Frum.Finance

I have the option of paying for medical care via hsa debit card or  paying by Credit Card and filing paperwork for reimbursement. I gain the %2 cashback doing it the second way. But is it worth the hassle?

Today I thought of another way to think about it. %2 is 1/50. I'm basically working for teruma

also I can wait to withdraw until years later and let the reimbursement grow tax free

What's the opportunity cost vs the total gain? Are you giving up a blatt gemara for 20$?

Can i learn a blatt in the time it takes me to fill out a claim form? Maybe?

It's a very personal question, no? If it's worth the hassle depends heavily on what your alternatives are. If you could do a quick consulting job in the time that pays more?

Your question is a personal one of hassle right?

Yeah I'm thinking I need to be able to bundle bills together into a really big claim for it to be worth it. I have $200 bill on my desk right now and I'm leaning towards HSA card. vs CC which would gain me $4 plus tax free growth on the $200

I pay with credit card and keep the reimbursements to file in many years from now to allow for compounding.

No matter what size the expense? Do you generally have enough potential claims available to empty the HSA?

No matter the size of the expense, yeah. Yeah I could probably drain it already with my current amount of claims.

I HSA carded it :slightly_smiling_face: I'm thinking My HSA contribution is something like 7 k a year. If I try to document every claim of $200 it would take something like 35 claims to file per year. That's too much for me to keep track of. The claims need to be bigger for this to be worth it for me

For small claims like that I just pay out of pocket since I will obviously have enough large claims over the next 40 years to withdraw from my HSA in the future.

So it's not like it would be 35 claims per year since in the future you are likely to have large claims that will be able to be used for the withdrawal.

Same as <@U04EQ1L14HG>. I pay everything cc. Much simpler. Then if I want cash, I claim a big expense (not the $7.50 drug copays lol). My HSA asks for almost nothing. Takes about 30 seconds to request the money. They don't verify anything since I'm obligated to keep the records, not them. 
For HRA and FSA, they need to verify, but then it's even more critical to never use the debit card. I once had a nightmare where they didn't like one of my receipts and were threatening to freeze everything because I was "cheating" even though I offered them much bigger receipts in "exchange." Never used the debit card again. A reimbursement will just be denied if they don't like it.