15:25
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Hadlock posted:For those of you on the other side of marriage When my first son was born I took home ~3k/mo as a resident doctor and my wife took home ~2k as a public high teacher. She took 6 months off but then we did full time daycare. Cost $1300 a month and went up 3% a year. Luckily our rent was only $1100 but it was still a financial blow. When we had our second 2 years later she quit after using up her sick leave. Working at a loss isn’t doable.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:46
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Hadlock posted:For those of you on the other side of marriage Kids are expensive, can't get around it, and daycare usually ends up being the cost of a 2nd rent/mortgage no matter where you are. In fact it's almost always been the exact same cost as my rent at the time now that I think about it. If you're going the daycare route, your kid can and will get kicked out of daycare at the most inopportune times for the dumbest reasons (oh no, Timmy had a one time temp to 100.5 with his cold, can't bring him in for 24 hrs), so plan to have some kind of backup system in place too, which may be costly depending on your options. Another thing is that daycare places may not give you a discount if you do 4 days instead of 5 days a week, and only give you reduced rates for 3 days or less, so double check with the individual daycare options what they're like. Other costs that will pop up: clothes, food/diapers, healthcare. Planning to save for college for them? Add that in too. Also, 6 years of care costs may not be realistic depending on your work schedules. Unless you can deal with 8AM drop offs and 3PM pick ups, you may still need to find before/after school coverage for a few more years, though at least it's significantly cheaper than full-time daycare. Depending on how much each of you make, there is a real question to answer about whether it financially makes sense to both continue to work full time + daycare vs one person doing the stay-at-home parent thing. It's also pretty stressful to be dealing with young kids, home upkeep and everything else life throws at you when both of you are working, vs having someone who can be dedicated to handling the home front. If you're both working, are you going to consider paying for house cleaning/lawn maintenance/etc to try to take some of the load off? Well count that in your budget too. For reference, my wife I and do the dual full-time work with kids thing and send them to daycare, and we've made it work so far, but it has been hard, and unanticipated issues that throw off your carefully laid plans become really hard to deal with. Would run the numbers on your overall budget assuming you already know what childcare costs are (and estimate overall costs at least a little higher than you think) and see what mortgage + home upkeep/repair (start with 1-2% of house purchase price per year) you can actually afford, so you don't end up getting screwed after you've purchased a house. I would not finance childcare out of your 401k, I would instead take a hard look at your budget and see what you can afford. Better to not have your future kids potentially have to pay for you in old age.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:00
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Hadlock posted:For those of you on the other side of marriage My wife and I do fairly well in a LCOL area and it was still tough on our budget once we suddenly had 3 kids in daycare ($2100/mo vs. your $2400 for one) as we wanted to keep contributing to retirement accounts. Once we were paying that kind of money we started looking at other options and ended up going with an Au Pair. I had always thought of Au Pairs as something for the wealthy and assumed they were super expensive, but if you have the room for it (they need their own bedroom) it works out to $1600/mo plus the increase in bills from having another person under your roof. Doesn't go up depending on geographic location or how many kids need care either. I imagine the math comes out net positive at 2 kids even in MCOL areas, though it's probably a bigger ask to have a spare bedroom available in H/MCOL areas. We have definitely met some families through the program that fit the stereotype though, just one kid who goes to full time daycare plus an Au Pair to help out. Crazy. Like I said we are in a LCOL area though, and that definitely helps. Taking out a 401k loan so you can buy a bigger house on the hopes it will appreciate more doesn't seem worth it though.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:47
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I just got a letter today from Fidelity stating that they'd be taking over management of the Amazon 401(k) program from Vanguard. I haven't worked at Amazon for over a decade, so the account's just been sitting there. I'd rather keep the money at Vanguard for simplicity's sake; the letter (and the website) don't have any details AFAICT on what will happen to ex-employees' balances, but I'm confident that they'll be hoovering up everything they can so Fidelity can get those management fees for itself. I'll be trying to figure out exactly what will happen to the account if I take no action, but I don't suppose there's some way I can do an end run on the issue and just convert the entire account into a Vanguard target retirement balance or something? Without sacrificing the 401(k) tax benefits of course.
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Nov 18, 2019 23:51
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You can transfer (“rollover”) the funds into an IRA or another 401k (such as your current employer’s). Those are your two options for maintaining tax-free growth status. e: or you could leave it and let Fidelity manage it. They’re fine, and they may even offer Vanguard funds within the Fidelity 401k.
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Nov 18, 2019 23:53
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I'm currently un/self-employed. I'll look into the rollover though, thanks. And I'm not really worried about Fidelity as a bad option in itself. I just don't want to split my investments up willy-nilly across multiple different providers.
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Nov 19, 2019 00:44
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DNK posted:They’re fine, and they may even offer Vanguard funds within the Fidelity 401k. This. We’ll be able to keep our funds (I work at Amazon).
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Nov 19, 2019 03:13
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm currently un/self-employed. I'll look into the rollover though, thanks. A rollover IRA would be just fine then. At minimum it's a safe space to keep your money until your next 401(k). TooMuchAbstraction posted:I just don't want to split my investments up willy-nilly across multiple different providers. Eh, it's not the end of the world. I have a Fidelity and Vanguard right now because my current job is Fidelity and my previous was Vanguard (that had 1 year prior moved away from Fidelity). Haven't rolled over because the old company had some dirt-cheap expense ratios on the funds. With that in mind, check out the expense ratios before you move the money. I would expect that Amazon was able to negotiate some decently low fees. It may be to your benefit to keep your money parked.
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Nov 19, 2019 13:44
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I have an HSA question, I've asked my HR guy and tax person and got completely opposite answers. Google isn't helping with my exact situation. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. Currently, we have high deductible health insurance and an HSA through my employer. I contributed the max amount but due to my son's orthodontics and a couple other things we will have approximately $2,000 in unreimbursed expenses at year's end. We are switching to a high deductible plan and HSA through my wife's employer next year. I want to know if I can use funds contributed to the 2020 HSA to reimburse costs incurred in 2019. My HR rep says I cannot do this as the expenses were incurred before the account will be created. My tax person says I can do this since I have an existing HSA and am just switching to a different "provider" (my word, not the tax person's). I know that if I was continuing on the same plan that I could do this. However, everything I can find online says I cannot but I haven't found anything that specifically applies to this exact situation. What say you SA?
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Nov 22, 2019 02:42
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Do you absolutely need the $2,000 now? If not I would say the question isn't can you reimburse yourself, but rather, should you, and the answer is no. That $2k will in all likelihood serve you much better in your HSA investment account.
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Nov 22, 2019 03:14
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I believe the rule is that as long as you were covered by an HSA-eligible HDHP (and had established an HSA account) at the time the costs were incurred, you can use “future” HSA dollars on them. Conversely, I believe you can spend HSA money on any qualified medical expenses after the contribution date, regardless of whether you are currently covered by an HDHP. Most HSA restrictions are about contributions and less about distributions. I am not a tax attorney but some google results seem to agree: https://60minutefinance.com/can-reimburse-old-medical-bill-hsa/ I don’t trust company HR people for any real tax advice. Guinness fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 22, 2019 03:14
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What is the general rule for a house down payment? Is pulling 401k contribution back to match normal in order to stockpile cash more quickly, or is it better to keep on contributing to max out the 401k / max IRA and take more time to reach down payment + closing costs? I have no debt, $10k EF, about $120k in taxable brokerage, am looking at ~$250k places, and am able to save about $4k/mo while maxing IRA/HSA/401k. Figure another $2k/mo if I shove off the retirement funding while I save the $60k estimated I'll need for down payment and closing costs. 15 months versus 10. I would greatly prefer not to liquidate my taxable account as it would feel like a kick in the balls. BlackMK4 fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Dec 1, 2019 |
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Dec 1, 2019 04:43
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BlackMK4 posted:What is the general rule for a house down payment? Liquidate the taxable. Don't lose out forever on tax advantaged space. It's way cheaper and easier to refill your taxable account.
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Dec 1, 2019 04:59
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Anyone have hot tips for exchanging + sending money? I'm trying to send money from a bank in Canada to a bank in South Korea. I've setup what I can only assume is the worst possible option where I just send it from bank to bank and lose a bunch through the various made up fees and %s the Canadian bank charges. I Googled it and it said to send an envelope of bills which sounds pretty cool but a little risky for my liking. I've seen Usain Bolt showing up in a lot of Xoom ads, that's a good sign right? If you have any tips that would be great. Thank you!
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Dec 1, 2019 16:23
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BlackMK4 posted:What is the general rule for a house down payment? Dropping the 401k contribution down to whatever is matched is fine. It’s what most of us who own houses did I’m guessing.
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Dec 1, 2019 16:34
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nelson posted:Dropping the 401k contribution down to whatever is matched is fine. It’s what most of us who own houses did I’m guessing. Most people who own houses didn't have enough to cover twice their down payment sitting in a taxable brokerage account when they bought their house, or the ability to save $4k/month towards a down payment while still maxing 401k/IRA/HSA. The smart moves are to either just pull the money out of taxable (assuming it's not earmarked for something else already) or to hold off for a few months to save a specific down payment fund. Heck, it'd probably be better to just get a low-down-payment loan and eat PMI for a little while than to decrease 401k contributions. 20% equity will come fast with $4k/month going into a ~$230k loan.
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Dec 1, 2019 16:42
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Liquidate part of the taxable. It’s the smartest number go down option, even if it “feels” bad.
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Dec 1, 2019 16:55
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nelson posted:Dropping the 401k contribution down to whatever is matched is fine. It’s what most of us who own houses did I’m guessing. This does not make sense when they have a 50% down payment sitting in a taxable brokerage or the ability to save the entire down payment without impacting retirement contributions at all in ~12 months. Touching their retirement is the worst possible idea short of taking a fha loan. Edit: there is a home buying thread if you want to come by and get this same advice from other people. We can also get you help in shopping for your house, mortgage, and other moving costs.
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Dec 1, 2019 17:26
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