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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

I was very happy when Fidelity added HSA. Much better than the 2 previous places I had HSA. Fidelity HSA just works, and is directly investable, including in the very competitive iShares index ETFs.

I wish more startups would find a way to use Fidelity or Vanguard (with access to the very-low-ER index funds).

I never did figure out how to track Guideline 401k in GnuCash satisfactorily. It was complex, when all I wanted was a balance of IVV/ITOT and AGG (or Vanguard equivalents).

And a different startup used Transamerica 401k, which looked like it had been forgotten on one person's desk in the basement of their skyscraper a decade earlier, and I didn't like their funds. As soon as I could rollover to an old Fidelity account, I did so.

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Note that unless your start-up is matching, you can set up your own HSA anywhere you like. Very different from an FSA.

The slight advantage for employer contributions to HSA are that they avoid payroll tax. You’ll get the employEE part of it back when you file your taxes, so the savings is the 7.5% employER side.

If you’re an senior+ software dev in the US there’s a good chance you’re already over the social security payroll tax cap, and if so you’re really only saving the Medicare tax of 1.45% on up to $8000 for a family plan. It’s not nothing but not worth dealing with a crappy provider to get.

I love the bubble that much of HN is in. In most of the US, most senior+ software developers are not making over $176K. They are working at boring old enterprise companies. (Yes I’ve done a stint at BigTech and I know what comp is like there and have friends that work at Amazon, Netflix, Nvidia and Google).

I’m no longer strictly a software engineer nor do I live in Atlanta any more. But that’s where I spent most of my career. If you look at the well known companies headquartered there like Delta, Coke, Home Depot, GE (large headquarters there), etc.

Very few of their developers are making over $176K. You see the same in most other tier 2 cities where most software developers work in the US.

Hell most of the job postings by YC companies here on HN aren’t offering their developers over $176K.

> Note that unless your start-up is matching, you can set up your own HSA anywhere you like.

Even if your employer provides an HSA, you can still open a separate HSA anywhere you like (or multiple, if you really wanted to). You just have to make certain that all contributions (from you, your employer(s), and your payroll) sum up under your annual limit at the end of the year (keeping in mind that changing jobs or benefits mid-year can impact your limit for that year).

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