Flexible Spending

As we grow older, many of us will be faced with medical issues which may be classified as chronic. In such cases, our medical expenses can be costly. There's a great way to assist ourselves in order to avoid having to pay taxes on a lot of these expenses. Flexible Spending is a program you may elect during your annual benefits enrollment each year through your employer. This program allows you to specify a sum of money to set aside before taxes which you feel will cover your co-payments for prescription drugs, doctors visits, over the counter drugs, as well as expenses incurred through dentistry and or vision plans for the next year.

It's important to note when deciding on the amount to set aside, you always need to estimate carefully as any funds not spent within the calender year will be forfeited to the federal government, thus making the program obsolete to your benefit.

Besides acting as a kind of tax shelter, another benefit to this program is you are able to withdraw funds, provided you have medical receipts to substantiate your claims, before you have even funded your Flex account through your monthly paycheck. In other words, this is somewhat of a interest free loan to yourself.

A very important warning and the main reason I'm writing about this topic is you're claim for the new year has to be performed in the new year regardless if you paid for service in the new year. Example: In the last week of December of 2009 I called to refill my prescriptions so I could pick them up in the first week of 2010 under the assumption I could file a Flex claim and get the money back. Not the case. Since the prescriptions were filled in 2009 it did not qualify me to retrieve those funds for the new year. This is an IRS rule. I feel it is my duty to make others aware of this minor and could be costly technicality.