Our first monthly contribution was taken out of Joshua’s paycheck last week, so I’m looking forward to that being taken care of. After this, there should be one contribution every month, for $250. We’d like to do more, but because it will significantly alter our take-home pay, we’re being conservative.
We got the hospital bill for Mary Judah, and owe $576 after the provider responsibility was factored in. I called when I got the bill to set up a payment plan, so we’ll pay $144 a month for four months, starting this month. I have that in writing from the hospital. The first payment is due by Friday.
I went to the dentist last Thursday and they are letting me call my payment in once our HSA funds are available, which is nice.
So check this out: we put $100 into the account from checking when we opened it. A few days later, I used $77.50 to order a six-month supply of contacts, which leaves us $22.50 in the account. $250 will get deposited in the next week or so, giving us $272.50. Once I pay the dentist ($125) and the installment of the hospital bill ($144), we will have $3.50 in our HSA! Whew! Barely made it.
Update Before Posting:
As it turns out, there’s apparently some kind of admin fee in the account for $4.25! Joshua is going to look into that, but that means that NO, we didn’t barely make it. It means that we’ll actually overdraft the account by about a dollar if we follow the plan in the above paragraph. The first hospital bill is due, no exceptions, so we’re going to have to pay part of the dental bill with the checking account. Not only would we overdraft the HSA, but we need to factor in another admin fee before the next deposit as well. CRAP.
Anyway, getting the HSA set up is a goal we’ve had for months, and it’s finally happening. And since the money is being taken straight out of Joshua’s paycheck, we don’t have to manually do anything, except keep track of how much we have in the account. Yay for automation!
The only thing now is to figure out how to factor that into the budget. Should we keep our medical categories in the budget and count the HSA as “income?” At this point, the HSA contribution is less than the medical budget, so counting it as income wouldn’t create a surplus in the budget, for now. If in the future, we are able to contribute more than the medical budget, then it would create a surplus, so I guess then we wouldn’t zero out the budget, since those funds are restricted. I’m just not sure how to keep track of that.
Everything is set up in Quicken right now, and I’ve entered the HSA account into Quicken as a savings account. I want to continue to keep track of how much we spend on the different medical services we have, but I’m flummoxed as to how to do that. Technically, the money put into the HSA would be deposits into a savings account, and the payments would be debits from that account, but how do I factor that into the budget, or do I?
I’m really hoping for some suggestions.