Helping employees plan for a healthy new year with spending accounts

A new year means new resolutions, new spending account limits, and a greater focus on health for many. What better way to get the new year on-track than to encourage your employees to plan out their health-related expenses?

Regardless of whether your employees have a health savings account (HSA) or a flexible spending account (FSA), they have options for utilizing them to ensure a healthy new year. And as we come off open enrollment, now is a great time to help them make the most of these tax-advantaged saving and spending opportunities.

FSAs aren’t just for optical care
When it comes to FSAs, we see a lot of folks making last-minute end-of-year purchases for items like eyeglasses to ensure their funds are spent. While it’s smart to use these funds on valuable purchases, it might even be smarter to take some time at the beginning of the year to plan out any potential health-related expenses.

While we know it is impossible to predict a year’s worth of health expenses due to myriad uncertainties – how much one should expect to spend on a specific procedure, and which procedures to anticipate – copays, OTC medications, routine and annual appointments are usually somewhat predictable.

Communicate the many perks
There are many ways that your employees can use their HSA or FSA. An HSA provides a tax-advantaged way to save money for expenses – and even invest that money to maximize savings. An FSA is an employer-owned funding vehicle that allows individuals to use pre-tax income to pay for eligible out-of-pocket medical expenses not covered by insurance.

Here are a few tips for contributing to your HSA that we encourage sharing with your HSA-holding employees.

Seeding your employees for success
Set your employees up for a successful and healthy 2023 by prioritizing their health – physically, mentally and financially. Seed employee HSAs to give them a head start. For additional insights about how seeding can be beneficial for both employers and their employees, check out Planting a Seed: How employers can help foster HSA adoption.

At the end of the day, you want to see your employees happy and healthy. And helping them take charge of their medical and health-related expenses is a great way to show them you care and help them kick off their new year.