Should I Use My HSA?

Show Trancript

Jimmy Turner (00:00)
I’ve had recent healthcare stuff that I’ve talked about on the show already, but yeah, we have an HSA as well. So we’re going to dive into all things HSA, the pros, the cons, maybe why you should or shouldn’t consider it. And I think this is one of the things I get asked a lot about at work because we have an HSA. And so I’m super excited to dive into that.

Before we get going, don’t forget to visit money meets medicine .com if you need help with disability insurance or you want to snag a free copy of the physician philosophers guide to personal finance and do me a solid give that copy. It’s completely free on the website to your trainees. I get questions all the time. That’s that very short read. It’s a short read probably takes like, you know, a few hours and you can listen to that and it’s really good primer to get you started. You’re not going to learn everything. That’s why the subtitle is the 20 % you know, need to know to get 80 % of the results.

But that said, appreciate you passing that along and also sharing the show. We’ve had a lot of people reach out and it seems like it’s going well. Justin’s apparently not a terrible co -host, so appreciate him being here. But HSA is Justin. So my workplace didn’t used to have these and it was only probably, I don’t know, four or five years ago that we got an HSA. And so when this thing popped up, everyone’s like, hey Jimmy, what do I do with this? I don’t know what this thing is. Should I use it?

How do I use it? And I think one of the reasons for confusion is that a lot of places, including my own, not just have an HSA, but they also have a flexible spending account. And so they’ve got an FSA and an HSA, and then there’s like a dependent care FSA. So you’ve got like a healthcare FSA, a dependent care FSA, and then an HSA. And immediately everyone’s like, I don’t know what in the world to do with any of these things. So.

Justin Harvey (02:45)
It is, the alphabet soup is totally confusing to the uninitiated, which is 99 point something percent of the population. And there’s an important difference between HSAs and FSAs. And so it would behoove you to at least understand the primary difference. And I’ll just dive right into it. I generally don’t even recommend FSAs, at least healthcare flexible savings accounts. Healthcare FSA, I don’t recommend those to my clients just because they’ll use it or lose it.

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And if you have any balance left over, that goes away after a period of time post the expiration of the plan year. And any tax benefit is, it’s a coin flip whether or not you’re gonna like remember to spend that and then you gotta go to like CVS and buy a bunch of stuff on the last day of the plan year and it’s kind of stressful. And I just think don’t bother with that.

Jimmy Turner (03:37)
Yeah, I totally did that. So I had an FSA when I was in residency and at the time I played a lot of golf. I would like to play more golf. For the record, I’m not good at golf. I just like playing golf. Those are very different things. And I haven’t had time lately, but back then I played more golf. Interestingly, I had an FSA and so was like, I have, I don’t even know. I had $1 I think left at the end of the year. And so…

I’m looking at the list of all the things you can you can use an FSA for and that that’s legal and and you can get reimbursed so I ended up spending I think like a thousand dollars on prescription Oakley’s because apparently apparently prescription sunglasses are our kosher and so for I don’t know a year and a half until my vision changed I would wear these you know $800 Oakley’s and the only reason I got them is because I had to spend the money otherwise it’s use it or lose it and I had an FSA and so

What you’re putting down is very much a real life story and in my experience and I definitely multiple years spent money on things that I otherwise wouldn’t have bought if I hadn’t had the FSA.

Justin Harvey (04:43)
Yeah, and so I don’t know what your marginal tax rate was as a resident, but I can imagine it was not the highest marginal tax rate of 37 % that we have right now. And so you could argue that spending $800 on sunglasses was a net negative in terms of financial outcome. And then you had some nice sunglasses, so that’s not a total loss. But the point is, it pressures you to spend money that you wouldn’t otherwise necessarily. And that’s not always a benefit. Plus, anything that introduces anxiety and stress into your life, need to, you know, we talk about the,

stress adjusted return on investment. You gotta make sure that it’s worth it for that stress. And also FSA limits are lower. The family contribution amount for an HSA is $8 ,350 in 2024. I don’t even know what it is in an FSA because we never use them, but it’s a lot less than that. So healthcare FSA is largely, I ignore. The HSA, the Health Savings Account, is, it doesn’t go away every year. You put money into it and it sticks around and we’re gonna talk about the mechanics of that, but.

That’s the primary sort of fundamental binary difference is one evaporates and one doesn’t. And the one that sticks around the HSA, you can invest it and grow that over time, which makes it a functionally, I describe it as like it’s a bolt on to your 403 B or your 401 K or whatever. It’s like an extra bucket that is treated very, very similarly. And, and you can usually invest the sum that you have deferred in there. And it’s a, it’s a good thing.

Jimmy Turner (06:07)
Yeah, so the way that I described this in FSA has a single tax advantage, which theoretically isn’t advantageous if you’re buying $800 Oakleys. But assuming that you’re using it for reasonable healthcare costs, you get to take that pre -tax money and spend it on things that would have otherwise need to purchase anyway. And so it’s got a single tax benefit. Whereas in HSA, the reason that people are just fascinated by this thing in the personal finance space is you put pre -tax dollars in, that pre -tax dollar grows.

Justin Harvey (06:15)
you

Jimmy Turner (06:37)
And unlike a taxable brokerage account, that gain is not taxed. And then when you take it out, if it’s for medical expenses later, it’s still tax free. And so that’s why this is called a triple tax advantage to count. And it’s a beautiful thing if you use it for health care expenses. And even if you don’t like the worst case scenario, as you’re mentioning, is that when you turn 65, if you’re not using on health care expenses, it essentially turns into a four or three B account where you just pay taxes on the back end and just like you would for pre -tax contributions to your four or three B. And so at worst, it’s just an extra four or three B.

And at best, you have triple tax advantages for healthcare costs that for the vast majority of us in our elderly years, we’re going to experience. And so that’s why people are enamored with this because it is the only triple tax advantage to count that exists. I do think it’s important to mention though, that even though you have that, and even though you can put money inside of it, fundamentally, it requires a high deductible healthcare plan. And so where I like to start this conversation is just to always point out that

You probably shouldn’t let the investment tail wag the insurance dog. At the end of the day, this is an insurance decision. In my opinion, this is an insurance decision first. And if you are in a reasonable insurance situation, then an HSA can be great. And we’ll talk about why momentarily. But Justin, when you’re advising people on HSAs, is that kind of the way you view it first? You know, health care decision first in terms of insurance needs and then the HSA investment portion or do you just say, hey, an HSA is great no matter what, just use it?

Justin Harvey (08:03)
100 % you need to make the healthcare decision first because if you need to be in network with a certain specialist or you have, you know, a health condition or medication that you’re, you need a certain insurance to be able to like reasonably cover, then any potential benefit from the triple tax advantage could easily be totally squished by that. my gosh. Every time I get to a specialist, it’s XYZ or they’re out of network or there there’s major costs with having the wrong plan.

And having the right plan is important. I think generally if you’re like young, healthy, low utilizer, you’re planning to get the cheapest possible policy. Usually the high deductible plan is in the conversation for that. And the high deductible plan is coupled with an HSA in many cases. And so you’re self -insuring to a greater degree. But if you are in fact, if you win that trade, if you do end up being a lower utilizer, then it does open up this other bucket of potential.

savings that can be useful over time.

Jimmy Turner (09:02)
Yeah, so before we dive into the nitty gritty of it, there’s some buckets that I like to talk about of people that you might not want to use an HSA. And that’s one of them, right? You’ve got these high insurance needs. And for some people, that’s your situation, Justin, where you’re like, I’m having a kid. I know I’m have a bunch of health care costs this year. So this year, I’m going to skip the HSA. I’m going have the lower health care costs through this other insurance plan if one is offered at your employer. And then I’m going jump back into the HSA the next year.

Before I talk about the other buckets, did you guys consider doing that?

Justin Harvey (09:33)
We kind of did. This is a whole nother rabbit hole. I commercial insurance. I’m trying to find a way to totally kick it to the curb because the cost is obscene in my opinion and and the reimbursing. It’s you know, it’s it’s confusing and complicated and reimbursement and like how much. man, I got an MRI the other day. I can’t remember if told you the story and I.

Jimmy Turner (09:59)
Yeah, yeah,

Justin Harvey (10:01)
I know how to look up CPT codes on my phone while I’m sitting in the waiting room and just, you know, I realized I was Regents Blue Cross and the MRI center where I was getting a scan on my elbow, they were gonna get paid $2 ,200 was the contracted rate. And if I was Medicare eligible and a 65 year old, the reimbursement for the CPT code of the right elbow without contrast MRI was something like $270. So my copay,

or my out of pocket cost for this scan was like 250 bucks. So I essentially paid the radiology center $250 and then my insurer, the negotiated rate that my insurer who I’m a customer of theirs got for me, like I paid exactly what Medicare would have paid and then the insurance company is gonna pay them another, I guess couple grand or whatever back room voodoo that they’re gonna like land on. It’s just, anyway, that’s.

aside, but it did make me think gosh is there a way that we can like not deal with Blue Cross anymore because it’s Super painful and that we’re still paying many hundreds a month in premiums, know to be a participant in this plan All that aside we did consider okay if we want to have a kid should we do like a PPO or a higher monthly cost to have a lower out of pocket and We’re we actually do have an HSA right now. And so we are keeping those receipts, know, when we have our kid who’s gonna be born we’re gonna be

inpatient and have the birth at the hospital and all that. We’re filing all that away for whenever we cash out in our 60s. I can still access my Google Drive at that time and be able to take those disbursements text free.

Jimmy Turner (11:42)
Yeah, so you sorted through that. Some people will say, hey, I’ve got this big insurance need coming up that I know that I have. I’m going to skip the HSA for this year. Some people say I’m just going to cash flow the expenses and then take advantage of the HSA, save the receipts. We’ll talk about why that’s important in a second and recoup those costs later. Some other reasons that I’ve heard people give to not use an HSA and I’m just going to throw them out there on the show just so that you can consider them, whether this is your situation or not. Some of these I don’t necessarily agree with.

But I can tell you that I know very reasonable people that have these views and don’t use an HSA. One of them is just risk personalities. So some people just want to be able to sleep at night and for them having a healthcare plan that doesn’t have this massive deductible and this massive out -of -pocket potential expense and that they know every time they show up they’re going to pay their co -pay and they know exactly how much things are going to cost and that there’s the ceiling that makes them comfortable.

It’s kind of like to them, I feel like it’s having bonds in their portfolio. This is their fixed asset, way to make them feel good about their insurance situation. And so even though they’re missing out on the HSA, even though they’re relatively healthy, they don’t have a bunch of upcoming expenses. They would rather miss out on the HSA benefits because they want that security. And I don’t love that rationale. I’m not going to lie, but I get it. I get it.

Part of the reason why I don’t love that rationale is because I am a very risk tolerant person just in general. That’s by the way you can’t be an entrepreneur if you don’t like risk. And so that is a reason that I’ve seen given and I can’t tell people it’s wrong. It’s just you know they’ve got a different risk tolerance than I have. So have you seen that Justin?

Justin Harvey (13:23)
And actually this is one of these sort of like psychological coaching teaching moments that I often engage with especially with fellows and I have a sit down with them was like alright I’m like we’re gonna talk about what it’s like to you know be out there in the wild and I’m gonna tell you some things that you’re not gonna really understand it now but you’re gonna you’ll get out there and eventually it’ll make sense to you a It makes sense to pay someone thousands of dollars to give you advice about your money

I know that like you’re scraping by for your groceries right now and that kind of blows your mind, but you’re entering a new economic paradigm. B, when it comes to insurance, get the best insurance you can basically across every applicable domain. So for your home, for your auto, for your umbrella, sometimes medical. The problem I have with medical insurance is you can get expensive medical insurance and the benefit is indistinguishable. But in other insurance realms, there’s a much more…

Jimmy Turner (14:09)
doesn’t cover anything.

Justin Harvey (14:16)
Observable causal relationship between I got a six million dollar insurance policy And I know that if I die that thing’s gonna pay out to my family like that makes sense to do Having high limits on your auto etc and one of the reasons comes back to what we talked about with stress adjusted return If I’m in a car accident I want to I want to know that I had like the Cadillac policy With very high limits and an umbrella on top of that and no matter what happens I’m I have as much as I could have reasonably ever expected to need

And that’s a way to export stress from your life. it’s something you don’t have to deal with, and you can be a little more emotionally at ease, and you just pay that premium every month, assuming that you have cash flow to be able to comfortably do that, which for most people, as they’re transitioning to attending, that’s the easy time before you’ve had the lifestyle inflation, and you bought the second house and the fourth car and all that stuff. So I think philosophically, it’s a good point. And it’s something that I really do encourage people to embrace.

This is a way to decrease stress. Get good insurance. It’s important.

Jimmy Turner (15:21)
Yeah, so you’ve got the insurance dog, don’t let the investment tail wag the insurance dog situation. If you’re a type one diabetic and you know you’re gonna have high healthcare costs every year of your life, then you might as well just have a non -HSA plan and just plan on using the insurance that you have. If you have a very low risk tolerance, maybe the HSA isn’t the best for you, you want that security. For me, residents, physicians in training, right? Like having a high duct,

I can’t speak for everybody, but I can tell you if I had a high deductible healthcare plan with a massive out of pocket expense, if I actually had something happen in training, that would have been a catastrophic nightmare for my family. If you’re not in that situation, you’re otherwise independently wealthy, you happen to be in residency, maybe that’s not you. But for the lion’s share of residents listening to this, unless you’re married to a sugar mama or sugar daddy, or you’re independently wealthy, HSA should give you pause. And for me, and the reason why is because I mean, having $1

emergency fund and training was, to be honest, somewhat challenging to come up with. And so having an HSA where like the potential out of pocket max is like 10 grand would not have been something I would recommend.

Justin Harvey (16:27)
And when you’re making that PGY scale income, the tax deduction is a lot less valuable for you. You’re still getting the benefit of the tax deferred growth and hopefully the tax free withdrawal. But in the year when you get that deduction, that’s a big part of the benefit. And if you’re in the top marginal bracket, you’re getting that, you know, 30 something percent benefit for that deferral. That’s very different than, my gosh, my effective tax rate is 11%. And I’m a family of four and my household income is $80 ,000. There’s very little deductible benefit there for you because you’re just not paying a lot of taxes.

Jimmy Turner (16:57)
Yep. And so when it comes to that deductible benefit, right? The way that this thing works, talk about some people that may want to give themselves some pause before they move forward with an HSA. But you mentioned the numbers around $8 ,300. If you’re a family for toward an HSA, put about half of that in. If you’re, if you’re single, something that I mentioned, right? Because we’re like, Hey, we’ve moved on from the people that maybe don’t want to consider an HSA for the rest of you. Maybe you do. Maybe you’re in training and you’re using HSA later.

Probably the first mistake that I see with an HSA that is comical but happens is when people don’t realize that you take the money and you put it in your HSA account, but then you still have to invest it. Like there’s a second step and I’ve run into people who are like, yeah, you know, I use an HSA. I’m like, great, you’re investing it, right? And they’re like, what do you mean? And I’m like, what do you mean? And sure enough, like they pull up their account and it’s just sitting there in cash and they never invested it. And so…

This happens also when people do a Roth. They’ll say, I put money in my Roth IRA. I’m like, great, what did you invest it in? They’re like, what do you mean? So just because you have an account like a, you know, a 529 or an HSA or you have a Roth, you do actually have to invest the money inside of these accounts in order for them to be doing the beneficial thing that you’re hoping that they do. Otherwise, you have a high deductible health care plan with potentially very high expenses should you get in a health care situation. And you’re not really reaping most of the benefit because you’re not investing it. So

I just point that out. I’m sure you’ve seen that too.

Justin Harvey (18:25)
Yeah, and it’s further complicated by the fact that your other employer participating plan, like a 401k, 403b, these plans at this point, because this was such a problem, it was so pervasive, the law around plan structure is such that there’s a, I forget what they call it, it’s like the default plan option, essentially. So if you just start a 401k and you do your 3 % deferral, you’re automatically put into the default plan option based on your age, and it’s a target year fund. So it’s at least,

Jimmy Turner (18:49)
Target Dave Fionn typically.

Justin Harvey (18:54)
you’re not gonna be, my gosh, my cash was gathering dust for seven years and I didn’t realize it. So the 401k, 403b, they have that protection built in. HSAs generally do not. And in my experience, the HSA platforms are usually clunkier, more annoying. They have the minimum cash balance you gotta keep in the HSA account and then the rest you move over to the investment account and then new contributions you gotta allocate. And so it is a little bit more cumbersome.

Jimmy Turner (19:17)
Yeah, and so you have that minimum cash balance. I think where I am, it’s $1 ,000. I don’t know if that’s just a rule for all HSAs, but for mine, I know that’s… Is that a cross the board kind of thing or…?

Justin Harvey (19:26)
I’ve seen different minimums, I think it might depend on the plan, but a thousand is common, I think I’ve seen fifteen hundred or two thousand as well.

Jimmy Turner (19:32)
Yeah, yeah, okay. So you put the money in and then you got to go over that threshold and then you can start investing the rest. So once you get your thousand dollars in, because you’re contributing to this every month ideally, you get your thousand dollars, then you can start investing the rest. And interestingly, it’s changed a couple of times, but the HSA investment company doesn’t have to be the same as like the HSA, like where the account is located, which is part of the reason why it’s clunkier. I had one

I can’t even call it a custodian because it’s just where like the cash was sitting where I could pull money out from but then you take money from that account and then put it into this other investment vehicle account and that’s where you would invest it if you need money back you take money out of that account and put it back into your HSA company account and then you could take it out it’s almost like having a brokerage account that drafts back to your bank account it’s like this HSA bank account and then this additional brokerage account so I agree with you it’s much clunkier is clunkier word I’m not it’s clunkier word okay all right

Justin Harvey (20:27)
Yeah, we’ll go with it.

Jimmy Turner (20:29)
Yeah, but that’s been my experience too, for sure. So when it comes to this thing, Justin, there are kind of a couple different ways to use this plan. And you’ve already alluded to the way that I think it should be used when at all possible and recognizing that life situations happen. So if you’ve had to tap into your HSA before, like no guilt, no shame, no judgment, life happens. If you can not touch it and cash flow the expenses,

That’s really kind of how you want to use an HSA plan is leave these things, defer everything to the future. And the beautiful thing that you can do is to do what you did, which is to hold on to receipts and you can actually redeem them at any point down the road. You can also just be lazy like me and just know that there are gonna be healthcare expenses in the future and not save receipts. I don’t recommend that. It’s probably better to just be organized and have like a Google folder that you snap a.

Picture of the receipt and just send it to that folder so you always have it I should probably start doing that I’m judging myself as I’m like these words are coming out of my mouth and there’s immediate judgment for my own life But yeah, I kind of deferring those things to the future Alternatively, you could you could use the money as things come up But then in that situation, it’s kind of why I have an HSA you’re paying for something that you’re basically not using Yeah, so I like the idea of deferring costs into the future but

Justin Harvey (21:48)
You are still getting a deduction in the current year. it’s, there is some benefit to, you’re, if you’re to defer to the HSA and use it this year or next, that is still worth doing. But as the law is currently written, you can use the money in the HSA for any qualifying healthcare expense. I’m putting this in air quotes for our audio only listeners, which is basically like any cost you incur healthcare related for your whole life. So you can have a kid when you’re in your thirties.

keep all those receipts and then when you’re taking district, when you are like 70 years old and you’re on Medicare and it’s hard for you to perhaps spend money because of what Medicare covers and you’ve got a huge HSA balance because it’s been, you’ve been investing $8 ,000 a year and it’s had a market tailwind and you have now hundreds of thousands of dollars that you’re hoping to draw down tax free. Yeah, you can spend as you go when you’re older and you may have health events and expenditures that will allow you to do that, but.

It may actually be a little more difficult because in Medicare, the Medicare ecosystem, it is a little bit more transparent in terms of pricing and cost and things than it is with a commercial carrier. And so you would have a problem. Like if I had, if I was 70 and I had $600 ,000 in an HSA, it may be more difficult to extract that 600. Whereas if I had a bunch of receipts where I was like, I need $100 ,000 to live right now and I had $100 ,000 of receipts, I could do it all.

without having to worry about, did I get an out of network surgery or something or pay cash for some procedure that would qualify.

Jimmy Turner (23:19)
Yeah, so walk me through this, Justin. Let’s say that I am a fictional theoretical client of yours. And let’s say that, I’m like, hey, Justin, I hear about this HSA, my work just started offering one. I’m thinking about using it. You walk them through all these things. Hey, yeah, it’s great in your situation. From an insurance side, this makes sense. This is how it works. You’re married, you got some kids, you can put $8 ,300 in it, and then we can invest that.

I said, great, what does that investing look like? And the reason that I ask this is because of exactly what we’re talking about, right? In this theoretical world where I’m gonna touch this money when I’m 65 or 70, I would invest that money very differently than if there was always kind of a potential that I might need to tap into it in the near future. And so when you have these conversations with people, how are they shaped and how do you kind of help people kind of sort through that decision -making process? Because they need to determine an asset allocation specifically in the HSA based on their goals, right?

Justin Harvey (24:17)
Yes. So there’s layers to this, but I think this is a good question. You want to always think about a bucket of money, a given bucket. And an HSA is kind of its own bucket. It’s a unique account type with a specific constraint. And you’ve got to think about it in terms of its own asset allocation. the primary, there’s, well, there’s a couple of main sort of considerations. One is your risk tolerance. The other is the time horizon. So thinking about, okay, if I’m in my thirties, I’m not planning to access this for at least 30 years. That’s a long time horizon.

Whenever you have a long time horizon and you’re somewhat risk tolerant, you can reasonably push as much of your risk at the household level. We’re thinking about like all the assets and all the investments you have. want that HSA to be stuffed full of all the juicy stuff that could really do really well. Meaning it’s going to be volatile in the short run. might be way up one year, way down the next, but over the long term, it’s an asset class that we expect to have an expected return in the, you know, eight to 10 plus percent per year range on average.

So we’re talking about stocks. So it could be US equities, international emerging markets, something like that. That’s a reasonable approach. Usually the HSAs have an investment menu similar to what you get in your 401k. So you get a list of options. You can’t do whatever you want, but you can, there’s maybe 20 different choices. So you can either do like a target date fund or some, you could build an equity focused portfolio using the options available that will sort of replicate the kind of risk.

profile that I’m talking about that would give you good growth potential. And then as you age, that time horizon changes when you’re in your 50s and 60s, it probably makes sense to like, if you’re in your 60s, you got a bunch of HSA money, your life expectancy is as short as it’s ever been up to that point. And so maybe you started thinking about drawing it down. And particularly before you’re taking RMDs in your early 70s, required minimum distributions where you’re kicking money out of your IRA.

That’s going to sort of turn on that faucet. You’ve got to start doing that in your 70s in your 60s There’s a lot more flexibility so maybe that’s a time when the HSA could be a source of living expenses and that’s when you could start digging up those old receipts from the old Google file to Start you know spending the cash and at that time as you get into your 50s and towards your 60s you want to moderate that asset allocation so you’re in the same way that a target date fund approaches a more conservative

allocation as you reach your proposed retirement date, you would want to make sure that you’re it’s looking more and more like cash or more and more like a government a short dated government bond as you approach the utilization date to make sure that you don’t have cash in your HSA precisely when the stock market sells off and all of your I mean, realistically, if that happened, I would probably just wait and hope it comes back to get the best bang for the buck there. But if you have flexibility on when you’re gonna use the cash, but that’s how I would think about that question.

Jimmy Turner (27:10)
Yeah, so practically speaking for me, it’s 100 % equity at this point because I don’t plan on touching it. I’m 38, about to turn 39. And so given the long time horizon, I have a very high risk tolerance, as I mentioned before. And so I’m just going to let that thing take as much risk as I can. And over the next 30 years, I hope to see it grow substantially. And as I get closer to the age at which I am likely to need said money, I will

De -leverage that risk that I’m taking in that account What that looks like in the meantime as I had my thyroid worked on recently is yeah We I took a huge chunk out of my emergency fund So I’ve mentioned this on the show before but I have about ten thousand dollars in cash that just sits in a regular checking account in my bank That’s immediately accessible and then I have additional emergency funds that are in a money market account at my brokerage and so yeah this this came up and I like pretty much sunk my

my immediate cash availability emergency fund because of these expenses and I didn’t expect, you know, having this radioactive iodine therapy that costs quite a bit to swallow a pill. And so that is what happened. But the reason that I’m doing that from a practical standpoint is because I don’t want to touch my HSA. That’s why I have an emergency fund. I had a medical emergency, if you will, come up, something I didn’t expect. I could take that money out of the HSA if I wanted to.

But I don’t I want that thing to grow its triple tax advantage. It’s the only account that exists like that So I’m gonna defer those costs to the future Fortunately, all of my health care stuff is now on an app. So I don’t have to save those receipts anymore So I have them immediately available That said it is something that we’ve deferred So I paid for it out of my emergency fund and now we’re building we’re in the process of building our emergency fund back up to the the numbers that we we like to have it at so Lots of risk if you’re young makes a lot of sense as you get older, obviously

not as much sense. But yeah, these accounts are pretty great if it’s the right thing for you. If you’ve got a low risk tolerance, if you are in training, if you know that every single year you’re gonna have insurance needs come up and it’s not really gonna be that advantageous for you outside of the tax break that you get, maybe you’d consider it even though you’re still using it in that year. Most of the time, if you don’t fit in one of those situations, HSA’s can be a really great thing.

And so I highly recommend them. I like them a lot. It’s not for everybody, just like anything in personal finance. Personal finance is personal. But unlike the FSA, you don’t lose it. You can invest the money, it can grow. It’s triple tax advantage. There’s a lot to like here.

Justin Harvey (29:41)
Absolutely. I feel the same way.

Jimmy Turner (29:44)
Alright everybody, thanks for tuning in this week and for sharing Money Meets Medicine with your friends. Appreciate you tagging along being a part of the community. Again, make sure to send people to moneymeetsmedicine .com where they can download a free copy of the Physician Philosopher’s Guide to Personal Finance or you can get a quote for your own Occupational Disability Insurance which is something that every doctor needs. We will see you next week. Cheers.