Hoodwinker posted:

You should not max your FSA. You should only put as much into your FSA as you are 100% sure you will spend, otherwise you will be forced to manufacture spending to not lose out on any unspent amount. FSA money that goes unspent is returned to your employer. You get none of it.

boop the snoot posted:

$500 rolls over from year to year. Does this alter your answer at all?

Hoodwinker posted:

If $500 rolls over from 2018 to 2019 and you add nothing more and spend nothing more, does $500 roll over from 2019 to 2020?

Additionally, how long can you be certain you'll remain at this company? I would still only provide up the amount you can guarantee you'll spend. There is a real risk the money becomes unavailable to you and only a marginal gain in going above and beyond the cost. If you're young and healthy, I would especially say don't add additional money in.

Edit: let me frame it this way - if you put $500 in and spend $500, you've saved probably 24% at most, or ~$125 in taxes. If you put $500 and leave the company after spending $250, you have saved $60 but lost $250, for a total net loss of $190. There are possible outcomes involving FSAs that involve you not coming out ahead by contributing beyond your apparent needs.

boop the snoot posted:

Fair enough. I need to do more research on the purpose of HSAs and FSAs (which seem to be beyond what I’ll be needing at this point in my life). It’s not something I’ve ever been presented with so I never bothered to figure out what they are for.

nelson posted:

HSAs do allow money to be invested in mutual funds, but the fees are generally high.

nelson posted:

HSAs do allow money to be invested in mutual funds, but the fees are generally high.

DJCobol posted:

Not necessarily. I have all of my HSA funds invested in Vanguard funds and the fees are no more than my Roth or rollover IRAs. The only fee I've ever encountered is by transferring too much from the main HSA to the investment account, going below the HSA account minimum.

Devonaut posted:

I have access to vanguard funds with low ER but my HSA custodian (Health Equity) charges 0.4% per year for all funds invested, and requires me to hold $2000 in cash paying 0.1% per year.

You guys with great plans, please tell us who is your HSA with?

Devonaut posted:

I have access to vanguard funds with low ER but my HSA custodian (Health Equity) charges 0.4% per year for all funds invested, and requires me to hold $2000 in cash paying 0.1% per year.

You guys with great plans, please tell us who is your HSA with?

boop the snoot posted:

I just started my first non-military adult job and today we got our benefits info.

I have health insurance through Tricare, so I don’t need my employer’s plan. Which means I’m not eligible for an HSA.

I will be getting dental and vision through my employer.

Should I max my FSA?

laxbro posted:

I maxed mine this year, and I'm barely going to spend it down to the $500 carryover even with the birth of a child this year. Unless you can confidently predict your health costs (ie. child's braces), then I'd recommend doing a test year with like $1,000. From there, it is pretty easy to get down to the $500 limit with a few co-pays and a new pair of prescription glasses.

Thanatosian posted:

I have a Citi Dividends card that I think is part of a program that doesn't exist anymore. It's my longest-open line of credit, and I would like to convert it to a Citi Doublecash card; will this cause that line to show as closed on my credit report? It's been 18 years, so it would be a pretty big hit to my average length of open credit.

Hawkeye posted:

Thanks for the sanity check. Submitted full payment!

C-Euro posted:

Do we have a thread about start-ups or goons ITT that have been involved with start-ups? My wife is in the process of launching a start-up and crowdfunding their first run of product and she's completely miserable; I'm helping where I can but she's the type who doesn't like to delegate (especially right now while her vision of the brand isn't firmly established) so I'm looking for entrepreneurial advice so I can least help her think through some of these issues.

Fcdts26 posted:

Today my wife's parents let her know that she should expect a call from an Edward Jones Advisor regarding some money that her grandfather is gifting to her. They said her grandfather and the Edward Jones advisor are going to call and that she can either start an account with Edward Jones or get a check but she will need to provide them with her SSN. Were going to ask for a check since we don't want anything to do with EJ but why would they need her SSN for that? I'm assuming the amount is going to be under 15K ( amount has not been disclosed ) for tax purposes, I just hate giving out our SSN.

Duxwig posted:

Two years ago I addressed some health issues. I ended up paying for the equipment I needed, or a smaller percentage. Fast forward to 2018 and I start getting calls that my outstanding balance of $139.44 is going to collections - what the gently caress outstanding balance are they talking about as I had statements that were all zero'ed out. Apparently insurance "denied" a double charge for the same piece of equipment(only one of it)...and some reason this was never included in the original billing statements (adding in now after 2 years is more WTF also). I called and the provider acted all stumped and of course just pressured me to pay it.
I'm now using my employer's health care advocate to address the situation. Without even all the information they were able to inform the provider they double billed me AND over charged me since everything was to be covered by my insurance plan but $35. Advocate says they'll be changing the bill to say what I actually owe($35). As this happens, I'm looking at past statements and see I actually paid the $35 as a separate charge AND for the equipment that was to be covered. In the end the company will end up either cutting me a check or giving me a credit on future equipment.

In the mean time while the health care advocate deals with all this drivel....I get a collections notice today. I'll flip a house if this bone head mistake of theirs fucks up my credit.
Will this issue resolve itself w/ the credit agencies once it's cleared out? If not, who do I have to war with next to clear the delinquent periods? I'm owed money back so I REALLY don't want to "suck it up" and just pay another $35 that I already paid two years ago.

eddiewalker posted:

I’m sure you don’t want them to give that money to the wrong person. Imagine having a common name.

It sucks, but SS# is the best unique identifier we have.

Duckman2008 posted:

Yeah, but it isn’t smart now a days to give out your SSN to someone calling you. If that advisor is local to the poster I would advise just meeting in person.

Duckman2008 posted:

Hard to say on the $35 owed whether they’ll properly fix it. To me, if it came down to it, I would pay $35 to get it fixed, but not $139, but everyone has their threshold.

Annual credit report.com and file a dispute on all 3 reports. My wife had a health billing issue, she went to an in network provider, insurance billed her as out of network, so they charged us like, $900 instead of $200. I fought with the provider and insurance for a year or so, and they never were able to fix it so I refused to pay it. When it hit her credit, I filed a dispute and the credit agencies actually removed it.

So mileage will vary, but it’s not that bad filing a dispute and worth it to try.


Yeah, but it isn’t smart now a days to give out your SSN to someone calling you. If that advisor is local to the poster I would advise just meeting in person.

Medullah posted:

Best Buy apparently just converted my store only card into a Visa rewards card without any type of approval from me - is that going to do anything to my credit? I'm in the middle of getting a mortgage and they were abundantly clear that "opening a new card is a huge no no"

terre packet posted:

Now that freezing my credit is free, is there any reason not to do it? My credit has been steadily around 800 for years, and I'm not planning on making any big purchases anytime soon.

C-Euro posted:

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Is there a thread for joining a super small business? I know someone who wants to expand his business, which is currently very low tech. He wants me to set up a website and generally handle that poo poo that involves a computer. It would be just him and me doing electronic stuff (maybe his accountant) since it’s construction, so it would be a very easy to handle environment. He also actually respects my computer knowledge, so hopefully I wouldn’t have to fight with him too much to get what I need to help the business do as well as possible and come into the 21st century.

Anyway, that’s tangential. I just want to know if there’s a thread where I can ask about stuff like what I need to see in a business plan / projections / that sort of thing. Since it would be a pretty big expansion his previous years wouldn’t be a good representation of financials after the shift.

E: I know this might sound like a terrible idea given the questions I have to ask, but it would be steady work from home with flexible hours, which is important to me given my current personal situation, and it would at least keep me afloat while I work on freelancing websites and maybe CRMs.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

He wants to pay me in a percentage plus some salary rate. Not sure how to handle that. Maybe lower percent than initially offered but higher salary, numbers depending on what he offers and how convinced I am by his plan, forecast, and the market that he'll actually hit those numbers. I'm in CO right near Boulder which is exploding at a stupid rate for construction, so I know he has the potential to make good money. I just need to be convinced he will.

I do like the salary idea if I can get a decent amount since I sincerely doubt I'd have enough work to be working anywhere near full time on his stuff and then I would have a stable baseline per month while not having to sacrifice pay from him for pay on temporary freelancing gigs.

Thank you for the suggestions, that sort of thing definitely seems important. I'd also be consulting with a lawyer on a contract and forming an LLC for the whole thing so no unhappy customers could sue me for my personal money. I don't expect to give them reasons to be unhappy, but I've been in IT long enough to know there are lovely users even before you take managers and directors that cover my rear end out of the equation. Probably have some sort of clause in the contract with him that if what I need to handle starts booming we'll have to renegotiate the contract. Because if he somehow goes from me, him, and possibly one or two other people's computers, a website, and a CRM to a dozen users, CRM, AD, O365, ERP system and a website he would have to pay me boat money to deal with that poo poo.