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Comment by johnnyletrois | Hacker News Reader

Not all employers offer HSAs to go along with their HDHPs. Mine doesn’t and it’s very frustrating. I want to save pretax money in an HSA but I can’t.

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That’s the insanity of employer health insurance. Things like this should never be a decision of the employer. It’s the same stupidity with 401k.

There is no requirement for your employer to provide the HSA. Frequently the employer can get better deals on the HSA than you can individually (like no waived maintenance fees and the like) but you can for sure open your own.

In fact once you have enough money in there that you are moving out of liquid investments then you definitely want to shop around for HSA much like you would for an investment account.

Can you actually fund a non-employer HSA with tax-deductible funds, or is that a benefit that only applies to payroll HSA contributions? If not, a lot of the benefit of an employer HSA disappears.

(FWIW, I have an HDHP, employer HSA, and an individual HSA that I roll my employer funds to annually for lower-fee investing.)

Yes, just submit a form 8889 when filing taxes.

Where do you have your individual HSA? I have an employer-provided one and I'm looking for a place to move it.

HSA Authority (part of Old National Bank). Last time I ran the numbers, the break-even point on annual expenses vs some other options was about $10k in HSA balance — where smaller balances would pay more at HSAA than some other provider(s). But they cost less than other providers for larger balances (again, last time I checked).

https://www.oldnational.com/thehsaauthority

And for comparison, https://thehsareportcard.com/hsa-authority / https://thehsareportcard.com/the-top-10-investor-hsas-1 . The landscape may have shifted since the last time I did my research.

Fidelity has a pretty compelling offering: https://www.fidelity.com/go/hsa/why-hsa

Yeah, that looks competitive. It doesn't have the one highly specific fund I wanted at HSA authority but it's got everything you really need.

Only partially. If you fund your HSA outside of your company's payroll system you can deduct your contribution amount from your MAGI for income tax purposes, but you still have to pay FICA taxes (social security and medicare) on that income.

If you have your HSA contributions made through your company's payroll department, then you don't have to pay FICA taxes on it.

I don't understand that. Literally the only "benefit" of a HDHP is the HSA. Why do employers not offer one?

Because you can get your own HSA, it does not have to be employer supplied. I have an HSA with Fidelity, and an HDHP from my employer.

I thought if you have a HDHP you can open a HSA account. It didn't have to be through your employer.

Yes you can, go to Fidelity and sign up for one. Takes like 10 minutes. Transfer money, buy a fund, away you go. Just like an IRA, except never taxed at any point. Besides employer matching it's the best freaking retirement deal there is.

Can you just open your own HSA account and do it yourself?

Short answer: generally, yes

That's not true. You don't need your employer participation to open an HSA.

Can you get a private HSA?

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