Utilizing a Flexible Spending Account

When my husband returned to the job he has had since he graduated from High School, they offered us the option to create and contribute to a Flexible Spending Account. With both of us bewildered over what exactly it was for, we lost a lot of valuable time that will leave us with a small loss at the end of the 2007 year. But with the knowledge I finally gained into this valuable option through his employer, it will be well used for the 2008 year, and won't leave us with a huge crunch out of our own pockets.

We signed up thinking that it would be a great way to meet any deductibles that we needed to meet for our Health Insurance plan. Since our out of pocket deductible was $500 USD for the year, that is precisely what we opted to have put into the account. Over approximately 32 weeks, $500 was filtered into this account pre-tax out of his gross income. We barely noticed it missing, I think that for this year it ran just over $15 a week. All of the funding sat there, accumulating, untouched. Purely because I had failed to properly educate myself about how to put it to use for me.

Somewhere in September (we had started the Flexible Spending Account, or FSA, in May) I finally looked around the internet to find out exactly what this account was for. And realized that I have been uselessly throwing money down the tubes for months, money that I could have billed back to the account for a refund.

Since we set up an FSA for health coverage only, I found the site and looked through the list of approved items that would be refunded after I purchased them. The list was very long, but to my disappointment it didn't cover feminine products. What it did cover was any form of over the counter medications, birth control methods (condoms, birth control pills, diaphragms, spermicides), and I could also bill any payments that I had made on our prescription co-pays and office visits.