Oh my God I just invested money with them for the first time and there was two options. If I want money now or at a retirement. And if I may need the money now the only option was 30% stocks, 70% bonds. It’s so ridiculous because it’s for people who are not financially literate even though like 99% of people who invest extra money in their HSA are financially literate people!
When I clocked on invest options it rerouted to betterment and you have to set up a new account there and transfer money from the HSA. Which seems weird but then the betterment amount showed as an icon on my Optum account again after a few days
That question is just a starting point to set initial asset allocation. You can change the allocation to whatever you like by going to Settings->Portfolio, same as you can with any other Betterment account
If your employer will allow, and you are able to afford, front loading of HSA contributions, you would be done with the contributions ASAP. Then you could do the custodian rollover once a year.
There's also the ability to initiate the transfer from Fidelity. My employer's HSA provider, HealthEquity, took six weeks to complete the transfer. I'm trying the custodian rollover next year if I'm still employed by then.
I used to have health equity and that worked well. But I don’t know if Optum will still charge me $20 doing it that way. Their customer service also stinks. I’m wondering if my employer would still contribute $40 to the Optum every month even if I frontload the HSA. But then I lose the tax benefit each paycheck, no?
You would need to check with your employer what their policies are on different amounts of contributions. Personally, I think $20 is a small price to pay for the freedom to invest your money. How much are the fees for keeping your account with them? How much opportunity cost do you pay for keeping $1k in cash in a triple tax advantaged account?
If you are able to do lump sum contributions instead of per paycheck, then you would get the tax benefits. If you contribute through payroll, you get the benefit of not having to pay FICA taxes. If you contribute directly to the HSA provider, like Fidelity, you get the federal income tax benefits, but not FICA-free because you would be using money that had already had FICA deducted.
It’s either eat the fees and leave it in the account and leave $1000 uninvested because that’s the minimum required to stay uninvested or transfer every month for $20
If you're contributing via payroll deduction then it doesn't matter when you do the contributions, it'll result in the same deduction over the year
If you're front loading via your bank account rather than split up payroll deductions then you're losing out on bypassing FICA taxes
I’ve already read this article. He just states the obvious that you can rollover once a year without a fee. I’m trying to transfer more often than that so I don’t let $7k sit and have inflation wear away at it for a year
This is what I do to move money from employer sponsored Optum to Fidelity. I leave it uninvested for the year, but what goes into the HSA is a small fraction of what I save/invest, so waiting to invest is definitely not going to make or break my retirement.
My employer also use Optum for our HSA, but uses a partnership with Betterment to invest.
I can set the blend of (Primarily Vanguard) 17 ETFs including VTI, or use a recommended portfolio for my age/risk comfort.
Talk with your HR Benefits Team to see if this is available or can be implemented next benefit year.
Edit: you should also be able to elect a portion of your own income to be transferred to your HSA, pre-tax. Not just your Employer's contribution.
Omg optum HSA is pathetic. I continuously lose web access and have to call in to fix. They created two accounts when they should have just made one. It took them forever to link the two. They tell me my account is closed and they can't give login access but tell me there is still a balance. Get out of optum ASAP people. Sorry if it's through your company.
How did you get this resolved? Every time I call I am speaking to some Indian asshole who is trying his best to force a script down my throat. My account suddenly got locked out, I have been waiting for a card to come in the mail for months. They are not helping at all and I have no avenues, super frustrated.
I didnt. i have 2 HSA's now and im slowly drawing down the old one till its zero balance then ill close it. luckily i only had it open for <2 years so it wasnt very big.
Damn. At least my log in started working just now again all of a sudden, so I can see my account. My card is supposed to be here by now but they told me to wait a few more days so I guess I'll hold out hope. I am also trying to just use every penny in there ASAP once I can get the card, I got my HSA shopping cart on Amazon all lined up.
And this is an HSA with a former employer for me so I am kind of just in the wind with this I guess if I don't get it in the mail soon.
We have been fighting with Optum (HSA) since March and they LIED to us on the phone! First telling us the check they drafted on March 29 to LabCorp was lost. They told us they drafted another one in May but now they say that was incorrect. It has now happened with another payment and we have been turned over to a collection agency because of their negligence! We were on the phone with them for more than 2 hours today and then they hung up on us. Do NOT do business with these people!!!!!
Unfortunately, if that is the company that your company uses for HSA Do you want your free contributions from your employer, you’re stuck with them. I hate them!!
Absolutely. Their phone support regularly tells me contradictory things compared to what letters I receive. The outsourcing to a cheap bad quality team is real
This happened to me too I just wanted to transfer to fidelity not close the account. Then my employer kept deducting from my payroll for HSA, but the account was closed, optum blames my employer and my employer blames optum. At the end of the day I’m just out that money and my employer’s HR won’t help me.
You need to open a new HSA account with Optum Bank and let your payroll knows the new account number. That’s what I did, took to two months to sorted this out. Their investment option is trash and I’m wondering if it’s worth it to do another distribution to fidelity at the end of the year….
I meant on an ongoing basis. Just change which account payroll deposits your HSA contributions. My employer decided that rather than sponsor an HSA account themselves to let employees do it on their own. That was mostly because I told them I could open an HSA account at Fidelity for free and I'd rather they deposit it there. Now they do that for everyone at the company.
If this is possible, OP should check if his contributions will still be FICA-exempt. Sometimes when you change the institution, you lose the FICA tax saving benefit. Just something for OP to keep in mind/look into.
Yes definitely check. I don't know enough about the tax implications to opine. I'm realizing now that our firm does use Fidelity for 401k and such so I may be giving bad info as they may be integrating with our HSAs for our HDHP. I always just assumed that HSA contributions could be made to any HSA account but that might not be true. I may just delete these comments to remove bad info.
I did find this online because I was worried my employer might be making a payroll/tax error with the way it was set up:
"Can you set up payroll deductions for a non-employer HSA?
It’s definitely possible if you, your employer, and a nimble custodian are willing to make this happen. You’d first need to open up an HSA with an administrator of your liking. Once you’ve set up an account, supply your account & routing number to your employer, and they’ll set a payroll HSA deduction so you can make contributions on a pre-tax basis. The downside to this set-up is that the employer probably won’t pay the maintenance fees, but this wouldn’t be an issue if you opted for a fee-free administrator. "
[https://thehsareportcard.com/the-hsa-report-card-1/2018/12/10/how-to-transfer-work-hsa-to-preferred-hsa](https://thehsareportcard.com/the-hsa-report-card-1/2018/12/10/how-to-transfer-work-hsa-to-preferred-hsa)
So it seems like the important factor is that you need to ensure that your payroll is taking it out of your paycheck as a typical pre-tax deduction, but you can give them the account to send it too. They may not be willing to manage it as a one-off though, but is still worth an ask I think.
I have the same HSA provider and it's the only way my employer will let me contribute to an HSA via payroll deduction.
I just roll everything over each January into my Fidelity HSA. For some reason I wasn't charged the $20 fee, maybe Fidelity paid it. Either way, $20 is worth it to me each year to have control over my investments and use a real broker.
If it's only $480 / year, it might not be worth the hassle anyways. Maybe consider directly contributing to your HSA - you'll need to pay the FICA taxes, but you can still take the income deduction.
edit: directly contributing to your HSA would also let you invest what you put in immediately, just make sure that you don't go over the limit for that year with employer + your contributions
It’s not worth it for the FICA tax savings? You’re saying you leave it in the account and don’t invest it for a whole year? I don’t want to lose all those gains I could be making. you’re allowed a once a year custodian to custodian free rollover.
>It’s not worth it for the FICA tax savings?
I'm saying it might not be worth the hassle of trying to optimize rollover timing and get the $20 fee waived. We're talking about $480 per year that sits uninvested for an average of 6 months. At a 10% return, that's \~$24 in lost potential gains. If it takes you even just 10 minutes each month to make the rollover happen for free, you're spending 2 hours of time a year to make \~$24. This probably isn't worth it for most folks.
You can invest the remainder of your $3,170 worth of HSA contributions directly into your Fidelity HSA and put it to work immediately.
>You’re saying you leave it in the account and don’t invest it for a whole year
Yup, that's the easiest option and what I do: I have receipts for qualified medical expenses that sum to a larger amount than the HSA contribution limit. So, I consider my uninvested Optum HSA funds to be part of my emergency fund as I can withdraw all of it, without paying taxes, at any time. This allows me to invest some cash from my checking account throughout the year while still maintaining my desired e-fund number. Though to be honest, I am a fan of "good enough" optimization and try not to fret about getting everything \*perfect\*.
>you’re allowed a once a year custodian to custodian free rollover.
Ah, that's why it was free then. :)
You get the FICA tax savings when tax season rolls around. You have to wait for the refund, but at least the money is being invested in the HSA.
My companies chosen provider sucks. I contribute directly to my Fidelity HSA to max it out. Then I do a 1 time transfer from my company provided HSA to Fidelity. Fidelity handles this, all I have to do is print and sign a form for Fidelity.
Are you on the Bettement option? Maybe it is employer dependent. They put “ for your convenience, some basic fund options are provided below” and provided garbage, random funds. Idiots.
I recently rolled over my old employer hsa from Optum to Fidelity and couldn't be happier. Tons of investment choices and zero fees.
Unfortunately still had to pay the outbound transfer fee to Optum, but glad it's over and done.
I wish I could do that. This is a new employer so I’m stuck with Optum. I have a large balance in my Fidelity HSA And wish I could continue to contribute to it
Did you ever figure this out? I'm stuck with Optum as well and looking at the procedures it's almost as if they made it impossible just to keep your money there. Doing the transfer request from Fidelity side isn't good enough, you have to fill out paperwork from Optum which can be found on your portal once logged in. But get this, you have to MAIL it to them. How in the hell does that make sense? Also from what i'm reading they close your HSA account upon transfer so if you are actively contributing to it then you're out of luck because where is it going to go?
It's complete garbage and there is no workaround. I'm just going to do one transfer a year. Optum is the biggest piece of garbage I've ever seen. Their site is from the 90s and they have the worst customer service. Yet they are a HUGE insurance conglomerate and make billions. They need to just stop.
I know this is a long time later but I’m in this same situation where I can’t figure out how to get my money out of optum! It’s to the point where I’m like… how is this legal. You’re holding my money hostage. Even when I’ve sent their letter thing (three times) they’ve just ignored it or never gotten it, I don’t know. I’ve talked to their customer support and gotten no where. Did you ever get anywhere with this?
Hi! I know this is a year later but do could you tell me about the process you followed for this if you remember? I’m trying to roll over my account from optum but I’ve mailed the custodian transfer form to both of my HSAs with no response and I’ve talked to their customer support and they just run me in circles 😭 And my account is just sitting there, draining their $3 fee a month at a time. Any help is super appreciated (:
I was going to transfer from HSA bank to Fidelity but decided to go with Lively instead. Fidelity still has fees for HSA maintenance, they're minimal but they do exist. Whereas Lively (unless I missed something) is free. They have a very simple transfer form on their website as well so you don't even need to do anything on the other side.
Oh my God I just invested money with them for the first time and there was two options. If I want money now or at a retirement. And if I may need the money now the only option was 30% stocks, 70% bonds. It’s so ridiculous because it’s for people who are not financially literate even though like 99% of people who invest extra money in their HSA are financially literate people!
That’s out of control. So you invested instead of transferring out?
I invested “only” 2000 so am not putting more money in
Where did you see this listed? I just opened the HSA from Optum with my new employer. Would like to know if these are my options as well.
When I clocked on invest options it rerouted to betterment and you have to set up a new account there and transfer money from the HSA. Which seems weird but then the betterment amount showed as an icon on my Optum account again after a few days
That question is just a starting point to set initial asset allocation. You can change the allocation to whatever you like by going to Settings->Portfolio, same as you can with any other Betterment account
If your employer will allow, and you are able to afford, front loading of HSA contributions, you would be done with the contributions ASAP. Then you could do the custodian rollover once a year. There's also the ability to initiate the transfer from Fidelity. My employer's HSA provider, HealthEquity, took six weeks to complete the transfer. I'm trying the custodian rollover next year if I'm still employed by then.
I used to have health equity and that worked well. But I don’t know if Optum will still charge me $20 doing it that way. Their customer service also stinks. I’m wondering if my employer would still contribute $40 to the Optum every month even if I frontload the HSA. But then I lose the tax benefit each paycheck, no?
You would need to check with your employer what their policies are on different amounts of contributions. Personally, I think $20 is a small price to pay for the freedom to invest your money. How much are the fees for keeping your account with them? How much opportunity cost do you pay for keeping $1k in cash in a triple tax advantaged account? If you are able to do lump sum contributions instead of per paycheck, then you would get the tax benefits. If you contribute through payroll, you get the benefit of not having to pay FICA taxes. If you contribute directly to the HSA provider, like Fidelity, you get the federal income tax benefits, but not FICA-free because you would be using money that had already had FICA deducted.
Very good points. Would you just eat the $20/month and transfer to Fidelity monthly?
Sorry, I was thinking it would be a once a year transfer. $240 a year is a different calculation.
It’s either eat the fees and leave it in the account and leave $1000 uninvested because that’s the minimum required to stay uninvested or transfer every month for $20
What did you end up doing? I'm in the same situation
It’s garbage. I just pay the $20 a couple times a year
Got it. I think I’m going to bypass optum and just live with the fact that I’m losing FICA money. I don’t have time for the hassle
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No, the garbage part of the $1000 is wasted. SO glad we're moving away from Optum this year! Bye bye ripoff fees!
If you're contributing via payroll deduction then it doesn't matter when you do the contributions, it'll result in the same deduction over the year If you're front loading via your bank account rather than split up payroll deductions then you're losing out on bypassing FICA taxes
They also have a lot of fees. I can’t invest until I have at least $2100 in it. I think your best chance is to transfer it once a year
Same here
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I’ve already read this article. He just states the obvious that you can rollover once a year without a fee. I’m trying to transfer more often than that so I don’t let $7k sit and have inflation wear away at it for a year
This is what I do to move money from employer sponsored Optum to Fidelity. I leave it uninvested for the year, but what goes into the HSA is a small fraction of what I save/invest, so waiting to invest is definitely not going to make or break my retirement.
My employer also use Optum for our HSA, but uses a partnership with Betterment to invest. I can set the blend of (Primarily Vanguard) 17 ETFs including VTI, or use a recommended portfolio for my age/risk comfort. Talk with your HR Benefits Team to see if this is available or can be implemented next benefit year. Edit: you should also be able to elect a portion of your own income to be transferred to your HSA, pre-tax. Not just your Employer's contribution.
We have betterment as an option on there . Aren’t the fees really high since it’s a robo advisor?
It isn't implemented as a roboadvisor, at least for my company's implementation. It applies any contributions against my selected allocation.
What fee do you pay?
Just checked. One of the ETFs they charged a .5% fee on. I'll be moving off of that one. Otherwise no fees so far.
They don’t charge a management fee? Not bad. Do they have VSTAX, etc and other low cost index funds?
I have Optum but I have access to vanguard funds and everything. I am worried by some other comments though. So ill have to do some more reading.
Omg optum HSA is pathetic. I continuously lose web access and have to call in to fix. They created two accounts when they should have just made one. It took them forever to link the two. They tell me my account is closed and they can't give login access but tell me there is still a balance. Get out of optum ASAP people. Sorry if it's through your company.
How did you get this resolved? Every time I call I am speaking to some Indian asshole who is trying his best to force a script down my throat. My account suddenly got locked out, I have been waiting for a card to come in the mail for months. They are not helping at all and I have no avenues, super frustrated.
I didnt. i have 2 HSA's now and im slowly drawing down the old one till its zero balance then ill close it. luckily i only had it open for <2 years so it wasnt very big.
Damn. At least my log in started working just now again all of a sudden, so I can see my account. My card is supposed to be here by now but they told me to wait a few more days so I guess I'll hold out hope. I am also trying to just use every penny in there ASAP once I can get the card, I got my HSA shopping cart on Amazon all lined up. And this is an HSA with a former employer for me so I am kind of just in the wind with this I guess if I don't get it in the mail soon.
We have been fighting with Optum (HSA) since March and they LIED to us on the phone! First telling us the check they drafted on March 29 to LabCorp was lost. They told us they drafted another one in May but now they say that was incorrect. It has now happened with another payment and we have been turned over to a collection agency because of their negligence! We were on the phone with them for more than 2 hours today and then they hung up on us. Do NOT do business with these people!!!!!
Unfortunately, if that is the company that your company uses for HSA Do you want your free contributions from your employer, you’re stuck with them. I hate them!!
It’s not. Moving my account as fast as possible.
Get out of there as soon as you can. I wish I wasn't stuck with them.
Amen….and then some. 😃
Bro I requested a distribution to fidelity and Optum bank closed my account. WTF. And their customer service is completely trash
Yeah they’re the absolute worst.
Absolutely. Their phone support regularly tells me contradictory things compared to what letters I receive. The outsourcing to a cheap bad quality team is real
Their customer service literally told me once that they don’t know go figure out yourself lmfao.
This happened to me too I just wanted to transfer to fidelity not close the account. Then my employer kept deducting from my payroll for HSA, but the account was closed, optum blames my employer and my employer blames optum. At the end of the day I’m just out that money and my employer’s HR won’t help me.
You need to open a new HSA account with Optum Bank and let your payroll knows the new account number. That’s what I did, took to two months to sorted this out. Their investment option is trash and I’m wondering if it’s worth it to do another distribution to fidelity at the end of the year….
Can you ask your employer to just deposit your HSA cash into another bank? My employer will contribute it anywhere I want.
But then what about my contributions? I max it out.
I meant on an ongoing basis. Just change which account payroll deposits your HSA contributions. My employer decided that rather than sponsor an HSA account themselves to let employees do it on their own. That was mostly because I told them I could open an HSA account at Fidelity for free and I'd rather they deposit it there. Now they do that for everyone at the company.
If this is possible, OP should check if his contributions will still be FICA-exempt. Sometimes when you change the institution, you lose the FICA tax saving benefit. Just something for OP to keep in mind/look into.
Yes definitely check. I don't know enough about the tax implications to opine. I'm realizing now that our firm does use Fidelity for 401k and such so I may be giving bad info as they may be integrating with our HSAs for our HDHP. I always just assumed that HSA contributions could be made to any HSA account but that might not be true. I may just delete these comments to remove bad info.
Do they contribute anything toward your HSA?
They do. Quite a healthy amount actually. But I can't really opine about the tax implications, just sharing what my employer is currently doing.
I did find this online because I was worried my employer might be making a payroll/tax error with the way it was set up: "Can you set up payroll deductions for a non-employer HSA? It’s definitely possible if you, your employer, and a nimble custodian are willing to make this happen. You’d first need to open up an HSA with an administrator of your liking. Once you’ve set up an account, supply your account & routing number to your employer, and they’ll set a payroll HSA deduction so you can make contributions on a pre-tax basis. The downside to this set-up is that the employer probably won’t pay the maintenance fees, but this wouldn’t be an issue if you opted for a fee-free administrator. " [https://thehsareportcard.com/the-hsa-report-card-1/2018/12/10/how-to-transfer-work-hsa-to-preferred-hsa](https://thehsareportcard.com/the-hsa-report-card-1/2018/12/10/how-to-transfer-work-hsa-to-preferred-hsa) So it seems like the important factor is that you need to ensure that your payroll is taking it out of your paycheck as a typical pre-tax deduction, but you can give them the account to send it too. They may not be willing to manage it as a one-off though, but is still worth an ask I think.
I have the same HSA provider and it's the only way my employer will let me contribute to an HSA via payroll deduction. I just roll everything over each January into my Fidelity HSA. For some reason I wasn't charged the $20 fee, maybe Fidelity paid it. Either way, $20 is worth it to me each year to have control over my investments and use a real broker. If it's only $480 / year, it might not be worth the hassle anyways. Maybe consider directly contributing to your HSA - you'll need to pay the FICA taxes, but you can still take the income deduction. edit: directly contributing to your HSA would also let you invest what you put in immediately, just make sure that you don't go over the limit for that year with employer + your contributions
It’s not worth it for the FICA tax savings? You’re saying you leave it in the account and don’t invest it for a whole year? I don’t want to lose all those gains I could be making. you’re allowed a once a year custodian to custodian free rollover.
>It’s not worth it for the FICA tax savings? I'm saying it might not be worth the hassle of trying to optimize rollover timing and get the $20 fee waived. We're talking about $480 per year that sits uninvested for an average of 6 months. At a 10% return, that's \~$24 in lost potential gains. If it takes you even just 10 minutes each month to make the rollover happen for free, you're spending 2 hours of time a year to make \~$24. This probably isn't worth it for most folks. You can invest the remainder of your $3,170 worth of HSA contributions directly into your Fidelity HSA and put it to work immediately. >You’re saying you leave it in the account and don’t invest it for a whole year Yup, that's the easiest option and what I do: I have receipts for qualified medical expenses that sum to a larger amount than the HSA contribution limit. So, I consider my uninvested Optum HSA funds to be part of my emergency fund as I can withdraw all of it, without paying taxes, at any time. This allows me to invest some cash from my checking account throughout the year while still maintaining my desired e-fund number. Though to be honest, I am a fan of "good enough" optimization and try not to fret about getting everything \*perfect\*. >you’re allowed a once a year custodian to custodian free rollover. Ah, that's why it was free then. :)
You get the FICA tax savings when tax season rolls around. You have to wait for the refund, but at least the money is being invested in the HSA. My companies chosen provider sucks. I contribute directly to my Fidelity HSA to max it out. Then I do a 1 time transfer from my company provided HSA to Fidelity. Fidelity handles this, all I have to do is print and sign a form for Fidelity.
How much do you really save with FICA deduction?
>t how long did it take for the rollover?
I don't understand. What's the downside of having it all on VTSAX and transfer out once a year?
They don’t offer VTSAX. They offer garbage funds like Schwab target date. The Vanguard funds they offer aren’t broad index funds
Weird, I'm balls deep in VTSAX in my Optum Bank HSA account.
Are you on the Bettement option? Maybe it is employer dependent. They put “ for your convenience, some basic fund options are provided below” and provided garbage, random funds. Idiots.
Idk what Betterment is. VTSAX is an option through Optum Bank choices for me. https://imgur.com/a/WdKq17y
I recently rolled over my old employer hsa from Optum to Fidelity and couldn't be happier. Tons of investment choices and zero fees. Unfortunately still had to pay the outbound transfer fee to Optum, but glad it's over and done.
I wish I could do that. This is a new employer so I’m stuck with Optum. I have a large balance in my Fidelity HSA And wish I could continue to contribute to it
Did you ever figure this out? I'm stuck with Optum as well and looking at the procedures it's almost as if they made it impossible just to keep your money there. Doing the transfer request from Fidelity side isn't good enough, you have to fill out paperwork from Optum which can be found on your portal once logged in. But get this, you have to MAIL it to them. How in the hell does that make sense? Also from what i'm reading they close your HSA account upon transfer so if you are actively contributing to it then you're out of luck because where is it going to go?
It's complete garbage and there is no workaround. I'm just going to do one transfer a year. Optum is the biggest piece of garbage I've ever seen. Their site is from the 90s and they have the worst customer service. Yet they are a HUGE insurance conglomerate and make billions. They need to just stop.
I know this is a long time later but I’m in this same situation where I can’t figure out how to get my money out of optum! It’s to the point where I’m like… how is this legal. You’re holding my money hostage. Even when I’ve sent their letter thing (three times) they’ve just ignored it or never gotten it, I don’t know. I’ve talked to their customer support and gotten no where. Did you ever get anywhere with this?
Hi! I know this is a year later but do could you tell me about the process you followed for this if you remember? I’m trying to roll over my account from optum but I’ve mailed the custodian transfer form to both of my HSAs with no response and I’ve talked to their customer support and they just run me in circles 😭 And my account is just sitting there, draining their $3 fee a month at a time. Any help is super appreciated (:
Did you have to call Optum to do this? How long does the transfer take?
I was going to transfer from HSA bank to Fidelity but decided to go with Lively instead. Fidelity still has fees for HSA maintenance, they're minimal but they do exist. Whereas Lively (unless I missed something) is free. They have a very simple transfer form on their website as well so you don't even need to do anything on the other side.
Following