Here’s the deal. I’m a healthy guy in my early 30s and am considering leaving my employer to work as a freelancer. If I do, I can’t decide whether to rollover my Health Savings Account to another provider.
I’ve got a Health Equity HSA that my company contributes to on a regular basis. Health Equity has been fine—probably good considering the state of healthcare software—but they are going to charge me $4/mo plus fees for statements if I leave. It seems a bit steep.
I also subscribe to the Mad Fientist’s philosophy of keeping receipts and paying medical expenses out of pocket. I’m trying to invest as much of my HSA as possible into index and low-cost mutual funds.
In short who has the best rates and options for investments? What’s the best HSA provider for me?
Also, @sam if this isn’t the right place for this type of conversation, I can remove it. I’m sure people on reddit personal finance and bogleheads have an opinion, but wanted to see what people here thought.
I have a couple opinions on this, but don’t have time to post them right now. In the mean time my advice is to stay away from Actwise or anything associated with Anthem.
So I have experience with Health Equity. Our company had it the last year and it is unremarkable, but does about everything an HSA account should do. You may want to check out HSA Search, which can help you compare accounts.
For Health Equity the investment options are pretty good although, it does lack VTSAX, SWSTX or similar total stock market funds. It’s easy enough to build a combination of low, mid and large-cap funds though. Good options with low management fees.
I think the account costs about $4/mo and paper statements are an additional $1, which you can opt out of. There’s also an account closing fee of $25, should you go somewhere else. It’s on the higher side, but within the range of most other HSA accounts.
We’re moving to Actwise, which I believe is Anthem / Blue Cross Blue Shield’s HSA. The software is terrible—starting with the horribly convoluted login system. It’s difficult to navigate to the part where you actually manage your HSA. The software threw errors whenever trying to access forms I needed to roll my HSA over from Health Equity.
I can’t speak for the investment options, because I’m still trying to move funds from my previous HSA. I’d stay away from Actwise if you can.
If I were you, I’d take a look at Lively. It’s a startup trying to disrupt some of the incumbents, but the UI and reporting look 10x better than anything else out there. Also, it looks like it’s free for individuals and that they only charge employers. I don’t know if there is some sort of required minimum for that though.
As a follow-up to this, the navigation of the Anthem / BCBS HSA is maddening. It is so painful to get from one site to the other—often across different domains. I believe the software was originally Actwise, but now it looks like it’s called Wealthcare or Wealthcare Admin?
Anyways, I am trying to login to see if my HSA rolled over. But it gets stuck loading forever. It’s incredibly frustrating.
I suppose the good news is they do have Vanguard funds, but the good news stops there.