Are HSAs the Best Retirement Account? #105

fantastic retirement accounts. We're going to dive into why that is in this episode. And a lot of people don't even know what an h s A is or if their h s A eligible, So we're gonna get into all that. Matt. By the way, you were out of town for a week recently and the girls and I would come over and we would water your garden. It's looking beautiful, dude, and I noticed that you're harvesting a

lot of stuff. Now, yeah, man, that's right. Well, you know what, before you came over, Kate and I had a fantastic meal and she made this triple mushroom pattee and we ate some of our fresh tomatoes. By the way, the kids aren't here with us this week because they're at grandparents camp, and so we're enjoying that's married without kid's life, where Kay can spend as much time as she wants without kids pulling on her leg while she's

whipping up dishes. Grandparents camp equals adult freedom. It's pretty, it's pretty glorious thing. It's amazing. But yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the garden. That's something we talked about doing just months ago. Even the garden, it's tons of fun, it's super cool. The girls love it. Kate herself, she actually gets a lot of joy and just kind of cultivating the plants. But dude, let me tell you what,

it is a lot of work. Which is interesting because when I first met you, you had a big garden in your backyard at yeah, oh yeah, I didn't know that you had this big guarden back in the day, and it was probably, let me guess, it was probably about twenty ft by ten ft. Honestly, it was more like thirty by thirty. It was. It was a massive garden. And so now you're rolling with a much smaller garden in the front yard, which is probably what ten by ten.

I should know this. It's as square foot garden. Kate's really gotten into it. Basically, it's all about gardening in a small plot of lane and essentially what you do is every square foot you plant something. And what you do, though, is you go vertical instead of letting it spread out. So if you're limited in space, that's what you do. And we've certainly had a lot of veggies. It's been

fantastic eating fresh, real tasting tomatoes. We've joked before about hipster tomatoes like the purple ones, but we got them Manrowan and we had some of that before you came over for lunch and it was fantastic. Not to mention other other awesome stuff like okra. I know you like okra? I do? I? Yeah? I made some fried okra at home the other day. Was so good. Another favorite of ours is shohido peppers. Have you ever had shohidos like blistered shochidos? No, but it sounds good. Oh my gosh,

I think you would love them. I'll try it. It's a it's a perfect mix between veggie, but on the grill as well, because you get real hot and they blister and amazing flavor. Well, I feel like we need to do a whole episode on garden ng or like kind of outside of the box ways to grow your own food, to think about your own food. You actually need to do an episode on specifically how to cook inexpensively too, And I'm looking forward to taking those topics

in the future. That's Skates, jam Man. We should, yeah, we should do that, but I mean, I wanted to mention the garden too. It's very delicious, it's amazing, it's

a lot of fun. But because it does take a lot of work, you need to make sure that you enjoy the actual work of weeding and tending to the garden if it's going to be worth it, because from a dollar to dollar standpoint, I don't know if it actually pans out, But if you can also enjoy the work, enjoy being outside doing the whole the whole gig, then

and it could totally be worth it for you. Man, There's something I would imagine because I haven't done it, so I don't know, but I would imagine that there's something really amazing about eating something that you've grown with your own hands, that intangible. Like we talked about calculating

your hourly rate. But that's one of those intangibles. And it doesn't even matter if it costs you more to grow your own vegetables as long as it provides you with kind of a connection to the earth and this ability to grow your own food and then eat something delicious. I mean, there are all these intangibles involved with how in your own garden that you can't put on paper, You can't put it in a spreadsheet. And man, I love that you guys are enjoying the fruits of your labors,

or vegetables of your labors, as it might be. Yeah, most definitely there's some awesome independence that comes from being able to grow your own food versus being deepended on a grocery store. But you wanna go ahead and introduce our beer for this episode. Yeah, Today on the show, we're drinking Mirror Universe. It's a Hazy i p a by Fair State Brewing Cooperative. And this is another beer given to Aspire listener Riley, who donated the beer from

Monday's episode. That's right, Thanks so much, Riley in Minnesota. We're looking forward to discussing this one at the end of the show. All right, Matt, So onto the topic at hand. We're talking about h s as health savings accounts, and it turns out there's a decent chance that hs as are actually the best retirement savings account most people have never heard of, and we think that most people

do need to know about health savings accounts. We have a friend Brandon, who goes by the name of the Mad Scientist, and he's called them the ultimate retirement account and I don't think he's wrong. But we need to talk about who has access and how to know if you're eligible, and then also help people understand how to get the most out of their HSA. So let's get

to it. Another reason too that we're talking about h S a S is because if you are getting your financial game together, you're looking for ways to to be smart with your money. You're looking for the best ways to optimize, You're looking for the best vehicles to invest through, and not everybody has an employer with a four O n K where they match right. And even with RATH I R A S, which is one of our favorite

vehicles to invest within, they still have contribution limits. So if you're wanting to save and invest your money for retirement, you want to make sure that you're aware of the additional vehicles that are also tax advantage and in this case, man, this might be one of the most tax advantaged accounts, even more than a rath I RA A yeah or a four oh one K and h S A S I think get overlooked for a couple of reasons. One is that the term health is involved, so people automatically

associated with health insurances healthcare. It's yeah, they assume that it's not some sort of retirement account investing vehicle, but it is health insurances. Confusing and frustrating. But if you have access to an h s A, you neglect it at your own financial peril because they're awesome. That's ragual, because h s A s are the best. One of the reasons that they're the best is because they are

quite literally the most tax advantaged account out there. There are three different ways that it can be a tax advantaged account. That's a triple savings That means you pay no tax on contributions that you make to an h s A, you pay zero taxes on earnings as that money grows, and then you also pay zero taxes when you spend that money on qualified medical expenses. That's A

a triple threat. And the reason that we would consider an hs A an investment account, even though you only get the extra tax advantage if you spend it on medical expenses, well, is that you can invest inside of an h s A and your money can experience compounding growth over the decades, just like you can in a four oh one K or an I R A. And we'll get into some of the nitty gritty on how you spend your h s A in retirement later on, but basically, it's important also to acknowledge that even if

your employer offers an h s A to you, well, that h s A is yours and it's not taken away from you when or if you leave your job. So if your employer has mentioned that you have an h s A available to you and you haven't taken advantage of it because you one weren't familiar with what it was, or two thought that maybe it didn't stick with you when you left, well that's not true. And so it's really important to know that when you open up an h s A, it's with you for life,

That's right, Joel. And we've talked about f s A s before, which are flexible spending accounts, and you know what, they're pretty good. But h s A S they are They are much much better. The biggest difference is that your money rolls over with an h s A, so you don't have to spend your contributions all in the same year that you put the funds in. It allows you to go into thinking about h s A S with more of a long term mindset. Yeah, where I'm employed, Matt, I only have access to an f s A. I

don't have an h s A at my disposal. Kind of sounds like a humble brig about how great your health insurance is. Yeah, so, which means I do have access to really good health insurance, which is which is nice. But in f s A, I use that to its

full potential. But if I had a high deductible plan, and we're gonna get into that in a second, I would most definitely be maxing out my h s A. And that is because some of these perks that we've talked about, and in particular that you can invest for the long term inside of an h s A and use it as an additional retirement savings account vehicle. So

we're gonna talk about eligibility. We're gonna answer a few other questions regarding the h s A right after the break All right, now, so a lot of people are listening to this episode and they're wondering, Well, first I didn't know what an h s A was. I didn't know it existed. Now that I know, well, Joel just mentioned he doesn't have access to one. How do I find out if I am eligible for an h s A?

And I'm glad you asked, Well, the I r S has set guidelines for who is eligible, but your healthcare plan needs to qualify as a high deductible healthcare plan in order for you to be able to contribute to an h s A. Matt, do you want to go over some of the numbers for us since your resident math or the numbers kind of suck. So we will put a link to that I r S page that

has the guidelines there. But for twenty nineteen, in order to qualify for an hs A, the minimum annual deductible for an individual's health coverage is one thousand, three fifty and the number is twenty seven dollars for a family plan, and there's also maximum deductibles as well. And so the maximum deductible and out of pocket is sixty seven fifty for an individual plan and thirteen thousand, five hundred for

full family healthcare. So basically, if you're deductibles fit within that range, you most definitely want to look into this. And there's a few other small requirements as well. We're not going to bore you to death with with all of those requirements, but check out the link will put that on our website. What's great though, is that a lot of the healthcare plans that are out there are

labeled as such. They're labeled hs A, and they'll have that after the name, right, and so it'll might say like Blue Cross, Blue Shield h s A. Yeah, And as healthcare costs have ramped up, more and more plan and have become hs A eligible because they are just more high deductible plans on the market. And so if you're in a situation like i am, and you've got a day job in an HR department, it's best to reach out and ask if your health insurance plan is

hs A eligible. Usually you can get a pretty quick response as to whether it is or isn't, But if it is, boom, it's time to start getting that ball rolling on investing in your hs A. And on top of that, some employers are actually contributing some money to an h s A that you begin to fund, which is a sweet perk. Yeah, that's that's a huge perk. Man. It's basically like a match that you don't have to put forth any effort and your employer does it for you. Right,

that's pretty sick. And so that's if you have that steady nine to five like you do, Joel. But if you're self employed like I am, you still have access to high deductible health plans. Just double check to make sure that it's labeled as such or if it's not, that you're kind of digging into the details when you

are picking out your plan. But regardless, if you're geting a high deductible plan, either through your employer or on your own out in the marketplace, the contribution limits are the same, which means that you and invest if you're single, and that's seven thousand dollars if you're married filing jointly.

And so it's worth noting that those contribution limits they're not quite as high as a standard traditional IRA or a roth ira A. But you know what, if you couple this additional amount that you can invest in an h s A on top of what you can contribute to an IRA A. Dude, that gets to be a pretty healthy amount of money towards your retirement. That's like, instead of facing just Batman, you're facing Batman and Robin,

right like this tag team Robins. Just like the little half point h s A off to the side a little bit, he both in tandem. Right, Well, maybe that begs a bigger question. Maybe the h s A is actually Batman. All right, Well, we'll tackle that. Might make that argument here in a little bit. All right, So another question that might come up for people who are just now kind of familiarizing themselves with hs A S is what if I no longer have a high deductible

health plan in the future. Let's see yourself employed now with the high deductible health plan, and you start investing in an hs A and then you go back and get a traditional job with great health insurance, and this new plan has a really low deductible which is great. Well, the h s A that you invested in is still yours. You can't contribute anymore, uh, during the years in which you don't have high deductible health plans, but that money is still growing for you, and you'll still have access

to that money tax free if you use it. Like we mentioned earlier on qualified medical expenses later on in life, yea, Joel, and you mentioned the year. It's it's even down to the month you might switch healthcare plans. And as soon as you start with a health care plan that does not have that high deductible plan, that month you can no longer make contributions to your hs A. So that's another way that it differs a little bit from an ira A where you kind of have an entire year

to to make contributions or to not. It comes down to the month even that you have or don't have a high deductible health plan. Alright, mat So here is the question, is the h s A Batman or is it robin? Is if someone has an HSA available to them, should they invest in one and should they invest in one before maxing out the other retirement accounts that they have access to? Yeah, Juel, I mean that's the big question, right,

That's what we're talking about here. And I would argue that an h s A should be fully funded before your roth IRA, before traditional IRA, and before any contributions beyond a match with your four O one K. I think the four one K with a match that comes first, because you can never beat that basically on your money, right like you can never beat that one for one dollar up to the percentage that they're willing to match.

But after that, after you've reached your four O one k match, should you look at investing in a traditional IRA, should you look at investing in a roth ira, or should you look at an H S A? And I think it should be an h S A first, the reason being because it is triple tax advantage. That money is contributed tax free, it grows tax free, and it

leaves that account without being taxed. It's spent on qualified medical expensive exactly exactly, and so there's a chance that that money never gets taxed or as with a roth IRA or with the traditional IRA, you're guaranteed that money is going to get taxed once at least once on the front end or the back end in some way

for or fashion. Exactly. By the way, I realized that qualified medical expenses sounds like a ridiculous, stupid term, and it sounds like something the I R S would say and it is actually the I R S terminology for this. We will post a link in the show notes to a great website that kind of details what qualified medical expenses are, and we'll kind of also discuss in plain English terms what that means towards the end of the show too. But Matt, I completely understand where you're coming from.

I think whether or not the h s A is

Batman or Robin partially depends on people's goals. And we've talked about the roth ira A in detail, and I think the flexibility of having a roth ira A it adds to its appeal and maybe and and the fact that you can contribute a little bit more than to a wrath than you can to an h s A actually kind of, in my mind, tips the scales a little bit in favor of contributing to a wrath before you start fully funding that hs A. But the great thing is, if you are truly a dedicated saver, and

you've placed a high priority on investing for your future, taking that four oh one K match if you have that available to you, and then focusing on maybe simultaneously even but focusing on the rath and then the hs A. I think is kind of a good way to think about it, and part of where you come down is going to depend on how you how much you value flexibility,

and what age you're planning on quitting work. Those are some of the questions you're gonna want to ask yourself to determine which one is more valuable for you as an investment vehicle. But more than anything, what we want to communicate in this episode is that an hs A

can and is truly an investment vehicle. Most of the times when people talk about in hs A, it's talked about as a current savings vehicle for medical expenses that you incur year of and based on what you can do inside of an h s A, that's the absolute wrong way to be using it. Yeah, that takes a very limited mindset and how you're approaching this amazing vehicle. It's it's kind of like if you have that brand new Tesla and you only take it to the al Di down the street and then you come back home,

like that's it. There's so much more that that car can do, but you're just taking it to the grocery store and go zero to thirty and twenty seconds. You know, like that's not what you want to hear about your tesla, man, because they can go way faster, much quicker. Yeah, bottom line, the h s A is a fantastic retirement vehicle. And we're gonna talk more about how to get the most out of your h s A. We'll get to that

right after the break, all right, Matt. So, we mentioned just a second ago how most people the way they talk about h s A s it's as a current savings vehicle for this year's medical expenses. And that's not the worst thing that could happen. You're still essentially using tax free money to pay for current medical expenses. But if you use an h s A in that manner, you're not really taking advantage of what it's able to

do for you. All Right, So if you do want to go ahead and open an h s A, which we would recommend if you are eligible, you of course want to make sure that you are putting it to work, you're getting the most out of it. The first thing to consider is to contribute as much as you can

every single year. We mentioned the annual limits, the annual contribution limits, that's singles seven thousand dollars if you're married, filing jointly try to hit those limits every single year, because you can't go back in time and contribute for prior years where you didn't aim. If you are contributing through automated payroll deductions, you are saving on fight attacks, so you're not having to pay additional payroll taxes on the money that you're contributing to your h s A. Yes,

so that's an additional tax savings. Instead of just saving on the income taxes that you would have paid on that money, you're also in addition, saving extra tax that you would have paid on that income Social Security Medicare. Yeah, it's a sweet deal. Another way to get the most out of your h s A is to begin investing inside of your hs A. So treating it like a retirement account is crucial in this whole process. If you don't invest inside of your hs A, well it's really

just not nearly as good of a vehicle. Thinking of your hs A like a rath IIRA or a four O one K and choosing investments inside of your hs A that will put your money in the market to

grow over the long term. That's where you're going to see the biggest benefit, and that's where the h s A really really shines, and most people in effectively use their hs A by treating it like a savings account for medical expenses as opposed to treating it like an investment account to be used further on down the road. And when you're investing within your h s A, just like with regular retirement accounts, low fees are critical. They're crucial,

just like with any other investment accounts. You want to make sure that you're minimizing the expenses that are going towards that account management as well as costs and expenses associated with those different fees. Yeah, we talked about this recently. Lower fees equal better for you. So a couple of places to consider lively infidelity, those are going to be your best bets for where you should have your hs

A account. Yeah, those are the two leaders in low cost h s A accounts, and so those are honestly the only two places I would in all likelihood consider having my h s A. Basically, if you have a choice over the company you do business with when it comes to your hs A, lively infidelity are going to be your best bets because low fees rock and that's what they priority us, all right, matt Onto. The major sticking point of how to get the most out of your h s A, well, that lies in not tapping

your hs A funds. That is how you maximize this account. If you pay your healthcare bills out of pocket and let your h s A continue to grow over the years, that is how you're going to build wealth inside of an h s A. Instead of taking the funds that you contribute to an h s A and tapping them for current medical expenses, you want to wait as long as you can and access those hs A funds after

decades of growth. And that only makes sense with the way that we're talking about investing within an h s A. Right. If you are going to put your money in low cost index funds within your h s A, well, that's not money that you're gonna want to touch. Because the market goes up, the market goes down. You don't want to be in a position where you have to withdraw some money for medical expenses because you don't know where

the market is going to be. And so it kind of makes sense that someone who isn't using an h s A to its full potential, right, they're using the h s A to literally pay their medical bills like they thought they were supposed to that it's sitting there in cash because they want availability to it. They want that access and it needs to be liquid. That makes sense, It only makes sense if that's how you're using your HSA, but we are recommending that you don't use your h

AY that way. Pay those medical bills out of pocket, contribute funds to your h s A, put them in low cost index funds, and allow them to grow for decades to come. However, a key component to getting that third tax advantage right, Like we know that you can contribute tax free, we know that the earnings grow within an h s A tax free. But the third way to get that tax advantage is being able to take

those distributions. But you want them to be qualified. And the way to make sure that your distributions are qualified is that you want to make sure that you hold on to your receipts. You want to keep those receipts forever. It's probably a good idea to digitize those receipts. Make sure that you have a digital record because there's no time stipulation for when you can reimburse your health expenses. I think that's the coolest thing in this whole thing.

It's nuts. It's it's like this crazy loophole right right, It's like, you can incur a medical expense today in two thousand nineteen, Matt. That is, let's say it's two hundred dollars, and you can take a picture of that receipt, you can keep a digital file of it. And in two thousand and fifty nine, when you're forty years older and your money has had time to grow in this hs A, you're able to basically tap your hs A for those funds and it doesn't matter that that expense

occurred forty years ago. You can withdraw the funds. Then. That's the most interesting part of the h s A as a vehicle is that you can wait a long long time from your actual medical procedure or the medical device that you purchased and tap the funds way down the road. Yeah, man, just think about the potential expenses, the potential medical expenses that you could have accrued over

a forty year period. I mean, who knows, Like we're talking possibly even hundreds of thousands of dollars at least maybe fifty two hundred, right, And that is how you can reimburse yourself when you're forty years older and you have proof, and so you're able to withdraw those funds without being taxed. And what's incredible too, is that you

don't actually have to wait that forty years. Like Joel mentioned, one of the benefits we've talked before about AIRA is that you have flexibility to withdraw your contributions tax and penalty free. Let's say it's only been ten years worth of accruing your medical expenses. Well, as long as you have those receipts, say you are in a bind and you're in a position where you need access to that money, well, you can reimburse yourself for ten years worth of medical expenses.

And maybe that's not a hundred thousand dollars, but gosh, it might be ten or twenty maybe ten or twenty dollars, And that's money that you can kind of tap just like you would with a roth ira A. And so what I'm saying though here is that the h S A has almost the same flexibility that a roth ira has. It just has the added step of a little bit of paperwork making sure that you maintain those receipts. If the I R S comes knocking and they want to

make you prove it. You have that. One thing that people ask is, well, what if I have too much money in my h s A. When I get to retirement and I don't have that many qualified medical expenses to have made investing in an hs A life, I've got too much money s exside. I know that that is like truly the best case scenario where you can have too much money set aside in your HSA. But what would you tell someone that asked that question, Well, Joel, first of all, we are going to have a ton

of medical expenses by the time we're older. I can't say exactly how much, but that's just that's just how life goes. We spend money on healthcare. It costs a lot. And the fact is, though there are a lot of eligible expenses, the list of eligible items it runs the gamut. It ranges from eyeglasses, two X rays, to prescriptions even to long term care. And even if the sect to me is I look that up, that's all. Well, that's

good to know. And make sure you're keeping your receipts for those any optical glasses, buddy, Okay, that's twenty dollars a pop, I want to get reimbursed for that junk. Well, on not note, I'm actually not eligible myself for an h s A because I am not on a high deductible plan. Yeah, you're actually not on an actual health insurance plan. You have health sharing coverage. Yeah, and that's something we might talk about one of these days. Yeah,

you've written about it on the website too. If people want to know more about that, you can check out Matt's article on why he's a part of a health sharing plan as opposed to something like a high deductible health plan on our website how to money dot com And Matt, I think another thing I would say, besides it being a larger list of eligible expenses than most people might think, there is well, in the worst case scenario, which is still a good case scenario, in hs A

functions like a traditional IRA in many ways. So you'll pay tax on the money that you withdraw that isn't spent on qualified healthcare expenses. But that's exactly what you do with a traditional IRA, exactly. But you hit a certain age, and in this case, the age is a little bit older. We're talking age sixty five that you have to wait until versus fifty nine and a half,

which is what it is for a traditional IRA. But what you're saying is the worst case scenario is that, oh, by the way, you have an extra traditional IRA account, right boo? Who I know. It's a beautiful thing. Yeah, And that's why I think there aren't really many objections that can be raised to investing in an h s A. I think it act, it makes a lot of sense.

And if you have the desire and the ability to contribute more money to retirement than just investing in a regular four oh one k or IRA account, well I think the h s A is at minimum the slay him dunge next move and maybe makes sense, as you mentioned earlier, to be the batman in the scenario and potentially becoming like your go to retirement account at the same time. Yeah, the h s A literally could take that lead role when it comes to setting money aside

for retirements. I mean, the only downside that I see with that is the fact that it requires a little more bookkeeping, like you have to keep those receipts. But that being said, if you're like me and you take a picture of every single receipt with a little digital point and shoot, of course you do, because that's how I roll. Then you're already doing that and there's really

no additional work. The only additional work that I could think of that might be handy is if you kept maybe an Excel file, which I also do, and you lift out all of your medical expenses. That way you have a running total, and that way you know the exact amounts of the medical expenses that you can be reimbursed for down the road. Yeah, it is really nice to have that running total for when you already to

actually access those funds. Right, Yeah, that's right. But yeah, other than the bookkeeping, I really see no other reason why someone shouldn't open and fund and hs A before a rath or traditional ira A strong words, my friend words. How I feel about it. I still really like the roth. Like I mentioned earlier, I think there's a lot of

current flexibility. There's some beauty in a simplicity, I'll say that, And there's also just the beauty that a lot more people are eligible to contribute to a rath than are eligible to contribute to an h s A exactly. And so I think you know, that's a reason we're gonna just mention the Rath more often on the show. But if you have access to an hs A, don't let

it fall by the wayside, don't forget about it. And now that you know what it is, you're gonna want to strongly consider putting some money aside inside of that account. All right, let's get it back to the beer we had Mirror Universe. Uh, this is a hazy I p a by Fair State Brewing co Op. Hey, so, are you a true Southerner? Do you say a mirror or do you see a mirror mirror? Do you say it properly? No, I'm not a I'm kind of a Southerner, but I'm

mostly a transplant from the Northwest, so it doesn't really count. Yeah, not really from the South either. I grew up here in the South, but my dad's from the Midwest and my mom's Korean. So there's very few sort of Southern sayings that I've lashed onto. That being said about folks

listening are like, no, you guys are totally Southern. Well, and honestly, people who live in Atlanta it's a completely different world from the majority of the South because it's this big metropolitan city, and so I think people think of Atlanta as the South, and rightly so, there are a lot of Southern sensibilities. There's a lot of Southern

nous to Atlanta. Southern a city, right, maybe that's probably what I'll call it, but truly, Atlanta has a lot of differences from a lot of the rest of the Southeast. So yeah, that's why I love Atlanta. It's just kind of this unique hybrid and I feel like I belong here because I feel like I'm a unique hybrid myself, and you are too, buddy. But enough about that. What

did you think of this beer? Well, first off, I'll mention that the cane is really hard to read because with it being Mirror Universe, everything is is kind of written backwards or upside down. But I kind of dig it because it makes me think of stranger things, and I just got a niche in for some stranger things. Man. Regardless of this beer, I really enjoyed a man, it's really tasty, have that new classic i PA flavor, juicy, kind of smooth drinking with a little bit of that

hot bite. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. On the label it says that they used quote unquote too many hops, and uh, yeah, I love that because honestly, in my opinion, I'm kind of a hophead. You really can't put too many hops in a beer for me. I thought they've had an awesome hop a roma, nice hop notes in the flavor profile, and so I hate to disagree with you Fair State Brewing co Op. But but no, not too many hops because I can take it. Yeah, this

was a really good beer, So give us more hops. Yeah, major thanks to Riley for sending this one into us. We appreciate it. Thank you Riley in Minnesota, and if you're ever in Minneapolis, be sure to check out Fair State Brewing Cooperative. Yeah, do it all right, Matt. So let's give our final thoughts on the subject. R hs A is actually the best retirement account out there. Well, Joel, it's up to the individual, but if you qualify, I think you seriously need to consider an h s A

for the reasons being it is triple tax advantage. It's completely free money. You don't have to pay taxes on your contributions on earnings and for qualified medical distributions. But worst case scenario, if you no longer have any qualified medical expenses, well, essentially it converts into a traditional IRA A. The only difference is is that instead of being able to make the withdrawals at age fifty nine and a half, you have to wait five and a half more years

until you hit age sixty five. That is a great worst case scenario to have. Yeah, no doubt, Yeah, I think more than anything, this episode was a primer for people who maybe don't know what they are. And maybe you don't have access to an h s A where you work right now, but you will in the future. Or maybe you have access to an hs A currently and you didn't really know what it was so you just kind of bypassed it, And hopefully this episode made you realize the amazing benefits that an hs A has

to offer if you use it properly. So if you think of your h s A as an investment tool for long term wealth building, then you're using it properly. So my biggest takeaway is to let people know that the h s A is one of the perfect investment vehicles for long term wealth building, So don't forget about the poor little hs A. It's basically Batman. Honestly, the only superhero movies I've ever seen are Batman movies. So leaving going back to like the classic, the old school

Batman and Robin. Yeah, that was good stuff. Or they're climbing up the side of the building. Did they do that every single episode, like climb up the building like with a rope where they shot at sideways. I think so that Adam West was Batman back then. They've a lot of iteration since then. I think my favorite Batman, if I had to pick one, would have been the one where Jim Carrey was the joker. That was so good. I think I was literally called Batman and Robin. Really,

which one was that? Is that in the nineties, ice h Man, It was probably two thousand two something like that. So I'm gonna have to disown you as a friend because you can't beat Christian Bale and Heath Ledger. Dude, come on, they were great. They were great, But nobody beats Jim Carey in my opinion, he was He's amazing. Yeah, you're wrong, Okay, Well that's the end of this podcast. I think we're never gonna we can't come to agreement

on that, then the end. Yeah, you can find our show notes up at how to Money dot com and we'll link to that I r S post where they have the guidelines as to who is eligible and will also linked to our friend Brandon's long form article. You know, Brandon's site is where I go to always figure out

where the best credit card sign up bonuses. By the way, so while you're there, click on travel cards and even if you don't want to travel card, you can click the button that switches it from travel to money money cash back. That's what I do. Yeah, he does a great job on his website and on his podcast The Mad Scientist. And if you've appreciated this podcast in this episode, we would appreciate your feedback. The best way to leave that feedback is to leave us a nice review on

Apple Podcast. We'd really appreciate it, and it helps get the word out about our show to other people who want to learn about money stuff. All right, Joel, until next time, Man Best Friends Out, Friends Out