By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder
I wrote the post, Best Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) for those, like myself, using an HSA as another retirement investing account. I was looking for the lowest possible fees and the best possible investments. I ranked and reviewed the twelve best HSAs. Lively came out on top, but not by much. At that time, I was with the second choice on my list, HSA Bank, and the difference in my case was only about $35 a year. That wasn't quite enough money for me to overcome my inertia and switch.
I Moved My Health Savings Account to Fidelity
Then, a new development came on scene. Mutual fund giant Fidelity came out with an HSA. Even better, their HSA charges NO ANNUAL FEES AT ALL.
That was enough of a difference for me to get off my butt and actually make some changes. Even more motivating than lower fees was the opportunity to eliminate two financial accounts from my life. When I was at HSA Bank, I had an HSA Bank account and a TD Ameritrade account. By switching to Fidelity, I eliminated both of those two accounts from my life. I already had a Fidelity account (for the Fidelity 2% back card). Simplification is great.
I was worried I'd have to liquidate my account and move it over as cash. It doesn't make sense to move in order to save $75 a year in fees if you're out of the market for a few days and your HSA misses a $1,000 run up in the market. It turned out that was not an issue. I could just transfer my securities (100% VTI) in kind from TD Ameritrade to Fidelity. No big deal. There was a little bit of cash at TD Ameritrade and a little at HSA Bank and that came over as well. I combined the cash with my 2019 contribution ($7,000 for our family) and invested it into a similar Fidelity Index Fund. Not only does that mean I didn't pay any commissions, but I don't even pay an expense ratio since I went with Fidelity's fancy new Zero TSM Fund.
How to Open a Health Savings Account at Fidelity
I attempted to do the entire rollover online but was stymied. However, a quick call to Fidelity got me a very friendly and competent representative who took care of it so fast I considered moving all my money from Vanguard to Fidelity. I took a few screenshots of the process you may enjoy seeing.
No big deal, right. Just hit next.
Then you just have to choose your sweep account. No big deal. There's obviously only one button to hit.
There's all the fine print if you want to read it.
See how easy this is? Click click click click.
Now all you have to do is transfer money from your bank (mine was already linked since I already had a Fidelity account) and buy an investment.
So I put my 2019 contribution in. Now there were a few more screens in there somewhere, but they were no more complicated than these. I just left them out because they showed my account numbers. It really was super easy to do this online, especially if you already have a Fidelity account. The rollover was a little trickier and I had to call customer service, but it happened very quickly and flawlessly. Now when I go into my HSA account, I can see my investments.
I log into Fidelity, click on the HSA account, and this is what I see:
Easy peasy. I have yet to pay any fee or commission whatsoever to Fidelity and I don't have to do a thing with it until next January when I contribute again. Could I simplify things a little by paying $4.95 to sell VTI and buy FZROX with it? I suppose I could but….inertia. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to it. The funds really are nearly identical.
The Lively Response
Right after I moved my account, Lively decided to match Fidelity by eliminating their already rock bottom fees in order to compete. By now my inertia had kicked in again and I really didn't want to switch again just to go to Lively. Seriously, if they had made that change the week before I might have a Lively HSA. The downside of Lively for me is that I would still have that TD Ameritrade account to worry about and I would just be exchanging an HSA Bank account for a Lively account. But the fees would be almost the same. I would pay Lively nothing and I would pay TD Ameritrade $6.95 once a year to buy $7K of VTI. Super cheap.
Fidelity vs. Lively Health Savings Account Review
As far as I know, no other HSA providers have eliminated their fees. So today we're going to go head to head comparing Lively to Fidelity. I will try to be as unbiased as I can be in my review, but that is going to be a little tricky for two reasons. First, I have a Fidelity account and second I am an affiliate partner with Lively. If you sign up for a Lively account through the links on this page, I make $10. Don't worry, it doesn't cost you any extra. We'll compare them in a handful of ways and you can draw your own conclusions.
HSA Fees
This one is almost a straight up draw. They both charge $0 for the typical fees. However, Fidelity has one fee Lively doesn't–a $25 account closing fee. Most HSAs have this, but Lively doesn't.
Advantage Lively.
Investment Options
Both Fidelity and TD Ameritrade (linked to your Lively HSA) are full-service brokerage options. You can buy anything. TD Ameritrade charges slightly more ($6.95/trade) than Fidelity ($4.95/trade) but both have a robust offering of commission-free ETFs. Fidelity has over 500 ETFs on their list (including all the iShares and Fidelity ones you are likely interested in). TD Ameritrade has over 300 ETFs on their list including many iShares and SPDR ETFs. Fidelity also has its very low-cost index funds available commission free. Both brokerages will charge you a small commission to buy Vanguard ETFs.
The edge here has to go to Fidelity, but let's be honest, the edge is very small and could easily be outweighed by other factors.
Cash Options
Sometimes you don't want all of your HSA money invested. You want it sitting in cash waiting for you to spend it. At Fidelity, the usual place for cash is your CORE FDIC Insured account. Now I suppose you could buy a money market fund at either brokerage as well. Fidelity offers its Prime MMF for no commission. TD Ameritrade made it very difficult to figure out what their best-paying no transaction fee MMF was, but at a minimum, you could pay a commission and buy a Fidelity or Vanguard Prime MMF.
Fidelity vs Lively–you really can't go wrong with either.
The edge here again goes to Fidelity, although again, it is very small.
Convenience
This one is probably in the eye of the beholder. In my case, I already had a Fidelity account, so Fidelity is more convenient. If your employer uses Lively or if you already have a TD Ameritrade account, you may find Lively more convenient. Both are good companies with good customer service.
We'll call this one a draw.
HSA Features
Now that we've looked at the fees and the investing features, you can see that there is very little difference between these two stalwarts. So let's take a look at the HSA features. While these don't matter all that much to me right now, eventually I may actually start using HSA money for, you know, health care expenses or something.
Both companies offer debit cards. They both have useful websites. They both allow you to upload and store receipts from health care purchases. Fidelity offers online bill pay (Lively doesn't). Fidelity offers check writing (Lively doesn't.) Fidelity has an app (Lively doesn't.) Fidelity gets rated higher by HSA experts. Lively gets rated higher by actual HSA users.
However, at Fidelity, you can tell that HSAs are just one thing they do. It feels like a brokerage or a mutual fund company. At Lively, it's all HSA all the time. The company is clearly built from the ground up to do one thing and one thing only–HSAs. And it does a darn good job of it.
The edge here goes to Lively, although if you really want check writing or online bill pay capability, that might be enough to sway you to Fidelity.
Which Is the Best HSA, Fidelity, or Lively?
Overall, the differences between these two HSA juggernauts are slight. They are both head and shoulders over all of the other HSAs currently being offered. I don't think you can really go wrong with either one of them. If you do decide to open an HSA at Lively, I appreciate you going through the links on this page to help support this website.
Open a Lively HSA Today!
What do you think of my review? Which HSA provider do you use and why? Which one do you think is best? What do you like and dislike about the Fidelity and Lively HSAs? Comment below!
[This updated post originally published in 2019.]
I am stuck at HSA bank for now given that’s where my employer has a partnership. This is our first year with an HSA and so I am having to tackle the “two-account” issue between HSA bank and TD Ameritrade. It is pretty annoying, honestly. I submitted the paperwork (via snail mail) to get access to the TD Ameritrade account. Now I have to wait for its approval before I can proceed to invest the money.
I’ll have to look into switching from my employer’s HSA custodian, but don’t want to have to continually transfer money and my employer is unlikely to let me deduct from my paycheck pre-tax. I’d have to wait until tax time to see that advantage.
Thanks for the information in the post. This is good info if I am ever given a choice.
TPP
I’m currently with Lively. I’m changing jobs this fall to an ER group that uses HSA bank. Given that I’ll be an independent contractor, are there any benefits to using the employers inferior HSA bank account or can I just directly contribute to my already established lively account?
Yes, your contributions are payroll tax free.
Unfortunately my HSA was chosen for me by my employer (UMB HSA). Overall I guess there are worse plans out there so I am ok with this choice.
The things I like about UMB is that they do offer Vanguard index funds as options (although they curiously do not offer a vanguard reit fund (or any Reit for that matter). They also have a $3 mo/fee which covers unlimited transactions a month. As the balance kept growing the basis of this fee quickly declined to acceptible range. They allow you to invest anything over a $1k amount (which must be held in cash). I think this is pretty standard.
Things I don’t like: UMB has an awful system to get into the investment portal. It basically adds quite a few unnecessary steps. I have even suggested to them that they need an ability to directly login to the market account but still nothing. I mentioned the lack of a Reit fund already (requested that as well and appears customer service has a deaf ear).
You can do a once a year rollover.
My employer HSA is with OptumBank (moved a few years ago from US Bank or something). I had just assumed I have to keep the funds there because that was the only option given to me. I plan for ALL my other accounts to be at Fidelity (because that’s where my employer account also is).
Are you saying we can open an HSA anywhere and just rollover the funds after they’re contributed?
Once a year, yes.
You can do unlimited *transfers*, though, where the money goes directly from HSA to HSA rather than to your bank account and then into the new HSA.
Were there any fees on TD’s or HSA Bank’s end to close those accounts?
No.
As of Nov 12, 2019 HSA Bank does indeed charge a $25 fee for closing an account. Many of the other fees are waived if your balance is above $5,000.
I use HSABank and TDA. I lited our fees below. I just keep the minimum in the account and invest the rest. Seems like a waste to keep 3K sitting around but I justify it as part of Efund.
Looks like there is a closure fee. Maybe it depends on your employer?
Fee details
Fee Amount Additional fee info
HSA Service Fee $1.25 Fee will be waived when the average daily balance exceeds $2,999.99
HSA Closure Fee $25.00
Debit Card Issuance Fee $6.00
ATM PIN or Point of Sale PIN Use Fee $2.00
HSA Check Distribution Fee $10.00
I don’t think I paid a closure fee.
Maybe the account is still open until they close it?
If your employer-sponsored account has that minimum balance requirement, is that the same as the “fees” you were referring to, and in that case, seems you could only rollover the funds apart from that minimum to avoid any fees?
Not sure what you mean, but a minimum balance requirement is basically the same thing as a fee since you can’t earn much ont hat money.
My understanding, using the example above, if you left at least $3K in the account (which all of our HSAs should have), you’d have no fees, right?
But if you roll everything out of your employer account, then they would charge you the fee.
I was trying to find out how it worked with my account (I believe mine had a $2.50 monthly fee for balance <$2500, but don't recall), and interestingly enough there is NO where to find this info online (re: fees, nor rollovers).
But I wanted to check that the fees you were referring to avoiding by moving to Fidelity were monthly fees like this, or something else? (Right now, as far as I understood, I'm paying no fees because I have more than the minimum balance.)
Yes, the ones I moved to avoid were charged every month. $5.50 a month.
Ok, so sounds like even if I did the annual rollover with my employer-based HSA, I would get charged a fee since I have to leave it open. I will double check with them, but too bad, I was excited to get all accounts under one roof for the first time in forever. 🙂
Nobody is forced to use employers HSA. You can contribute directly to any HSA of your choice, though you don’t get the tax break on your paycheck. You still get the tax break when you file
I know Federal and State tax breaks are the same regardless you use pay roll or contribute directly to HSA. However, contributing through pay roll are not subjected to SS, Medicare, and City tax either. Can you claim SS, Medicare, and City tax refunds when you file tax returns if you contribute directly to HSA?
I don’t think so.
If you pass the SS cap each year, which it’s likely the target audience of this blog does, SS is a wash. You’ll hit the cap earlier in the year and spend more of the year without a SS deduction.
However, there’s not a path to recover the extra Medicare taxes, including the Medicare surtax on income over $200k. State/city taxes totally depend on whether it’s a flat percentage of taxable income withheld by the employer and requiring no return or whether you file an actual return on which they let you take a deduction for the HSA contribution / base it on your federal taxable income.
@Mike B,
If someone falls under high income household category, is it still beneficial to withdraw from payroll, versus paying directly by bank.
I understand there is cap limit for SS, Medicare and for State: California doesn’t recognize HSA anyways.
Is my understanding correct, there is no actual benefit for payroll contribution versus bank contribution, in that scenario. This can help me if
1.)I can do a.)FRONTLOAD HSA to b.)provider of my choice – Fidelity HSA, with doing some tax management myself, as it won’t show up on W2
VERSUS
2.)Smaller equal monthly contribution via payroll, and then do transfer to Fidelity every month or so.
The benefit of going through payroll is saved Medicare taxes. So about $200 a year.
Thanks. This makes sense to me. I assume this is because of below calculation of income?
2.90% regular Medicare tax for first 250K family income + 0.9% additional Medicare tax for family income beyond 250K
(2.9+0.9)%*7100 ==> 269.8
Exactly, although the exact amount can vary a bit due to employment status and income/tax bracket.
We are newly self employed and had FSA previously. We joined a group physician K-2 plan for health insurance that puts our HSA money into Health Equity. Have you heard of them? We have put in the max for 3 years now, but have also used it. The fee is $30/year. You can start choosing investments at $10k.
I am a lazy bum who hasn’t yet made our 2018 HSA contribution yet and was planning to deposit the money this weekend into the Lively account I opened last year following your recommendation . Since I already have a brokerage account and both of our Roth IRAs at Fidelity already, it makes a lot more sense to have our HSAs there as well, as it would make the annual contributions way simpler by just transferring money from the brokerage account into our HSAs like we do with the Roths.
Thanks for this amazingly timely update!
I have Synovus as HSA custodian through work (save on payroll taxes). Transfer once a year the majority of the balance to lively. Last year no problems it transferred within 2 weeks. This year has been 4+ weeks and synovus is dragging their feet. Lively has been really helpful on the customer service side, but this year’s process has not gone smoothly. The receipt uploading option is super convenient. I don’t love the TD ameritrade interface, but fortunately I just need to use it once a year to buy SPDR total stock etf.
Thanks, read the article and opened up a brand new account with Fidelity in about 10 minutes. It looks like the transfer of my HSA bank cash balance will take about 10-14 days and my TD ameritrade balance should be moved within about 7 days. It always irked me to pay the $5.50 per month to HSA bank so thank you for finding a lower fee HSA.
my company recently transitioned away from Optum Bank to Further. Further seems pretty new
Quick Note. While TD Ameritrade does normally charge commissions for their ETF, I found a pretty good loop hole for those that use HSA Bank and like to Dollar Cost average their HSA. If you do automatic monthly investments into your HSA through TD Ameritrade, they waive the commission fee. So, I am able to contribute monthly to my TD Ameritrade and have them auto purchase VTSAX and there are no fees aside from the low expense ratio of the fund itself. Also, with HSA bank I don’t keep the high minimum balance to avoid the fee, but somehow they only charge 2.50/month for monthly maintainence fee. Maybe this is because it through a large workplace account? Either way, my expenses are 30/year plus the 0.04% expense ratio and that is it. Pretty good deal for not having access to Lively or Fidelity. If I was an independent contractor, I would definitely go with Fidelity though, but the savings would be pretty minimal
Thanks for the article alerting us to the Fidelity option! Currently with HSA Bank and I’m similarly annoyed at having to manage two accounts (TD+HSAB) as well as the fees or minimum cash balance, and the hour I used to spend every 6 months trying to get it to download into Quicken again because it stopped working… Recently they even took away the option to download a quicken-compatible file for manual import, and when I contacted customer support they stated that wasn’t a feature they planned to provide anymore. Fidelity has always worked well with Quicken for me, so I expect the HSA will do the same…
I am considering moving my HSA to HealthSavings Administrators, to use their Vanguard index funds. Anyone have experience with them? Any drawbacks that I should be aware of?
Other than the low fees versus the no fees at Lively and Fidelity? No. I think they’re fine.
Thanks. I have accumulated HSA money in a lame cash account that has been making peanuts over the past 9 or so years. I literally had an awakening after starting listening to your podcasts (thanks!!) and had started the process of moving my HSA to the HealthSavings Administrators account. Now, I realize that the fees with that account is about 0.35% per yr. I may have to switch again!!
They were one of the better ones just a few months ago, so don’t beat yourself up too much.
They seem to change their rules all the time without notification, so good to check in every so often. My employer one changed administrators, and then about a year later changed internally somehow (maybe similar name but somehow different, as had different website, phone number, and log in, money needed to be transferred, etc). I was so wrapped up in the glitches with getting my money over (left one and did not appear in the other!), that I didn’t realize that the rules had changed and their minimum for fees went up from $2.50/month for <$2500 balance, to $3/month for <$5K balance.
I wonder if Fidelity could start charging a monthly fee at any point. Do they have separate HSA+investment parts to their account too? If it made no difference with my employer, I might just pay the $20 fee (charged by current HSA for rollovers) and get it into Fidelity and not deal with this stuff anymore.
I am currently with HSA Bank and will be switching to Fidelity as my other accounts are with them. With my HSA Bank account, do I need to transfer the invested money at TD Ameritrade back to HSA Bank? Or can I transfer them directly from TD Ameritrade?
I’m with HSA Bank, and after reading the article this morning, I opened an account at Fidelity and used their online process to start the transfer of my funds from HSA Bank and (hopefully) investsments in-kind from TD Ameritrade.
After opening the account and going through the all-online process to create and sign the transfer forms after uploading a copy of my HSA Bank statement, I called Fidelity and received a rep to ask about what to do about TD Ameritrade. She told me that you can’t do the process online and would have to print/fill-out/send in forms for TDA investment transfer.
But then I went into the account online and clicked on the transfer link, and it asked me to search for an external company, found TD Ameritrade as an option, and filled out all of the details and signed/submitted online. We’ll see if everything actually goes through, but it seemed like I was able to do it, looking at the PDF transfer forms it generated, which correctly checked the boxes for transfer of investments and marked the original and receiving accounts as “HSA”.
Of note, on the HSA Bank website, when you look at the PDF about closing/transferring your account, it states that you need to sell your investments and move to cash in the HSA Bank account before closing/transferring, but given WCI’s statements in the article of not doing that himself, I decided to give it a try as well.
I didn’t have to. The assets were transferred in kind to Fidelity.
Just confirming that using the WCI process, my in-kind transfer from TD Ameritrade with all-online pdf form signature/submission did correctly get transferred to my new Fidelity HSA account. Still waiting for the HSA bank cash to show up so I can get it invested (Yay, no fees and no minimum cash balance!)…
Thanks for this info. I’m doing my today. Was glad to see someone else had attempted and completed the transfer of funds and assets from HSA Bank without calling Fidelity.
My HSA bank cash balance finally showed up at Fidelity more than a month after I originally started the transfer through Fidelity. I suppose that’s just another way that they make money (delaying the transfers yet not paying any worthwhile interest).
Once everything was closed, I sent them a nice email to list my reasons for taking my business elsewhere (investments without cash minimum or fees, quicken download that works)… I doubt they will consider changing based on me or my comments though… There will always be plenty of employers who will choose them for their employees, who will be a captive audience.
Never heard of Lively before but nice to see there is another good option for HSA’s out there. One of the (many) changes I made to my financial life when becoming self employed is switching my HSA. The one with my former employer charged a lot of fees.
As fate would have it, Fidelity jumped into the HSA game right around the time I became self employed. I was able to roll everything over in about a week and became fully invested in the same FZROX fund. I’ll be sticking with them for a while I’m sure.
First time HSAer here. 1099. Bought an HSA eligible plan for this year and just signed up with Fidelity … very easy as you observed. But I want to make the family contribution of 7k, also using it as an investment vehicle. Do I need to open an HSA account for my spouse as well? Also, can I continue taking deductions on my health expenses, assuming I keep the HSA funds in the account?
No. You just put $7K in yours.
You either use the HSA dollars or take the deduction. You can’t do both. But few docs get a significant deduction out of health care expenses due to the 7.5% of income floor issue.(See lines 1-4 of Schedule A).
I am a partner with a large private group practice. The group contributes the max to our HSA accounts (of our choosing) in bi-yearly installments. As far as you know, are there any logistical issues with setting this up with either Fidelity or Lively? What our office manager requires to transfer money is the routing and account numbers.
I don’t know of any logistical issues. Why not have the office manager call Lively or Fidelity to set it up?
I switched from Optum to Lively last year and love it so far. The website interface is super user friendly. I have begun to use my HSA funds to pay off health expenses as they arise, just to simplify things. And the process is really simple- takes <3 min of my time each time... scan receipt, pay yourself, confirm. Cash in bank account in 2-3 days.
Have a really basic q re: something mentioned earlier: saving on payroll taxes. HSA is through DH's sdg. We fund it through our post-tax dollars and at the end of the tax yr, it goes as a deduction on our taxes. The reason it's been set up this way is because only 3 of the 4 partners participate in the HDP: the 4th gets health insurance through his wife's employer. Are we missing out on maximizing our deduction by paying with post tax dollars? Thanks!
You should still be able to save the income taxes by deducting it when you put in your K-1 but you won’t be able to save the payroll taxes. Sorry!
Hmm, thanks WCI. So, its about 7.5% of $7000 or $525/yr lost. Let me see if the practice accountant has any ideas on how to do this.
Let me know if you figure it out, I couldn’t with my partnership.
Thank you for the article. I opened an HSA at Fidelity recently but haven’t invested any of the money yet. If you were not transferring your VTI shares from Lively, would you have invested your entire HSA account in FZROX? I read the article you linked about expense ratios , and I’m a bit confused as it seems you felt VTI was still superior despite the fees – do you now feel they are about equivalent? Also, would there be any drawback to investing half into FZROX and half into VTI?
If one is superior to the other, it isn’t by much. That was the point of that article. I bought the FZROX just to avoid the $6 commission of buying VTI. I prefer funds anyway.
Nobody is forced to use employers HSA. You can contribute directly to any HSA of your choice, though you don’t get the tax break on your paycheck. You still get the tax break when you file
There is some potential loss if payroll deduction means employer is actually contributing directly to HSA (vs contributing as employee), since the former somehow avoids more taxes (forget how). But I just checked with my employer and they confirmed that their deductions still end up being employee deduction – so you’re right, no reason to stay since I contribute directly anyway! 🙂
Not the payroll tax break.
If one is able to avoid fees from your current HSA plan, would the payroll tax break be worth it for that amount of annual contribution? It would be the same break for everyone, right?
2.9%*$7000=$203. If the fees or investment performance is worse than that, then forget it.
So payroll tax=both parts of Medicare tax?
Why is our savings as employees not just 1.45% (vs 2.9%)?
I guess you’re right. Sorry. Sometimes I forget some people have employers!
If employer is contributing (not your contribution via payroll deduction, but they are giving you money as enticement for High Deductible plan), then you’re likely going to have to use their HSA for that.
But if you have both, you can always roll it to your third party HSA. Typically, I think employers pay the plan fees while you’re still an employee, so that doesn’t really add any cost.
I transferred all my former company’s HSA to Fidelity because of the $2.50/month fee and having to deal with “sweep” accounts and horrible website. The “closing” fee of $25 was kind of annoying.
Has anyone had any experience with the Track and Pay receipt tracking and check writing feature associated with the Fidelity HSA? Apologies if this has been discussed on another current thread. If so, would welcome the redirect. Also, any reservations about allowing Fidelity third party access to your insurer?
I haven’t seen a post on it and I haven’t done it.
Not sure I understand your concern about third party access.
If I understand correctly, agreeing to the terms for Track and Pay and enabling a feature allows Fidelity to connect directly to your insurance carrier and upload claims data. This may be a standard feature of any HSA, but I’m a little wary of sharing my personal health info with Fidelity. See agreement below:
“These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your use of the Track and Pay service (“Service”) provided by Fidelity Workplace Services LLC or its affiliates (“Fidelity”). The Service includes an application that:
– can retrieve your and your dependents’ healthcare information from third party web sites (“Third Party Sites”), display information about your Fidelity HSA® (“Fidelity Account Information”) and certain workplace benefit accounts (hereafter, “Workplace Account Information”, such as a HSA-compatible health flexible spending account, if authorized by your employer);
– allows you to upload and store images of receipts for healthcare expenses; and
– organizes such information in a user-friendly interface to assist you in understanding and paying healthcare expenses from your Fidelity HSA®, workplace or other designated personal accounts.
I guess you could just skip that feature and have the HSA send you the money directly.
I wouldn’t use that feature either because of privacy concerns. I trust Fidelity, but don’t necessarily trust the “third party sites”. There have been too many data breaches and this isn’t worth it.
BTW, instead of managing receipts to reimburse yourself as your expenses occur, consider waiting until the end of the year and use your health insurance EOB report and do a year’s worth of reimburesments at one time. It’s much easier, if you can wait and don’t need the reimbursement immediately.
Not sure who will see this but I have experience with both WageWorks and Fidelity’s Track and Pay for paying health providers.
Wageworks was far better. Fidelity’s program is utter garbage.
First, it’s hard to find. You need to log in to Fidelity and click like 3-4 times just to get to it.
It’s clear that Fidelity’s system was not made by Fidelity but by a third-party. It has a much different look and feel. It’s sluggish.
I put my health insurance and dental insurance info into it. One linked fine, the other didn’t. There was no customer service chat nor email available, which is really pathetic for 2020. Only a phone number, where I was put on hold until a customer service rep took down my details. She said that it might take 2-3 weeks to get it resolved. Pathetic.
One of my accounts does link properly, however, and it gets details about how much I owe and to whom. But it doesn’t have any mailing details or account details so I can’t even see where I’m supposed to send a check until I get the bill in the mail. And then I have to copy it from there into the computer to pay. With Wageworks, everything was filled out for me automatically.
Really crappy software. It’s clear to me that Fidelity wanted to do the HSA thing and patched together some junk hoping to catch some clients. My company was already using Fidelity for the stock plan so they probably figured to also put their HSA there. It’s a total disaster. I’m going to see if I can somehow keep using WageWorks and just transfer all my funds out of Fidelity regularly to Wageworks and pay out of there. Not sure if it’s possible since I no longer contribute there.
Fidelity is fine. Track and Pay is garbage.
The tracker didn’t work very well for my transfer, but I think it’s highly dependent on the electronic access to the HSA you are leaving.
The tracker was able to tell me when fidelity sent the request to the old HSA and when they received the paper check that was mailed back . Everything else was a black box.
YMMV
Indeed that’s one possibility. My plan was to pay all medical expenses with a 2.5% cash rebate credit card and let the HSA grow unencumbered as recommended, deferring reimbursement until retirement. The convenience of having all dental and medical insurance receipts for the family flowing directly to the safety? of Fidelity servers is tempting. A yellowing stuffed tax receipt folder potentially lost to flood or fire is not. Prescriptions, etc. would be uploaded manually. Would also need to confirm that this data could be retrieved should the need arise to switch to an alternate HSA provider. Are there any reasons why I wouldn’t choose to share health claims data with an HSA provider or am I overconcerned?
Why not just keep in a data file of your own? My personal method is an email folder, since some of my receipts are electronic anyway and the others I can just take a photo of and email to myself.
I’m assuming that the way we upload this information will likely change in a couple decades anyway, not to mention the likelihood of possibly changing HSA is for another reason.
Rob and Snag75:
I pay everything up front with my own cash back card and then do a one time reimbursement at the end of the year.
Instead of managing receipts, I download a report from the insurance company at the end of the year which shows “out of pocket” costs for the year and reimburse myself that way. (I suppose you could do it more often, but the ability to customize reporting probably varies between insurance companies).
From what I can tell, the IRS doesn’t specify exactly what counts as “proof” for out of pocket cost, so I’ll just assume the insurance company’s report is valid and call it done. I still keep the receipts and stuff them in a zip lock bag on the off chance the IRS does an audit and doesn’t accept the report, but that seems highly unlikely.
Some pharmacies also can provide an annual report of your expenses if it’s not already included with your health insurance report. Also, I separately manage annual eye care receipt as it’s not part of my insurance report.
Curious what card gives 2.5% cash rebate? Mine is 2%, but if there’s a better one, I’d like to know. Sorry for getting too far off topic with that.
WCI, Snag75 and YYZ:
All viable alternatives. Thanks for sharing!
YYZ:
Switched from Fidelity Visa 2% to Alliant Credit Union Visa Signature 2.5% cash back almost two years ago. No issues. Good support. Good app. 3% cash back first year! $59 annual fee. Longer electronic setup process than other cards but smooth afterwards. Requires $25 donation to charity to set up checking account which I don’t use. I have no affiliation.
https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/bank/visa-signature-card
https://www.valuepenguin.com/alliant-cashback-credit-card
That is attractive for me. I may have to look into that. The $59 fee would be no problema to make up given how much I put on a card. I guess the only question is what kind of a credit limit they’ll give me. Question for you- how is the cash back applied?
Okay, I applied tonight. We’ll see what kind of credit limit they offer me.
WCI:
Just following up. Were you able to obtain a satisfactory credit limit from Alliant?
$25K. They say they’ll revisit in 6 months. Maybe I’ll put $25K of my tax bill today on it somehow.
My 2% cash back card has no annual fee. ( MasterCard double cash back 1% when you use it and another 1% when you pay it. They advertise often on TV)
If you have to pay annual $59 to get 2.5%, you’d have to spend 11,800/year to cover the annual fee ($59/.005) as compared to 2% card. If you charge more, it appears to be a good way to go. If you charge less, no annual fee is better
Oddly, our grocery store announced they’re going to stop accepting Visa this month due to their fees. They are nationally known as Kroger, but operate under many different names depending on the region of the country. If you see store branded items with Kroger name, it’s likely they won’t take Visa after April 3
YYZ:
AMEX Blue Cash Preferred was offering 6% cash back on groceries at Kroger as late as Feb of this year but may also be history if they boot VISA.
Still a great card for most grocery stores and for purchasing Amazon gift and gas cards at 6% off as long as store is coded as a grocer and not wholesaler. See comments section in following:
https://20somethingfinance.com/best-rewards-card-for-groceries-american-express-blue-preferred-review/
Apologies for straying so far OT. Will cease and desist.
If I could get a high enough balance limit I may be able to put 50-100 times that on the card. Not worried about hitting $11,800. Remember I pay taxes with my credit cards (costs 1.87%, but there’s a big arbitrage there if I’m making 2.5%.) I don’t care so much about groceries. That’s chump change compared to taxes.
Statement credit (within one billing cycle) or deposit to Alliant checking or savings account.
Be advised, cash back expires in the December credit cycle of the 4th year after it is received, on a rolling basis.
e.g. Jan 2019 cash reward goes poof Dec 2023 if unredeemed.
How would it be unredeemed if it automatically goes to the statement or the checking account? Or do you have to do something to get it to go there?
Requires either call or online request to apply cash back as statement credit or to deposit into Alliant checking or savings account.
Every month? That’s annoying.
WCI:
No, it’s similar to most cash rewards cards. Your cash back dollars accrue automatically every month. When you wish to use the cash (redeem), call or click online to apply as statement credit, or to direct into Alliant savings or checking account. Just be sure to use the money within four years from the time you receive it. Took me 2 min 30 secs to redeem by phone today with a live agent. Probably even faster online.
I’m confused…it was my understanding that the choice of HSA is always up to the employee to shop around for, even if the employer has other options in place.
That’s right, although if you want the employer to contribute matching funds, you’d better use theirs! Plus if you’re an employee, you can save some payroll taxes.
I checked with my employer, and although they do not contribute toward employee HSAs, they are willing to setup regular payroll deductions to an HSA of our choosing, thus saving payroll taxes. I am considering Fidelity. Am I correct in understanding that those regular contributions will be deposited into the Fidelity core account, and that I will have to manually transfer those funds every month into my investment account? Does that mean a $4.95 fee each time? Sounds like many folks here would use an HSA independent of their employer simply make a single $7K contribution annually, thus only one$4.95 transfer fee.
Cool!
I’d be surprised if you had to pay $4.95 to buy Fidelity funds, but perhaps if you want to buy Vanguard ETFs you’d have to pay that each time.
Oh, got it, the $4.95 per trade fee is only for purchasing investments outside of Fidelity’s own offerings. That was not clear to me. I suppose if someone in my situation really wanted Vanguard funds, they could slide funds into some reasonable fidelity options each month after the payroll deferral is deposited, and then make a single large trade each year into Vanguard.
FYI- Lively now has an App and it works great.