Use Your Flexible Spending Account to Take Care of Your Eyes

Do you have an FSA (Flexible Spending Account) set up to help cover annual medical expenses? If you don’t, you should really consider talking to your employer about participating in a plan like this. You may consider yourself a healthy individual. That means you’re confident that your health insurance will cover any unexpected health issues. Even so, you can use funds in an FSA to cover eye-related medical expenses. When you do, you’ll save money!

How does an Flexible Spending Account fund work?

An FSA fund is set up by your employer to allow you—the employee—to save money out of your paycheck before it is taxed. In other words, before the government grabs a percentage of your bi-weekly or monthly check, you can take some money out and designate it towards your medical expenses in this account. If you use the funds for only medical expenses, it will never be taxed!

Let’s say you take out $100 each month to put into your FSA and your tax rate is usually around 20%, this means that every month you are keeping an extra $20 that would usually be deducted from your paycheck.

There’s something different about FSAs though…the money is ‘Use it or lose it.’ If December rolls around and you haven’t spent the money you saved in this account, it literally disappears at the end of the year. You want to make sure to not only track your savings, but track your spending, so you can make these dollars work for you.

How can an Flexible Spending Account save me money on eye care?

Let’s go back to the example of saving $100 a month in your FSA, pre-tax. By choosing this option, you are making an extra $20 each month. Over the course of a year, that $20 each month will add up to $240 saved for your medical needs.

This amount could completely cover your optical needs for the year, especially when you go to America’s Best.

Let me show you how this works. At America’s Best you can get two pairs of stylish, designer eyeglasses for one low price. Let’s say you choose a designer frame that costs $159.95. Then you choose a back-up pair of glasses that only costs $69.95. Together, both pairs of glasses will cost only $194.95! That includes single vision uncoated plastic lenses AND an eye exam!

That leaves you $40 to spend! You could use it to add a lens coating on a pair of glasses or for those prescription eye drops you need. Prefer contact lenses to glasses? Then use your FSA funds to join the Eyecare Club, to get free eye exams (up to 2 per year) and additional discounts on your contact lenses and glasses for 3 years!

Remember, FSA account spending must be done before the calendar year ends. Hurry into America’s Best to stretch your FSA funds to cover all of your optical needs!