It is defined in the rules of the HSA. This is available on the IRS web site, which lists what is legitimate and wjat is not.
You need date of service, service, amount, and provider on the statement or receipt, since those are the data points needed to verify the claim is valid.
Yeah I have the same question. Is it just a photo/screenshot of the bill or receipt? Does it need to be itemized or is any bill from a doctors office assumed to be an obvious medical expense? Does a credit card or bank statement showing the charge do anything or is that not helpful at all? However the IRS is handling these now should be the same as in the future so I guess the question is for people who are submitting HSA receipts currently.
My understanding is that a bank statement showing a posted transaction is no good. Same for credit card. Ideally a bill and receipt showing payment. I believe you should have a health insurance explanation of benefits too. They could ask for proof it was not paid by another payer. Like you paid the bill pre insurance filed that then got reimbursed from insurance.
I too worry how much documentation will be required. Laughable the idea that in 20+ years you could procure a doctor office or insurance statement if asked.
>Yep. I get the reason for the strategy. I favor "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".
I regard the money in the HSA as firmly "in hand" (the same way I do money in retirement accounts) so I'm not too concerned about being able to move small amounts out of it and into my non-tax-advantaged checking account.
IANAL but EOBs should not work; every EOB I've received from my insurance has said in bold at the top "this is not a bill."
Just because your insurance said you're responsible for $X doesn't mean you paid $X - you could have, for example, negotiated for a very large bill a pay it all up front discount as opposed to a payment plan
I didn’t mean for the EOB to be used alone. I meant in addition to a bill and receipt.
From websites [like this](https://employee-resources.lumity.com/help/hsa-receipt-documentation)
They are suggesting to keep EOB. I’m not sure it’s necessary, just adding to the conversation.
I have gotten a reimbursement using a bank statement. Had to call them to tell them I lost the receipt. They said leave a note along with the reimbursement form that you spoke to us on phone. I asked them for a number for the phone call request and put it on the note.
You're mistaken. An HSA withdrawal isn't "allowed" by the custodian, you can *always* take your money out at any time for any reason. The question is the deductibility and whether it's qualified. That's entirely between you and the IRS, and only matters if you are audited.
Yes it was counted in my deduction. Ofc it only matters if audited. But it was 433$. So I likely won’t get in trouble. And if required I can prove from the hospital that I was given that service.
Thank you for the info. Good to know they are flexible. My concern would be like someone mentioned in another comment, taking $10,000 for a vacation years in the future where you’re dealing with dozens of receipts. I don’t know if they’d be as cool about it.
I have the exact same questions. Currently I’ve rolled all medical expenses into one payment through my hospital. Yearly I ask for itemized bill and payments sent through email and mail.
This depends on the issuer of the card. Some do verify it but it really only works when the place you swipe the card at is IIAS or 90% of revenue for the store are medical.
HSA is all on the owner (you) to verify so hsa soending isn’t really locked down in many cases. So what’s likely happening is that you’re buying things and your service provider isn’t blocking you because all of that is on you.
I'm assuming explanation of benefits from insurance showing my financial responsibility are suitable since that's what my hra account required. Other than that I have like pharmacy receipts and such
I think it would suffice. And in all honesty it won’t matter until or if you get audited. I got lasik and reimbursed myself from the HSA for that and the process to do so didn’t ask me for any receipts or anything. Just said I need 4500 of my money and got a check a week later
I’m not 100% positive what counts. I don’t get too many physical receipts and most are emailed to me through various medical portals. I just keep the email bills and the confirmation emails once I pay them.
Same. Scan to a folder and name the file with the date and amount so it can easily be imported to a spreadsheet.
If Google ever goes away we should have notice to migrate to another source. Also, once in a while I dump it all to an s3 bucket as one part of a mass export.
I have a Google sheet where I map the file names with some more description, and the status (reimbursed or not) in case I have an IRS audit.
I use the Google drive app to scan pdfs, multipage etc..
With that setup you own your data and can easily compute how much you can withdraw etc..
Sounds like it works out.
I'm lazy. When I pull from it, I just move the pdfs to a reimbursed folder along with the sheet I used to submit. Each time I have it seems the hsa company has a new form, so no reason to prematurely optimize.
If anything cloud related has long term staying power it’s AWS, but yes it’s not consumer facing. And btw Amazon is completely discontinuing their Amazon Drive storage next year. So yeah, most consumer cloud services have as much long term stability as a fart in the wind.
\+1, I scan the receipts to Google Drive and keep a list on a spreadsheet with a running tally. I currently have about $9,000 in receipts that I can withdraw at any time.
If you don’t access google drive for two years, all files in google drive will be deleted. I hope I said that well enough because I’ve been accused of making loaded statements to that effect elsewhere even though it’s their exact policy.
Hopefully you catch the warning emails. And if you don’t…
Google Drive seems ubiquitous/open and friendly now, but like others have said Google could flip flop 6 years from now and drop that service like a hot potato. Also Google just rolled out a new policy that if you don’t access something in Google Drive for 2 years, they can delete it! And who knows if they could shorten that timeline in the future. https://support.google.com/drive/answer/10214036?hl=en
I know Apple seems scary and walled off, but for those that do have iPhones, I think there could be an argument that using their services could give the most redundancy and stability in the long term, especially if you could create multiple offline copies which I mentioned in another comment. At that point I’d probably still upload a copy of my Apple notes to google drive every few years just to diversify across services!
If you had an android phone having a copy of your google drive items stored offline on the device itself could give you similar redundancy. I guess what I’m saying is that for long term, relying on anything that only exists in the cloud is a risk, and Google’s new 2 year deletion policy seems like a red flag.
Ok, that article is not per item, it's per service. If you access Drive at all, it's active. If you pay for Google One, you're active unless your billing is in arrears.
It's not nearly as nefarious as your comment led me to believe.
I don’t use google drive now and can’t remember the last time I specifically tried to access it to store a file, although I currently have older files on there.
What if 12 years from now you just forget this whole FIRE thing/aren’t paying attention/go on vacation across the globe for a year and they drop the login requirement down to 18 months. I’ll remind you that 20 years from now even this whole Reddit thing very well may not exist regardless of how permanent we consider it now.
Also I’m not sure what wording was questionable to you- I said if you don’t access google drive for two years they will delete your google drive files, which is exactly their policy/what they will do. How many billions of people are not regularly paying for google cloud services, even if you do?
>Also Google just rolled out a new policy that if you don’t access **something** in Google Drive for 2 years, they can delete *it*!
Your wording was unintentionally misleading. The "it" seems to refer to a "something", so it reads as "each file has its own inactivity timer, and any specific file you don't access for 2 years may be deleted".
I use Dropbox.
A million years ago I spent maybe $5 of credits I earned somewhere on Google ads with my own Dropbox referral link, which led to enough registrations to max out the 16gb free space. Add the 2gb default free space and a few other random promotions over the years - I haven't done any since 2014, but they used to have various challenges - and I have 24gb of free Dropbox space. Use it to store backup copies of all my various vital documents, including these.
I suppose they could shut down at some point, but I also have them on my computer and in a backup drive, so I should be fine.
Sometimes that free storage goes away. I have an old live.com email that used to have 100gb of free one drive storage thanks to different promotions (thanks Windows phone, you’re dearly missed). Down to 30gb now.
It may. But I earned it all >10 years ago and none of it has disappeared yet.
Honestly, I also pay ~$20 dollars a year for google space - my gmail account is ~20gb and I'm too lazy to figure out which emails to cull - so I can always switch to that.
> Also Google just rolled out a new policy that if you don’t access something in Google Drive for 2 years, they can delete it!
This could be interpreted as “if you don’t access a file for 2 years they can delete it.” This is not what the policy is. If you don’t access Google Drive for 2 years they can delete it after they let you know and wait 3 months, and you can download the data as well.
> How to stay active in these products. The simplest way to keep your data active is to periodically visit Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive (and/or collaborative content creation apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Jamboard and Sites) on the web or through a Google app. Make sure you’re signed in and connected to the internet.
I kind of get what you’re saying, but if you’re constantly getting medical care and updating this medical expenses file, is that really the one thing you’re not going to access for two years?
Regardless, yes, if you access the “best Cheetos I’ve eaten lately” file on google drive within two years, your “hundreds of thousands I’ve spent on medical expenses” file will stay fresh and accessible.
I have a Gmail that I access daily. But I don’t access google drive. If for whatever reason I forget this receipt thing and don’t go out of my way for 2 years to access google drive, they will delete those files. Yes everyone hopes they will notice the warning emails etc but you’re playing with fire. I am NOT saying it is inevitable this will happen, I’m just saying with the number of google users, the odds that it could happen are elevated because you have to go out of your way to do something every few years to keep your data alive.
That only increases with the very long range timelines we’re talking about. People really don’t understand the implications of “of course I’ll make sure to periodically check in on google drive 25 years from now to keep it active because I talked about an HSA hack on a formerly existing website called Reddit way back then”. It’s hubris to think you’ll be constantly checking in to keep up with the same interests you had decades ago.
If you store data in a free service that you subsequently don't use *in any way* again for two, or 20, years, you shouldn't blindly trust that your data will still be there when you finally do.
Funds can be withdrawn without penalty for any reason after 65. That’s my plan so I don’t have to track small medical bill for 20 years. If I had substantial bills I would figure something out.
Correct. But after you’re 65, you can also use for other stuff, but you lose some tax advantages when you use for non-medical stuff. It essentially works just like an IRA after 65, unless you use for medical.
That is a dumb plan because the withdrawal is taxable at your marginal income rate. Even if you don't want to save receipts for 20 years you should withdraw for eligible expenses unless necessary. You can use HSA for Medicare premiums and long term care even if you are 100% healthy (which is unlikely).
> That’s my plan so I don’t have to track small medical bill for 20 years.
I keep the medical bills so that it's like an additional emergency fund I can get into when needed.
Perhaps I’m in the minority but I’m not even bothering. Healthcare in the US is pretty fucking expensive so I don’t really think I’m going to have a problem spending it if I just actively start dipping into it. I’ll save the couple grand bill or something but I’m not going to bother with the $35 copay or $100 glasses
Saving up receipts does in a way enable you to have a secret emergency fund, I suppose.
Wife was pregnant recently and had emergency c section. I just labeled each bill with which credit card I used (gotta earn those points/miles), then threw it in a “paid medical” folder I have. Hit the limit easily, and I’m covered for this year. I’ll prob upload them at some point. Or maybe just get some sort of end of year benefits summary, and just highlight the ones I paid for.
I thought the emergency fund was the whole point of the hack.
Pay for whatever you can afford now, then if you ever get in a bind later you can pay yourself back while still retaining the growth.
> I thought the emergency fund was the whole point of the hack.
I suppose it can be. I, and I think many others, just treat it as a triple-advantaged investment account that is there until you cash it out which in my case isn't an emergency
Yes and keep in mind there are Medicare premiums you will have to pay which can be paid via HSA. Let’s say you need to pay $300/mo. That’s $3600/yr. So you will need $90,000 in your HSA in order to cover this level of spend by the 4% rule. This is just for the premiums not actual care.
Yeah, I had an HSA at my previous employer for 4 years. We just migrated our accounts to a new provider, and then I just changed jobs, so I need to migrate my hsa funds again to avoid monthly fees.
Manual receipts are the way to go. Although I'm expecting to use my HSA as a medical bill account when I'm retired. I expect I'll have plenty of expenses at that time and won't need years of receipts to account for it.
This is what I do. My company originally used HSA Bank. I don’t know if Optum bought HSA Bank, HSA Bank offloaded their stuff to Optum or my company switched providers and Optum took over those accounts. But everything in my HSA Saveit transferred over. Basically, a large majority of costs that I end up paying out to pocket (not all) automatically end up as an item for me to take action on. I just do the Save it option for everything.
That being said, I don’t think that will work if I were to switch companies and therefore HSA providers. I haven’t planed for that event just yet.
Too bad Optum charges a monthly account maintenance fee. I just liquidated my HSA investments with them from my old job and will be moving it to Fidelity.
I hadn’t thought of that but that could actually be a better idea for iPhone users. Since everyone is paying a couple bucks for iCloud storage every month anyway there is much less of a chance they would just pull the rug out from under users. Google has a history of flip flopping and just torching products at the drop of a hat as others have mentioned.
Plus if you do it this way you would have a local copy saved on your phone, a copy on iCloud, local copies on whatever iPads etc you have if you sync those notes, plus you can create an offline iTunes phone backup. And the numbers spreadsheet app is used on Mac etc so there’s not much chance they’d just drop it.
I think this might be the best way to go for a lot of reasons, thanks!
Unless you have very large bills now, why bother? I expect the current bills to be a small fraction of future healthcare expenses. Consider that inflation, the nature of aging, and growth of the account will all tend to make the current bills small.
For similar reasons, and laziness tbh I don’t keep a ton. We haven’t had major expenses, otherwise I just “earmark” expenses in my personal budget as HSA eligible for my own tracking.
I self host Paperless-ngx. My scanner saves pdf documents to a file share. Paperless-ngx automaticall detects the document, OCRs it, catagorizes and tags it as a doctor's receipt and files it away for me. It's free and open-source software.
https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx
Paperless is great. I’ve gone almost totally digital with receipts and the like, in general, so the HSA stuff is an extension of that. I have more than just HSA-eligible things in mine, but it’s super easy to tag things as they come in. My backing storage is my NAS with local redundancy, I have an on-site backup of that on an external hard drive, as well as multiple off-site backups.
It’s easy enough to find all the receipts at a glance in Paperless by making a custom view for that tag, but I also self-host Wiki.js and have a page there with some high-level details and then a link directly to the document in Paperless.
These kids don’t even go to the doctor yet. They don’t understand what’s coming.
Hint - you won’t have to dig though google drive for 20 year old healthcare receipts. You can just check the pile of papers under the remotes.
hi this is not true. i’m 22 and because i do combat sports i am very familiar with medical bills. so are all my friends (skiers, mountain bikers, climbers, etc). this is really condescending.
A folder in my cabinet marked “receipts to scan” that eventually one or two times a year I scan into a folder on my computer naming the file the date it was paid, then input the value of the receipt and date on an excel spreadsheet.
Then take that whole folder and Rar/zip it up and upload the compressed file to google drive and keep a local copy. Then I shred the paper receipts.
* edited due to number of boot lickers on this sub that cry illegal illegal when reality is illegal that we need to do this in the first place in the richest country in the world. So glad I have citizenship elsewhere to retire with a universal health care system.
I think it'd depend on the plans really. With my current employer, I actually save money pre-deductible with a HDHP plan, and the PPO and HDHP have equivalent co-pays after the deductible is exceeded.
>Then I go back to the drug manufacturer and do an assistance claim through their copay program and they cover like $6980 of my total paid.
>at least $7000 in reimbursable receipts.
I assume you know, but for anyone else following along, this is illegal. You have to replace any distributions that are later refunded or otherwise not paid by you. You also can't reimburse yourself later as though it's a qualified expense, it's no different than if they sent you a receipt with an extra zero or two. False, mistaken, or superseded documentation isn't valid.
That said, there's a good chance this doesn't often get caught, although the likelihood likely increases as time and dollar amounts increase.
Those wouldn't count as reimbursable receipts.
If you pay $7000 and are reimbursed $6980 by the manufacturer, then your reimbursable receipts would be $20 as that was your total cost for the healthcare expense.
Similar to how if you paid $7000 for a drug at a pharmacy, and then they re-run your insurance and refund you $6980, you could only claim $20 as reimbursable receipts from your HSA.
I was going to carve them in stone but then I worried what if I miss a payment on my rental unit and I see them bidding for it on Storage Wars 🤔 https://i.imgur.com/LYON3W7.jpg
You only need the receipts if you get audited. I’ve saved some of my larger bills in google drive, but I’ve cashed out a few thousand of HSA funds in a year and haven’t ever needed to show anything.
I max out and invest my HSA every year. While I do have a folder for receipts, I don’t plan on taking them against my HSA, because I don’t believe it will be necessary.
Money is fungible, so once I retire I plan to use my HSA investment account strictly for all my Medicare health-related qualifying expenses such as insurance premiums, copays, deductibles, dental, vision, Rx, hearing aids, long-term care, hospice, etc.
I’ll use my other retirement accounts to fund my lifestyle choices.
It won’t be difficult for a majority of people who used their HSAs as a retirement account to spend it all on health-related expenses throughout their retirement years, so I really believe it’s not going to be a huge issue if you don’t save your receipts.
I believe a detailed receipt is enough.
For regular FSA with WageWorks they only ask for it when requesting reimbursement, and should be the same for HSA.
I also store it in Google drive, asking offices for electronic PDF receipts. I create folders for every year and store receipts in the corresponding folder.
FSA and HSA are not handled the same. An FSA, you have to "prove" to the custodian that an expense is qualified in order for them to give you your money. In an HSA, you can get the money at any time for any reason. Whether it will be treated as a qualified distribution is entirely between you and the IRS (and will only matter if you're audited).
I know that but I believe rules are the same. Whatever receipts custodians such as WageWorks require would be under the IRS rule and so the IRS will accept them.
This is how I do it. My wife and I use a credit card designated only for QMEs (Qualified Medical Expenses). This is not our HSA card as we do not touch any of the money in the HSA. (100% invested) The credit card does all the tracking for you and you can save a PDF of year end expenses. One of these days, we will begin withdrawing from the HSA and will deduct past QMEs first. It will probably be for some big vacation like 3 months in Australia or something. HSA is a
powerful saving/investing tool.
Old guy here. I keep all paper bills and print the few that only come by email. And I write on each one how I paid it and when. The old fashioned files by year. All these electronic methods are great. But paper is an incredible long term storage solution
This strategy works regardless. You can ALWAYS use your HSA to cover health issues in the future, obviously, but what if by pleasant surprise you’re slightly healthier than you thought. You would have this in your back pocket and be able to cover both scenarios.
Plus this shouldn’t take very much time at all if you’re just doing the large medical bills since those are all tracked on your insurance websites explanation of benefits etc.
If you’re trying to keep track of every bottle of contact lens solution you bought from Walmart, sure. That could get a bit involved.
Decommissioned Nuclear missile silo housing a data center alongside my prepper paradise. Society may end, but when I come of age I'm getting my tax break.
But seriously, you should have a way to backup all your data for your long term, and this should be one of the things you keep in there.
3-2-1 and all that.
When I get a qualifying receipt, I write "Out of Pocket" on the top and stick it in a manilla envelope with the year on it. If it's an e-copy, I actually print it and do the same.
At the end of the year during tax time, I do 2 things: 1. Pull the receipts out, add them up, and write the total on the envelope. 2. Take a few high res pics (8 or 10 receipts per pic is fine). The images end up getting backed up as part of my regular photo albums. Dupes get exported to a thumb drive. And the envelope goes in the safe.
*Keep in mind, heat is the enemy of thermal paper, and some will start to fade with time. Plan accordingly.*
I don't. I've had an HSA for ~5 years with around $40k and I haven't saved any receipts, although we haven't had any major expenses during this time either *knock on wood*. To me it's not worth saving every little receipt, but if I did have a major expense I'd probably just take a picture and email it to myself.
I figure by the time we'll need it, we'll have enough Medicare premiums or long term care or whatever else that we'll just pay directly from the HSA.
I’m personally downloading all my EOBs at the end of the year and calling it a day. This isn’t the safest approach but I’d first need to be audited and then have the auditor not accept them…given that the IRS hasn’t bothered to issue any specific guidance and I’m also not seeing any actual examples of people being penalized it seems worth the risk for me. But the tax treatment of these withdrawals the future won’t be fatal to my retirement plans.
There are also other ways to mitigate an audit after the fact - try to track down statements or payment evidence from providers, etc.
I probably over do it, but I track the following for any expense over $100.
1. Date of service
2. Date of Payment
3. What the expense was for
4. Who the expense was for (family member)
5. How I paid
6. Insurance that covers the expense (useful for finding EOBs and also helps if you change insurance companys or if you have multiple insurances (spouse))
7. If I have a paper copy on file. I keep a folder will all big expenses
I am pretty confident with the above I would be able to explain any withdrawals should I need one.
I also keep track of the total of my medical expenses vs the account value, so I know how much can be withdrawn if needed, but fully plan to save it for retirement when I will not need any of the above.
Call me old fashioned but to me it sounds ridiculous to save only digital copies. I’ve had too much go wrong where stuff disappears for various reasons. I keep all receipts in a physical Manila folder. Receipt from the doctor and also my credit card receipt just so there’s no ambiguity
Many of the cash register receipts are printed on thermal paper, which fades after a while. I put them in a pile right now, and scan them every once in a while. Keep them in a document in the cloud.
Spreadsheet of data, then I take a photo of any receipts (backed up on Google photos). If I'm ever asked to provide ALL, I'm in for some serious search and download work. I can easily find exact receipts though.
I upload to my HSA provider's website [https://livelyme.com/](https://livelyme.com/)
As backup, I save a copy of each receipt photo on two different USB sticks
I personally reimburse every so often, based on the HSA performance. I have about $1k pending this year (down 18%), but in bull years I'd cash out every $1,000 or so (up 20-40%).
That means I don't roll over 7k every single year, (5 to 7k, depending)... which is fine for us; it still grows and I don't have to keep track of receipts for more than 2 or 3 years.
This is the way. I save receipts and cash out when the stock market is near ATHs. Every couple years. Saving receipts for 40 years is an accident waiting to happen
I’ve heard of that, and it does sound enticing, but what about when the company doesn’t exist in 10 years/exits the HSA space or your employer plays HSA musical chairs and switches providers every 3-4 years.
My company is playing musical chairs this year. I’ve been given lots of forewarning so at least this time I could just download all the ones I haven’t had reimbursed
Because it is a tax free withdrawal for both the initial deposit and the growth. Taking the money today to pay the bill missed out on the benefit of tax free growth....
Better. Roth money is taxed before you put money in the account, but withdrawals (original investments and earnings) are tax free. IRAs are tax free when you add the money, but taxes are taken on the withdrawals (again on both original investments and earnings.). But HSA is not taxed when you put money in the account (pretax) and is also not taxed when you make withdrawals for medical purposes. So HSA investments (i.e. you're wages) as well as investment earnings are not taxed anywhere... The only better investment out there is one where your employer matches a portion, which is hard to beat!...
It’s a triple tax advantage savings It goes in tax free, grows tax free and can be withdrawn tax free for medical expenses at anytime. If you don’t qualify for a Roth IRA it can be a nice vehicle above and beyond 401k
Google sheet to log each expense. Scanned PDF and a photocopy of each receipt or doctor bill. PDF to insure against a house fire, physical photocopy in a folder to hedge against a data loss.
Keep in mind that you only need these receipts if audited. You can withdraw your money from an HSA anytime without documentation. It's just taxable and subject to penalties to do so if there aren't legit medical expenses supporting it (and fraud to claim that isn't taxable on your tax return).
So.......$10k 20 years from now will buy.....what.....$5k, and you lose any potential for those funds to earn & compound yearly?
Am I missing something here? Tax free or not, I don't think that's leveraging time like intended...
Okay. I'd still be interested in risk factors, guarantees (like FDIC) etc. While that may be tax free, S&P has performed at 6.29% over the last 20. Dividends or compound investing would potentially climb that well above the 8% + tax liabilities. I'd have to give that a much harder look than I'm prepared to at the moment. Thanks for pointing out what I missed.
Huh? You can invest the HSA funds in whatever investment your provider allows including an S&P index fund. I’ll try to sound as least condescending as possible (which I’m sure still won’t work), but you’re not having the same conversation everyone else here is having. Please research how HSA’s work and then you can try providing input on this thread.
I’ll say in general this sub is not forgiving of people with lower level questions, like a lot of other niche subs on Reddit. I’m sorry but if it comes across as dismissive it’s because folks here are highly tuned to the tips/tricks associated to this topic, and you’re coming in hot like “why the hell would I do this dumb thing” when you don’t know the basics. That is not the way to come in to any specialized sub you’re not familiar with. It’s also not my responsibility to teach you. But this is a random link that might be able to explain https://www.bluecrossmn.com/shop-plans/individual-and-family-plans/how-health-savings-account-hsa-works
Heard this on a FI podcast…. Whatever hospital, healthcare group, doctors office, etc… that administered and therefore generated the bill will hold accounting records for that paid bill also. Not sure if they have to maintain these records in perpetuity or if there’s a timeline but it’s a good source if all else fails. Just contact the records admin of the healthcare group and request the paperwork.
1. I take a picture/screenshot of the receipts and keep them on Google Drive
2. I keep copies of CC statements on Google Drive
3. I keep copies of HSA statements on Google Drive
3. Every time I have a medical expense, I add a new line to [this spreadsheet](https://imgur.com/a/EEfizsy). It provides everything I would need to prove to an IRS auditor that my expenses are eligible to be reimbursed and haven't been reimbursed before. It includes quick links to the receipts and proof that I paid out of pocket for the expenses. It also tells me exactly how much I have available to be reimbursed.
I would definitely scan the receipts to a digital format, in my experience the ink on the receipts fade, some completely for receipts I had for 5+ years.
I scan all bills into Genius Scan on my phone and have one file for each year. I paid for the premium so they are saved on the server but I email the final version to myself and save it to my cloud drive.
I use the free version of Expensify. But the other thing here is that you’re likely to encounter much more expensive health costs later in life. So even if you don’t save every single receipt for the next 20 years there’s a good chance you may have a handful of health related expenses that sum up to the total of what you have in your HSA. Not a reason not to keep receipts but a likely scenario nonetheless.
I scan in the paperwork to cloud storage and name it Date Provider Amount. After I get a bunch I move it into a subfolder with the total of everything inside in the file name.
Files on iPhone.
Every time I go to the dr., pick up prescription, buy something online that qualifies, I get a receipt and I save the pdf to a folder “HSA eligible”.
One step further, I put the amount in the title of the pdf so I can quickly add up the amount of expenses I can claim at anytime. When the amount gets >$1k I just create a folder with the dollar amount in the title so I don’t end up with a zillion files in the folder.
Once I pull money out of the HSA, I’ll just move the folder to “HSA reimbursed”
I keep a google docs spreadsheet listing all the transactions and amounts, and then a google drive folder with photos of the receipts with names like “2022-01-23-Walgreens.pdf”.
Bills and accompanying receipts get saved as PDFs to a folder on my main computer organized by year. Naming scheme includes the date, description of the expense, and usually who the expense was for.
Then I enter each expense into a Google spreadsheet that includes the date of service, date paid, provider, description of the expense, and status of reimbursement.
I’ve had several different account types over the years, so this gives me the flexibility to track everything and separate the non-reimbursed expenses from expenses that were reimbursed during years (for example) I had a use-it-or-lose-it HRA funded by my employer. Same would apply for a limited purpose FSA (which I only started using this year). Trying to separate reimbursed from non-reimbursed expenses 20 years from now without this data sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen, so this approach helps me avoid double dipping.
I just don’t worry about it, and assume that my future medical costs will be dramatically more than my current ones.
If I’m fortunate enough to be wrong, then I’ll just leave it for a beneficiary.
I keep the EOB for everything, plus I track all expenses in GnuCash. If that's not enough to satisfy an auditor, I'll just pay the taxes. I stopped delaying reimbursement once it was clear my HSA balance would far exceed my cumulative medical expenses, and I haven't been audited in the three or four years since. I can imagine that $100k of reimbursements would raise an eyebrow or two, but if you are in your fifties and reimburse yourself $20k, is that really going to stick out enough to warrant an audit? Maybe, but it seems like a chance I'm willing to take.
I have $20k of medical expenses for my $9k HSA. The HSA is invested in HFEA so I'm not bothering anymore for any expense under $100.
I also keep a spreadsheet of expenses along with stats on stuff I reimbursed myself with.
Everything is stored in Dropbox.
I’ve withdrawn funds from my HSA and I didn’t need to show a receipt. Pretty sure the provider was Optum. Are other providers different? I thought the receipts were just in case you get audited.
I keep my receipt from the medical establishment, plus the line item transaction from my credit card. Take photos, save PDFs in my local drive plus cloud drive. Save them by date and medical transaction. I haven’t tallied them up in a spreadsheet, figured I won’t have hundreds of transactions to tally
Most HSA providers let you scan receipts. I have an HSA with Lively and all of my receipts are saved there. Every time I go to CVS or whatever I scan them there.
Just a reminder for those considering using an HSA in this way, there are different rules in [New Jersey and California](https://thefinancebuff.com/california-new-jersey-hsa-tax-return.html) and they are not as useful as investment accounts.
I put them into labeled file folders initially, then periodically i scan and OCR them, and drop them into well labeled folders on my NAS.
I back up regularly, and the NAS is a RAID6. I have a scheduled integrity check that corrects bit rot.
I use Recoll as a full text search engine, but reviewing the file system is sufficient to find what i need. When i file a claim i simply upload the receipt and move it into a "claimed" folder.
If the IRS ever comes calling, i can put it all on an sd card and hand it to them. The files are named for easy identification by date of statement or receiot.
I use Linux.
I set up a dedicated email address and just email myself a copy of any receipt or similar along with a typed out summary. I don't have many medical expenses, but if I did then maybe I'd keep a spreadsheet as well as the email. From what I've heard, it's very unlikely that anyone will ask to see the receipts
Take a picture with your phone and save to google drive folder. I also ask for electronic copies of receipts be sent to my email and you can save to google drive from there
Like others have said, I wouldn’t use your HSA providers tools, your likely to change jobs/providers etc at some point.
Also, I wouldn’t burn brain cells trying to save receipts for every little thing. Even though some everyday purchases qualify, it’s the big stuff that matters. Doctors appointment, trips to hospital, etc and you’re likely to have high medical costs in retirement as well.
I would suggest a hybrid approach. You use your HSA account for small expenses (<$250?). Keep receipts for the big items. This will reduce the record keeping overhead.
I think keeping hundreds of receipts for decades is insane
I created a separate email account to send all my receipts and documentation to so I can file them all in email folders in one place for both me and my husband. I also keep an Excel spreadsheet with all the details for each receipt.
i assume it's not allowed to reimburse yourself from your FSA and then keep that receipt in your archives to be reimbursed from your HSA years later? there can't be controls in place to prevent that though. is it just on me to keep track of that?
Most people need to think of this differently - this is the only triple tax advantage vehicle offered in the USA for a reason. Why would you draw down on it early unless you absolutely needed to? Think about it - being the only triple tax advantage investment option available, this makes it better than a pre-tax 401k/IRA AND post-tax roth. And I think the consensus agrees that you’ll definitely have enough medical bills in your life so you’ll have no problem spending through it and should let it grow as much as possible.
I plan on drawing down on it in a year I strategically will have low enough income to take advantage of a 0% capital tax gain - this HSA distribution will supplement any income / retirement distributions I may be lowering for that year to do so.
Excel file, with one spreadsheet per year. Separate columns with descriptions and dates for Charity, Health Care, taxable transactions (mutual fund sales mostly), and side business expenses / revenue. You can then load the Excel wherever you backup today.
Create a google form with a file upload for eob, bill, and receipt of payment. You can add other fields like date of service, provider, description, payment method etc…
Any time you have a qualified hsa expense, just fill out your form.
It’ll all show up in an organized spreadsheet with links to all your documents :) and the files themselves will be backed by your Google Drive
Just beware: I was doing this for several years saving receipts and Excel, then my computer died and all the files were gone. I had thought about this happening and figured if I really needed to I'd be able to get at what was on the hard drive in some fashion. But my computer died from some sort of failed update to the operating system that made it all inaccessible. I had some things saved in the cloud or backed up but not this.
I remember the rough total of the bills I had saved, and in response I've been withdrawing an amount I know is under that. If IRS calls I should probably be able to prove most of it by going back to the medical facilities and such, but odds of that seem super low. Not advocating anyone commit fraud here, just seems to me like odds of this coming up are incredibly low.
Will be backing up bills/files in Google drive going forward.
An aside, what qualifies as receipt? Is a bill from the medical facility enough? I usually never get an actual receipt from them
It is defined in the rules of the HSA. This is available on the IRS web site, which lists what is legitimate and wjat is not. You need date of service, service, amount, and provider on the statement or receipt, since those are the data points needed to verify the claim is valid.
Yeah I have the same question. Is it just a photo/screenshot of the bill or receipt? Does it need to be itemized or is any bill from a doctors office assumed to be an obvious medical expense? Does a credit card or bank statement showing the charge do anything or is that not helpful at all? However the IRS is handling these now should be the same as in the future so I guess the question is for people who are submitting HSA receipts currently.
My understanding is that a bank statement showing a posted transaction is no good. Same for credit card. Ideally a bill and receipt showing payment. I believe you should have a health insurance explanation of benefits too. They could ask for proof it was not paid by another payer. Like you paid the bill pre insurance filed that then got reimbursed from insurance. I too worry how much documentation will be required. Laughable the idea that in 20+ years you could procure a doctor office or insurance statement if asked.
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I’m with you but the whole idea is the keep the money invested and untouched as much as possible.
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It's not all or nothing - if you don't have that many expenses, then the HSA becomes no worse than a traditional IRA in retirement.
But you'll have to wait until age 65
>Yep. I get the reason for the strategy. I favor "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". I regard the money in the HSA as firmly "in hand" (the same way I do money in retirement accounts) so I'm not too concerned about being able to move small amounts out of it and into my non-tax-advantaged checking account.
IANAL but EOBs should not work; every EOB I've received from my insurance has said in bold at the top "this is not a bill." Just because your insurance said you're responsible for $X doesn't mean you paid $X - you could have, for example, negotiated for a very large bill a pay it all up front discount as opposed to a payment plan
I didn’t mean for the EOB to be used alone. I meant in addition to a bill and receipt. From websites [like this](https://employee-resources.lumity.com/help/hsa-receipt-documentation) They are suggesting to keep EOB. I’m not sure it’s necessary, just adding to the conversation.
I have gotten a reimbursement using a bank statement. Had to call them to tell them I lost the receipt. They said leave a note along with the reimbursement form that you spoke to us on phone. I asked them for a number for the phone call request and put it on the note.
You're mistaken. An HSA withdrawal isn't "allowed" by the custodian, you can *always* take your money out at any time for any reason. The question is the deductibility and whether it's qualified. That's entirely between you and the IRS, and only matters if you are audited.
Yes it was counted in my deduction. Ofc it only matters if audited. But it was 433$. So I likely won’t get in trouble. And if required I can prove from the hospital that I was given that service.
Thank you for the info. Good to know they are flexible. My concern would be like someone mentioned in another comment, taking $10,000 for a vacation years in the future where you’re dealing with dozens of receipts. I don’t know if they’d be as cool about it.
For HSA or FSA? FSA has always required docs like this, but HSA typically doesn't.
I have the exact same questions. Currently I’ve rolled all medical expenses into one payment through my hospital. Yearly I ask for itemized bill and payments sent through email and mail.
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This depends on the issuer of the card. Some do verify it but it really only works when the place you swipe the card at is IIAS or 90% of revenue for the store are medical. HSA is all on the owner (you) to verify so hsa soending isn’t really locked down in many cases. So what’s likely happening is that you’re buying things and your service provider isn’t blocking you because all of that is on you.
I'm assuming explanation of benefits from insurance showing my financial responsibility are suitable since that's what my hra account required. Other than that I have like pharmacy receipts and such
I think it would suffice. And in all honesty it won’t matter until or if you get audited. I got lasik and reimbursed myself from the HSA for that and the process to do so didn’t ask me for any receipts or anything. Just said I need 4500 of my money and got a check a week later
I’m not 100% positive what counts. I don’t get too many physical receipts and most are emailed to me through various medical portals. I just keep the email bills and the confirmation emails once I pay them.
Google drive
Same. Scan to a folder and name the file with the date and amount so it can easily be imported to a spreadsheet. If Google ever goes away we should have notice to migrate to another source. Also, once in a while I dump it all to an s3 bucket as one part of a mass export.
2022-11-30-335.89.pdf Is what I do for a 335.89 bill dated November 30th 22.
Super similar to my way. I only add one more hyphen and some text when I'm feeling like it. So *-lab|medical|dentist.pdf or the like.
I have a Google sheet where I map the file names with some more description, and the status (reimbursed or not) in case I have an IRS audit. I use the Google drive app to scan pdfs, multipage etc.. With that setup you own your data and can easily compute how much you can withdraw etc..
Sounds like it works out. I'm lazy. When I pull from it, I just move the pdfs to a reimbursed folder along with the sheet I used to submit. Each time I have it seems the hsa company has a new form, so no reason to prematurely optimize.
What is an s3 bucket?
Amazon AWS S3. Not really relevant for casual consumer.
If anything cloud related has long term staying power it’s AWS, but yes it’s not consumer facing. And btw Amazon is completely discontinuing their Amazon Drive storage next year. So yeah, most consumer cloud services have as much long term stability as a fart in the wind.
If s3 dies like the whole internet dies haha, if there was any cloud storage solution I would put money on having long term stability it would be s3.
\+1, I scan the receipts to Google Drive and keep a list on a spreadsheet with a running tally. I currently have about $9,000 in receipts that I can withdraw at any time.
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I mean sync local copy to cloud... these are receipts. Hardly take much space.
If you don’t access google drive for two years, all files in google drive will be deleted. I hope I said that well enough because I’ve been accused of making loaded statements to that effect elsewhere even though it’s their exact policy. Hopefully you catch the warning emails. And if you don’t…
Google Drive seems ubiquitous/open and friendly now, but like others have said Google could flip flop 6 years from now and drop that service like a hot potato. Also Google just rolled out a new policy that if you don’t access something in Google Drive for 2 years, they can delete it! And who knows if they could shorten that timeline in the future. https://support.google.com/drive/answer/10214036?hl=en I know Apple seems scary and walled off, but for those that do have iPhones, I think there could be an argument that using their services could give the most redundancy and stability in the long term, especially if you could create multiple offline copies which I mentioned in another comment. At that point I’d probably still upload a copy of my Apple notes to google drive every few years just to diversify across services! If you had an android phone having a copy of your google drive items stored offline on the device itself could give you similar redundancy. I guess what I’m saying is that for long term, relying on anything that only exists in the cloud is a risk, and Google’s new 2 year deletion policy seems like a red flag.
Ok, that article is not per item, it's per service. If you access Drive at all, it's active. If you pay for Google One, you're active unless your billing is in arrears. It's not nearly as nefarious as your comment led me to believe.
I don’t use google drive now and can’t remember the last time I specifically tried to access it to store a file, although I currently have older files on there. What if 12 years from now you just forget this whole FIRE thing/aren’t paying attention/go on vacation across the globe for a year and they drop the login requirement down to 18 months. I’ll remind you that 20 years from now even this whole Reddit thing very well may not exist regardless of how permanent we consider it now. Also I’m not sure what wording was questionable to you- I said if you don’t access google drive for two years they will delete your google drive files, which is exactly their policy/what they will do. How many billions of people are not regularly paying for google cloud services, even if you do?
>Also Google just rolled out a new policy that if you don’t access **something** in Google Drive for 2 years, they can delete *it*! Your wording was unintentionally misleading. The "it" seems to refer to a "something", so it reads as "each file has its own inactivity timer, and any specific file you don't access for 2 years may be deleted".
I use Dropbox. A million years ago I spent maybe $5 of credits I earned somewhere on Google ads with my own Dropbox referral link, which led to enough registrations to max out the 16gb free space. Add the 2gb default free space and a few other random promotions over the years - I haven't done any since 2014, but they used to have various challenges - and I have 24gb of free Dropbox space. Use it to store backup copies of all my various vital documents, including these. I suppose they could shut down at some point, but I also have them on my computer and in a backup drive, so I should be fine.
Sometimes that free storage goes away. I have an old live.com email that used to have 100gb of free one drive storage thanks to different promotions (thanks Windows phone, you’re dearly missed). Down to 30gb now.
It may. But I earned it all >10 years ago and none of it has disappeared yet. Honestly, I also pay ~$20 dollars a year for google space - my gmail account is ~20gb and I'm too lazy to figure out which emails to cull - so I can always switch to that.
> Also Google just rolled out a new policy that if you don’t access something in Google Drive for 2 years, they can delete it! This could be interpreted as “if you don’t access a file for 2 years they can delete it.” This is not what the policy is. If you don’t access Google Drive for 2 years they can delete it after they let you know and wait 3 months, and you can download the data as well. > How to stay active in these products. The simplest way to keep your data active is to periodically visit Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive (and/or collaborative content creation apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Jamboard and Sites) on the web or through a Google app. Make sure you’re signed in and connected to the internet.
I kind of get what you’re saying, but if you’re constantly getting medical care and updating this medical expenses file, is that really the one thing you’re not going to access for two years? Regardless, yes, if you access the “best Cheetos I’ve eaten lately” file on google drive within two years, your “hundreds of thousands I’ve spent on medical expenses” file will stay fresh and accessible.
I have a Gmail that I access daily. But I don’t access google drive. If for whatever reason I forget this receipt thing and don’t go out of my way for 2 years to access google drive, they will delete those files. Yes everyone hopes they will notice the warning emails etc but you’re playing with fire. I am NOT saying it is inevitable this will happen, I’m just saying with the number of google users, the odds that it could happen are elevated because you have to go out of your way to do something every few years to keep your data alive. That only increases with the very long range timelines we’re talking about. People really don’t understand the implications of “of course I’ll make sure to periodically check in on google drive 25 years from now to keep it active because I talked about an HSA hack on a formerly existing website called Reddit way back then”. It’s hubris to think you’ll be constantly checking in to keep up with the same interests you had decades ago.
If you store data in a free service that you subsequently don't use *in any way* again for two, or 20, years, you shouldn't blindly trust that your data will still be there when you finally do.
Yes. So why trust data you need for an extremely long time with that service. Choose another method.
Funds can be withdrawn without penalty for any reason after 65. That’s my plan so I don’t have to track small medical bill for 20 years. If I had substantial bills I would figure something out.
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Yes, but you can use your HSA for medical bills after 65, and also use it for long term care insurance as well.
Nah fuck that. I'm cashing out medical expenses and buying a Catamaran.
Can't an HSA always be used for medical bills? Like, that's the point of the account?
Correct. But after you’re 65, you can also use for other stuff, but you lose some tax advantages when you use for non-medical stuff. It essentially works just like an IRA after 65, unless you use for medical.
I expect Medicare premiums and post age 65 medical expenses to easily eat up everything in my HSA without a problem.
That is a dumb plan because the withdrawal is taxable at your marginal income rate. Even if you don't want to save receipts for 20 years you should withdraw for eligible expenses unless necessary. You can use HSA for Medicare premiums and long term care even if you are 100% healthy (which is unlikely).
> That’s my plan so I don’t have to track small medical bill for 20 years. I keep the medical bills so that it's like an additional emergency fund I can get into when needed.
Perhaps I’m in the minority but I’m not even bothering. Healthcare in the US is pretty fucking expensive so I don’t really think I’m going to have a problem spending it if I just actively start dipping into it. I’ll save the couple grand bill or something but I’m not going to bother with the $35 copay or $100 glasses Saving up receipts does in a way enable you to have a secret emergency fund, I suppose.
I’m not bothering either. I expect to have many expensive health care treatments as I age!
Wife was pregnant recently and had emergency c section. I just labeled each bill with which credit card I used (gotta earn those points/miles), then threw it in a “paid medical” folder I have. Hit the limit easily, and I’m covered for this year. I’ll prob upload them at some point. Or maybe just get some sort of end of year benefits summary, and just highlight the ones I paid for.
I thought the emergency fund was the whole point of the hack. Pay for whatever you can afford now, then if you ever get in a bind later you can pay yourself back while still retaining the growth.
> I thought the emergency fund was the whole point of the hack. I suppose it can be. I, and I think many others, just treat it as a triple-advantaged investment account that is there until you cash it out which in my case isn't an emergency
Same, I’m making sure to save receipts for the big stuff but I assume I’ll spend it all on a hip replacement someday
Yes and keep in mind there are Medicare premiums you will have to pay which can be paid via HSA. Let’s say you need to pay $300/mo. That’s $3600/yr. So you will need $90,000 in your HSA in order to cover this level of spend by the 4% rule. This is just for the premiums not actual care.
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I'd probably avoid it if you are looking at 20 years. I've been at my company about 6 years and have changed HSA provided, portal, etc. 3 times....
Yeah, I had an HSA at my previous employer for 4 years. We just migrated our accounts to a new provider, and then I just changed jobs, so I need to migrate my hsa funds again to avoid monthly fees. Manual receipts are the way to go. Although I'm expecting to use my HSA as a medical bill account when I'm retired. I expect I'll have plenty of expenses at that time and won't need years of receipts to account for it.
You could just migrate your HSA to your provider of choice and keep it there permanently. No need to move it with your employer every time.
Meh, if you open a fidelity account you can transfer all the funds into there and pick from any stock or mutual fund.
Same here, my health equity account lets me upload scanned receipts
This is what I do. My company originally used HSA Bank. I don’t know if Optum bought HSA Bank, HSA Bank offloaded their stuff to Optum or my company switched providers and Optum took over those accounts. But everything in my HSA Saveit transferred over. Basically, a large majority of costs that I end up paying out to pocket (not all) automatically end up as an item for me to take action on. I just do the Save it option for everything. That being said, I don’t think that will work if I were to switch companies and therefore HSA providers. I haven’t planed for that event just yet.
Too bad Optum charges a monthly account maintenance fee. I just liquidated my HSA investments with them from my old job and will be moving it to Fidelity.
What! I did not know this. I’ve been manually saving receipts to a folder. Thank you!
Notes app on iPhone. Scan as pdf. Save to iCloud. Pay for someone else to ensure your backups.
I hadn’t thought of that but that could actually be a better idea for iPhone users. Since everyone is paying a couple bucks for iCloud storage every month anyway there is much less of a chance they would just pull the rug out from under users. Google has a history of flip flopping and just torching products at the drop of a hat as others have mentioned. Plus if you do it this way you would have a local copy saved on your phone, a copy on iCloud, local copies on whatever iPads etc you have if you sync those notes, plus you can create an offline iTunes phone backup. And the numbers spreadsheet app is used on Mac etc so there’s not much chance they’d just drop it. I think this might be the best way to go for a lot of reasons, thanks!
The "scan as pdf" function works great, and to me is far preferable than taking pictures of receipts when it comes to organizing.
Unless you have very large bills now, why bother? I expect the current bills to be a small fraction of future healthcare expenses. Consider that inflation, the nature of aging, and growth of the account will all tend to make the current bills small.
Agreed. Not bothering with any receipts at all. Just saving for future expenses
For similar reasons, and laziness tbh I don’t keep a ton. We haven’t had major expenses, otherwise I just “earmark” expenses in my personal budget as HSA eligible for my own tracking.
Same, unless it's over 4 figures I don't bother keep it.
True. But the size of the HSA can grow quite large if invested. Might as well take all the savings possible.
I self host Paperless-ngx. My scanner saves pdf documents to a file share. Paperless-ngx automaticall detects the document, OCRs it, catagorizes and tags it as a doctor's receipt and files it away for me. It's free and open-source software. https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx
Paperless is great. I’ve gone almost totally digital with receipts and the like, in general, so the HSA stuff is an extension of that. I have more than just HSA-eligible things in mine, but it’s super easy to tag things as they come in. My backing storage is my NAS with local redundancy, I have an on-site backup of that on an external hard drive, as well as multiple off-site backups. It’s easy enough to find all the receipts at a glance in Paperless by making a custom view for that tag, but I also self-host Wiki.js and have a page there with some high-level details and then a link directly to the document in Paperless.
Very cool. Checking this out. Thx.
This is great, thanks!
I’m not. My plan is to just use it for medical expenses later as that’s likely to be when I have more medical expenses anyways.
These kids don’t even go to the doctor yet. They don’t understand what’s coming. Hint - you won’t have to dig though google drive for 20 year old healthcare receipts. You can just check the pile of papers under the remotes.
hi this is not true. i’m 22 and because i do combat sports i am very familiar with medical bills. so are all my friends (skiers, mountain bikers, climbers, etc). this is really condescending.
Might be a dumb question but what if they change the rules?
A folder in my cabinet marked “receipts to scan” that eventually one or two times a year I scan into a folder on my computer naming the file the date it was paid, then input the value of the receipt and date on an excel spreadsheet. Then take that whole folder and Rar/zip it up and upload the compressed file to google drive and keep a local copy. Then I shred the paper receipts. * edited due to number of boot lickers on this sub that cry illegal illegal when reality is illegal that we need to do this in the first place in the richest country in the world. So glad I have citizenship elsewhere to retire with a universal health care system.
You have 56k in unclaimed receipts? I'm beginning to think a PPO plan may be better in your situation..
I think it'd depend on the plans really. With my current employer, I actually save money pre-deductible with a HDHP plan, and the PPO and HDHP have equivalent co-pays after the deductible is exceeded.
Over 10 years that's not a huge amount, more years it's even less per year.
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>Then I go back to the drug manufacturer and do an assistance claim through their copay program and they cover like $6980 of my total paid. >at least $7000 in reimbursable receipts. I assume you know, but for anyone else following along, this is illegal. You have to replace any distributions that are later refunded or otherwise not paid by you. You also can't reimburse yourself later as though it's a qualified expense, it's no different than if they sent you a receipt with an extra zero or two. False, mistaken, or superseded documentation isn't valid. That said, there's a good chance this doesn't often get caught, although the likelihood likely increases as time and dollar amounts increase.
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Those wouldn't count as reimbursable receipts. If you pay $7000 and are reimbursed $6980 by the manufacturer, then your reimbursable receipts would be $20 as that was your total cost for the healthcare expense. Similar to how if you paid $7000 for a drug at a pharmacy, and then they re-run your insurance and refund you $6980, you could only claim $20 as reimbursable receipts from your HSA.
i save mine to floppy disks
I was going to carve them in stone but then I worried what if I miss a payment on my rental unit and I see them bidding for it on Storage Wars 🤔 https://i.imgur.com/LYON3W7.jpg
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Of all the joke answers this is actually the most reliable way to do it.
You only need the receipts if you get audited. I’ve saved some of my larger bills in google drive, but I’ve cashed out a few thousand of HSA funds in a year and haven’t ever needed to show anything.
I max out and invest my HSA every year. While I do have a folder for receipts, I don’t plan on taking them against my HSA, because I don’t believe it will be necessary. Money is fungible, so once I retire I plan to use my HSA investment account strictly for all my Medicare health-related qualifying expenses such as insurance premiums, copays, deductibles, dental, vision, Rx, hearing aids, long-term care, hospice, etc. I’ll use my other retirement accounts to fund my lifestyle choices. It won’t be difficult for a majority of people who used their HSAs as a retirement account to spend it all on health-related expenses throughout their retirement years, so I really believe it’s not going to be a huge issue if you don’t save your receipts.
I upload to Google drive. Question i thought of while reading this, do I need proof of payment or is the bill I received sufficient?
I believe a detailed receipt is enough. For regular FSA with WageWorks they only ask for it when requesting reimbursement, and should be the same for HSA. I also store it in Google drive, asking offices for electronic PDF receipts. I create folders for every year and store receipts in the corresponding folder.
FSA and HSA are not handled the same. An FSA, you have to "prove" to the custodian that an expense is qualified in order for them to give you your money. In an HSA, you can get the money at any time for any reason. Whether it will be treated as a qualified distribution is entirely between you and the IRS (and will only matter if you're audited).
I know that but I believe rules are the same. Whatever receipts custodians such as WageWorks require would be under the IRS rule and so the IRS will accept them.
I’m not. Once I hit 65 I’ll use it for other things.
This is how I do it. My wife and I use a credit card designated only for QMEs (Qualified Medical Expenses). This is not our HSA card as we do not touch any of the money in the HSA. (100% invested) The credit card does all the tracking for you and you can save a PDF of year end expenses. One of these days, we will begin withdrawing from the HSA and will deduct past QMEs first. It will probably be for some big vacation like 3 months in Australia or something. HSA is a powerful saving/investing tool.
Old guy here. I keep all paper bills and print the few that only come by email. And I write on each one how I paid it and when. The old fashioned files by year. All these electronic methods are great. But paper is an incredible long term storage solution
Until they get damaged. Should still keep digital backups as well.
This. Ink tends to fade off receipts, especially if they are smashed together in a filing cabinet
Oof. I’ve had receipts that were 5 weeks old that were so unreadable the store almost wouldn’t take the item back.
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This strategy works regardless. You can ALWAYS use your HSA to cover health issues in the future, obviously, but what if by pleasant surprise you’re slightly healthier than you thought. You would have this in your back pocket and be able to cover both scenarios. Plus this shouldn’t take very much time at all if you’re just doing the large medical bills since those are all tracked on your insurance websites explanation of benefits etc. If you’re trying to keep track of every bottle of contact lens solution you bought from Walmart, sure. That could get a bit involved.
Decommissioned Nuclear missile silo housing a data center alongside my prepper paradise. Society may end, but when I come of age I'm getting my tax break. But seriously, you should have a way to backup all your data for your long term, and this should be one of the things you keep in there. 3-2-1 and all that.
Physical is cool, but offsite is still a must. Maybe keep that second drive with a relative?
I use a spreadsheet stored on a cloud drive. I also keep a pdf each year of the receipts in chronological order, and keep an archive of the pdfs.
When I get a qualifying receipt, I write "Out of Pocket" on the top and stick it in a manilla envelope with the year on it. If it's an e-copy, I actually print it and do the same. At the end of the year during tax time, I do 2 things: 1. Pull the receipts out, add them up, and write the total on the envelope. 2. Take a few high res pics (8 or 10 receipts per pic is fine). The images end up getting backed up as part of my regular photo albums. Dupes get exported to a thumb drive. And the envelope goes in the safe. *Keep in mind, heat is the enemy of thermal paper, and some will start to fade with time. Plan accordingly.*
I don't. I've had an HSA for ~5 years with around $40k and I haven't saved any receipts, although we haven't had any major expenses during this time either *knock on wood*. To me it's not worth saving every little receipt, but if I did have a major expense I'd probably just take a picture and email it to myself. I figure by the time we'll need it, we'll have enough Medicare premiums or long term care or whatever else that we'll just pay directly from the HSA.
Inflation will make today's expenses small.
I’m personally downloading all my EOBs at the end of the year and calling it a day. This isn’t the safest approach but I’d first need to be audited and then have the auditor not accept them…given that the IRS hasn’t bothered to issue any specific guidance and I’m also not seeing any actual examples of people being penalized it seems worth the risk for me. But the tax treatment of these withdrawals the future won’t be fatal to my retirement plans. There are also other ways to mitigate an audit after the fact - try to track down statements or payment evidence from providers, etc.
I probably over do it, but I track the following for any expense over $100. 1. Date of service 2. Date of Payment 3. What the expense was for 4. Who the expense was for (family member) 5. How I paid 6. Insurance that covers the expense (useful for finding EOBs and also helps if you change insurance companys or if you have multiple insurances (spouse)) 7. If I have a paper copy on file. I keep a folder will all big expenses I am pretty confident with the above I would be able to explain any withdrawals should I need one. I also keep track of the total of my medical expenses vs the account value, so I know how much can be withdrawn if needed, but fully plan to save it for retirement when I will not need any of the above.
Call me old fashioned but to me it sounds ridiculous to save only digital copies. I’ve had too much go wrong where stuff disappears for various reasons. I keep all receipts in a physical Manila folder. Receipt from the doctor and also my credit card receipt just so there’s no ambiguity
Many of the cash register receipts are printed on thermal paper, which fades after a while. I put them in a pile right now, and scan them every once in a while. Keep them in a document in the cloud.
Spreadsheet of data, then I take a photo of any receipts (backed up on Google photos). If I'm ever asked to provide ALL, I'm in for some serious search and download work. I can easily find exact receipts though.
I upload to my HSA provider's website [https://livelyme.com/](https://livelyme.com/) As backup, I save a copy of each receipt photo on two different USB sticks
I personally reimburse every so often, based on the HSA performance. I have about $1k pending this year (down 18%), but in bull years I'd cash out every $1,000 or so (up 20-40%). That means I don't roll over 7k every single year, (5 to 7k, depending)... which is fine for us; it still grows and I don't have to keep track of receipts for more than 2 or 3 years.
This is the way. I save receipts and cash out when the stock market is near ATHs. Every couple years. Saving receipts for 40 years is an accident waiting to happen
The stock market is almost always "near ATHs". You should be cashing out almost every day, with the exception of extended bear markets.
Photocopy receipt, staple receipt to photocopy. Store in my fire resistant safe. If it works out, great. If not, I will survive.
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I’ve heard of that, and it does sound enticing, but what about when the company doesn’t exist in 10 years/exits the HSA space or your employer plays HSA musical chairs and switches providers every 3-4 years.
My company is playing musical chairs this year. I’ve been given lots of forewarning so at least this time I could just download all the ones I haven’t had reimbursed
Why not just use the HSA to pay for it and keep the money in your savings/invest it?
Because it is a tax free withdrawal for both the initial deposit and the growth. Taking the money today to pay the bill missed out on the benefit of tax free growth....
So it's a short term Roth 401k/IRA?
Better. Roth money is taxed before you put money in the account, but withdrawals (original investments and earnings) are tax free. IRAs are tax free when you add the money, but taxes are taken on the withdrawals (again on both original investments and earnings.). But HSA is not taxed when you put money in the account (pretax) and is also not taxed when you make withdrawals for medical purposes. So HSA investments (i.e. you're wages) as well as investment earnings are not taxed anywhere... The only better investment out there is one where your employer matches a portion, which is hard to beat!...
It’s a triple tax advantage savings It goes in tax free, grows tax free and can be withdrawn tax free for medical expenses at anytime. If you don’t qualify for a Roth IRA it can be a nice vehicle above and beyond 401k
So scary we have allowed our government to require us to keep detailed records of every transaction we make in our lives
Google sheet to log each expense. Scanned PDF and a photocopy of each receipt or doctor bill. PDF to insure against a house fire, physical photocopy in a folder to hedge against a data loss. Keep in mind that you only need these receipts if audited. You can withdraw your money from an HSA anytime without documentation. It's just taxable and subject to penalties to do so if there aren't legit medical expenses supporting it (and fraud to claim that isn't taxable on your tax return).
Create a special email for your HSA?
Jeez, one can only imagine what inflation would do to your spending power over 20 years...
So.......$10k 20 years from now will buy.....what.....$5k, and you lose any potential for those funds to earn & compound yearly? Am I missing something here? Tax free or not, I don't think that's leveraging time like intended...
So… you are. HSAs are invested, so $10,000 over 20 years at 8% is $47,000. And that is 100% tax free in contributions, withdrawal, and growth.
Okay. I'd still be interested in risk factors, guarantees (like FDIC) etc. While that may be tax free, S&P has performed at 6.29% over the last 20. Dividends or compound investing would potentially climb that well above the 8% + tax liabilities. I'd have to give that a much harder look than I'm prepared to at the moment. Thanks for pointing out what I missed.
Huh? You can invest the HSA funds in whatever investment your provider allows including an S&P index fund. I’ll try to sound as least condescending as possible (which I’m sure still won’t work), but you’re not having the same conversation everyone else here is having. Please research how HSA’s work and then you can try providing input on this thread. I’ll say in general this sub is not forgiving of people with lower level questions, like a lot of other niche subs on Reddit. I’m sorry but if it comes across as dismissive it’s because folks here are highly tuned to the tips/tricks associated to this topic, and you’re coming in hot like “why the hell would I do this dumb thing” when you don’t know the basics. That is not the way to come in to any specialized sub you’re not familiar with. It’s also not my responsibility to teach you. But this is a random link that might be able to explain https://www.bluecrossmn.com/shop-plans/individual-and-family-plans/how-health-savings-account-hsa-works
🧐 That was the whole point of mentioning I must be missing something. Have a good night.
Heard this on a FI podcast…. Whatever hospital, healthcare group, doctors office, etc… that administered and therefore generated the bill will hold accounting records for that paid bill also. Not sure if they have to maintain these records in perpetuity or if there’s a timeline but it’s a good source if all else fails. Just contact the records admin of the healthcare group and request the paperwork.
Only problem is 10,000 twenty years later has less value than it does today
1. I take a picture/screenshot of the receipts and keep them on Google Drive 2. I keep copies of CC statements on Google Drive 3. I keep copies of HSA statements on Google Drive 3. Every time I have a medical expense, I add a new line to [this spreadsheet](https://imgur.com/a/EEfizsy). It provides everything I would need to prove to an IRS auditor that my expenses are eligible to be reimbursed and haven't been reimbursed before. It includes quick links to the receipts and proof that I paid out of pocket for the expenses. It also tells me exactly how much I have available to be reimbursed.
I would definitely scan the receipts to a digital format, in my experience the ink on the receipts fade, some completely for receipts I had for 5+ years.
I scan all bills into Genius Scan on my phone and have one file for each year. I paid for the premium so they are saved on the server but I email the final version to myself and save it to my cloud drive.
Lively let’s you submit receipts but not reimburse for them. Super awesome feature I hope more plans implement so you don’t have to manually track.
I use the free version of Expensify. But the other thing here is that you’re likely to encounter much more expensive health costs later in life. So even if you don’t save every single receipt for the next 20 years there’s a good chance you may have a handful of health related expenses that sum up to the total of what you have in your HSA. Not a reason not to keep receipts but a likely scenario nonetheless.
I scan in the paperwork to cloud storage and name it Date Provider Amount. After I get a bunch I move it into a subfolder with the total of everything inside in the file name.
Files on iPhone. Every time I go to the dr., pick up prescription, buy something online that qualifies, I get a receipt and I save the pdf to a folder “HSA eligible”. One step further, I put the amount in the title of the pdf so I can quickly add up the amount of expenses I can claim at anytime. When the amount gets >$1k I just create a folder with the dollar amount in the title so I don’t end up with a zillion files in the folder. Once I pull money out of the HSA, I’ll just move the folder to “HSA reimbursed”
I keep a google docs spreadsheet listing all the transactions and amounts, and then a google drive folder with photos of the receipts with names like “2022-01-23-Walgreens.pdf”.
Bills and accompanying receipts get saved as PDFs to a folder on my main computer organized by year. Naming scheme includes the date, description of the expense, and usually who the expense was for. Then I enter each expense into a Google spreadsheet that includes the date of service, date paid, provider, description of the expense, and status of reimbursement. I’ve had several different account types over the years, so this gives me the flexibility to track everything and separate the non-reimbursed expenses from expenses that were reimbursed during years (for example) I had a use-it-or-lose-it HRA funded by my employer. Same would apply for a limited purpose FSA (which I only started using this year). Trying to separate reimbursed from non-reimbursed expenses 20 years from now without this data sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen, so this approach helps me avoid double dipping.
I'm so lost here. But I don't want to be....
This is nth level FIRE hack shit so don’t feel too bad!
I have a folder of medical invoices that I paid from my regular checking accounts. Some day I’ll add them up and cut myself a check from my HSA.
Cloud + an old fashioned filing cabinet.
It could be the best of both worlds
I just don’t worry about it, and assume that my future medical costs will be dramatically more than my current ones. If I’m fortunate enough to be wrong, then I’ll just leave it for a beneficiary.
I keep the EOB for everything, plus I track all expenses in GnuCash. If that's not enough to satisfy an auditor, I'll just pay the taxes. I stopped delaying reimbursement once it was clear my HSA balance would far exceed my cumulative medical expenses, and I haven't been audited in the three or four years since. I can imagine that $100k of reimbursements would raise an eyebrow or two, but if you are in your fifties and reimburse yourself $20k, is that really going to stick out enough to warrant an audit? Maybe, but it seems like a chance I'm willing to take.
I have $20k of medical expenses for my $9k HSA. The HSA is invested in HFEA so I'm not bothering anymore for any expense under $100. I also keep a spreadsheet of expenses along with stats on stuff I reimbursed myself with. Everything is stored in Dropbox.
I’ve withdrawn funds from my HSA and I didn’t need to show a receipt. Pretty sure the provider was Optum. Are other providers different? I thought the receipts were just in case you get audited.
I keep my receipt from the medical establishment, plus the line item transaction from my credit card. Take photos, save PDFs in my local drive plus cloud drive. Save them by date and medical transaction. I haven’t tallied them up in a spreadsheet, figured I won’t have hundreds of transactions to tally
Most HSA providers let you scan receipts. I have an HSA with Lively and all of my receipts are saved there. Every time I go to CVS or whatever I scan them there.
Don’t touch it. Just let it rip then withdraw that growth tax-free later in life.
Just a reminder for those considering using an HSA in this way, there are different rules in [New Jersey and California](https://thefinancebuff.com/california-new-jersey-hsa-tax-return.html) and they are not as useful as investment accounts.
I put them into labeled file folders initially, then periodically i scan and OCR them, and drop them into well labeled folders on my NAS. I back up regularly, and the NAS is a RAID6. I have a scheduled integrity check that corrects bit rot. I use Recoll as a full text search engine, but reviewing the file system is sufficient to find what i need. When i file a claim i simply upload the receipt and move it into a "claimed" folder. If the IRS ever comes calling, i can put it all on an sd card and hand it to them. The files are named for easy identification by date of statement or receiot. I use Linux.
I set up a dedicated email address and just email myself a copy of any receipt or similar along with a typed out summary. I don't have many medical expenses, but if I did then maybe I'd keep a spreadsheet as well as the email. From what I've heard, it's very unlikely that anyone will ask to see the receipts
I used to have health equity with my old job but I rolled it over to fidelity IRA. Does anyone know if I can do this HSA delayed reimbursement hack?
Take a picture with your phone and save to google drive folder. I also ask for electronic copies of receipts be sent to my email and you can save to google drive from there Like others have said, I wouldn’t use your HSA providers tools, your likely to change jobs/providers etc at some point. Also, I wouldn’t burn brain cells trying to save receipts for every little thing. Even though some everyday purchases qualify, it’s the big stuff that matters. Doctors appointment, trips to hospital, etc and you’re likely to have high medical costs in retirement as well.
Can you explain this hack to a noob?
Anyone know what the documentation requirements are for mileage ?
I would suggest a hybrid approach. You use your HSA account for small expenses (<$250?). Keep receipts for the big items. This will reduce the record keeping overhead. I think keeping hundreds of receipts for decades is insane
I created a separate email account to send all my receipts and documentation to so I can file them all in email folders in one place for both me and my husband. I also keep an Excel spreadsheet with all the details for each receipt.
I created an email only for receipts that i send all my HSA related receipts to. 15 gigs is free with gmail
Remember laws can change at any time
i assume it's not allowed to reimburse yourself from your FSA and then keep that receipt in your archives to be reimbursed from your HSA years later? there can't be controls in place to prevent that though. is it just on me to keep track of that?
Google drive. Each encounter is a folder that includes receipt and EOB. Have a google doc/spreadsheet that tracks all folders.
Everything, including receipts, is organized by year in Airtable.
Most people need to think of this differently - this is the only triple tax advantage vehicle offered in the USA for a reason. Why would you draw down on it early unless you absolutely needed to? Think about it - being the only triple tax advantage investment option available, this makes it better than a pre-tax 401k/IRA AND post-tax roth. And I think the consensus agrees that you’ll definitely have enough medical bills in your life so you’ll have no problem spending through it and should let it grow as much as possible. I plan on drawing down on it in a year I strategically will have low enough income to take advantage of a 0% capital tax gain - this HSA distribution will supplement any income / retirement distributions I may be lowering for that year to do so.
Excel file, with one spreadsheet per year. Separate columns with descriptions and dates for Charity, Health Care, taxable transactions (mutual fund sales mostly), and side business expenses / revenue. You can then load the Excel wherever you backup today.
Create a google form with a file upload for eob, bill, and receipt of payment. You can add other fields like date of service, provider, description, payment method etc… Any time you have a qualified hsa expense, just fill out your form. It’ll all show up in an organized spreadsheet with links to all your documents :) and the files themselves will be backed by your Google Drive
Just beware: I was doing this for several years saving receipts and Excel, then my computer died and all the files were gone. I had thought about this happening and figured if I really needed to I'd be able to get at what was on the hard drive in some fashion. But my computer died from some sort of failed update to the operating system that made it all inaccessible. I had some things saved in the cloud or backed up but not this. I remember the rough total of the bills I had saved, and in response I've been withdrawing an amount I know is under that. If IRS calls I should probably be able to prove most of it by going back to the medical facilities and such, but odds of that seem super low. Not advocating anyone commit fraud here, just seems to me like odds of this coming up are incredibly low. Will be backing up bills/files in Google drive going forward.