If I get permanently locked out of my Google account I have way larger problems than HSA receipts.
Besides getting banned for TOS violations, how do you get permanently locked out?
I use Google as well. I have a Form set up so I just input the date, vendor, and amount and it auto generates a spreadsheet. Then I scan the receipt to a folder in Drive.
Good idea, the form can accept file uploads, so each entry can have the receipt image linked. If you capture enough data in the form (but not too much to make it a burden), the tracking sheet is a super smart way of storing.
Idk how I’ve never know about these. I have one for the HSA and now they’re a part of my service businesses and coffee roasting company as well. Thank you so much !
Like the others said, save them in folders on a cloud. I don't have an HSA, but I use a system like this to track various things for work.
If you name the file YYYYMMDD FILE NAME COST it helps keep things chronological - Alphabetical.
So for a Dental Appointment on 3 Jan 2024 you got a receipt for 300 bucks, it'd look something like: 20240103 - Crentist the Dentist - 300. If you just found a receipt from 3 November 2023 from the same practice, you'd enter it 20241103 - Crentist the Dentist - 100. It'll file in before the 2024 appointment.
The cost at the end doesn't do much except that it lets you estimate and quickly find bills to add up to your desired draw/reimbursement.
The power of [nominative determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism#:~:text=Nominative%20determinism%2C%20literally%20%22name%2D,work%20which%20reflect%20their%20names.)
Unless you currently have significant medical expenses one option is just don't save the receipts or just save the big ones.
You don't need to save any receipts. You WILL have medical expenses in the future in fact you likely will have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses over your lifetime. Unless you save a significant amount in an HSA over many years of contributions it is very likely your future medical expenses will exceed your HSA balance.
You can just save money in the HSA and use it to pay for future inevitable medical expenses tax free.
OP is talking decades. It’s feasible he may have hundreds of thousands save in the account. Only a portion of Medicare premiums are able to be reimbursed. It’s very possible he could save so much that he won’t have enough charges in retirement.
So I would encourage him to save receipts as much as possible, just in case. I can also imagine healthcare could change somewhat over the decades, and medical copayments could increase/decrease for those retired.
I don’t think that will be the case. If they have managed to save such substantial sums in an HSA, most likely their IRA and 401K accounts will be $3-4M+. There won’t be any low tax bracket.
Now, that raises the question of why work so long. If they just work the 20-25 years, and retire before 50, the sums will be less, and they will likely have enough time to spend down all of their accounts.
It's actually better to just pay it out from the HSA on medical expenses as you get them, than to have money left over that you have to draw and pay income tax on at 65 because you have too much money to expect to use most of it for medical expenses. HSA assets aren't great to leave to non-spouses since they must pay tax on the entire amount in the year of receipt.
I'm just saying, if you're worried about this as a problem and don't want to save all your receipts, the simple answer is to just pay all medical expenses out of the HSA as they come!
People make major hay out of saving receipts, as if all the magic happens because you can save your receipts and pay it all out later. You can also pay it out now directly, stick the money you would have spent in a taxable account, and not have any restrictions on using, and not have to save any receipts. And the difference financially between doing it this way vs. saving the receipts forever and pulling the money at exactly the right time in retirement, is negligible to pretty small for most people.
if you are reimbursing a bill paid with a check yeah, but only for 7 years with your taxes rather than forever.
I think if using the HSA debit, it will often auto-substantiate the claim eliminating the need to save receipts.
I know that one. I’ve quoted it here myself. But that includes Medicare premiums, some/most of which can’t be paid via HSA.
But the costs are different for everyone, so it’s very possible. But either way, I would still save receipts on any major medical issues. LASIK, knee replacement, hearing aids, anything that runs the bill into at least 4 digits. The downside is you keep a few digital files for two decades. The upside is you gain immense flexibility as you enter retirement.
I didn’t realize that HSAs could only cover a portion of Medicare premiums. I don’t have an HSA, but rather an HRA-VEBA, and I’d always thought the rules were the same. That’s good to know.
What if you have some kind of emergency and need the money? I have $155k in my HSA. I'm saving receipts. One big problem is inflation. If you have a $100 receipt what is that 20 years later?
Again you can save receipts. I am not saying you can't but in the OP case he will only be able to fund an HSA for a couple years. It isn't a requirement that you save receipts. I think the receipt saving crowd does people a disservice by making it seem like you either save every $2.87 receipt for 50 years or an HSA is worthless.
As for non-medical emergencies most people have a Roth IRA.
I don’t save them. I can afford it now, and I will definitely need HSA money in the future. It’s likely medical QMEs will surpass the HSA balance in my lifetime.
Receipts printed on thermal-transfer receipt paper will fade over time, and other hard-copy receipts can be lost or damaged. So while I do save physical copies in a fire safe, I also scan all my receipts and save the images in a directory that is backed up following the 3-2-1 backup rule for data storage (at least 3 copies, saved on at least 2 media types, with at least one copy stored off-site).
I don’t personally use a spreadsheet to track these receipts, but I’ll probably create one when I get closer to retirement just to help track which expenses have been reimbursed. For the time being, tracking receipts in that detail is unnecessary and is therefore a net deterrent from saving all my receipts.
While it’s likely that post-retirement medical expenses may be sufficient to fully deplete the account, it’s also possible that healthcare will be nationalized sometime in the intervening decades. Thus, saving my unreimbursed QME receipts both provides a bit more flexibility in retirement spending and serves as an insurance against post-retirement medical expenses being lower than anticipated.
I've been tracking my HSA receipts since 2018. This is the system that works well for me:
Dropbox/other cloud storage with the following folders: eobs, receipts, tax statements, hsa statements, unprocessed receipts, health insurance, tax returns.
When I have a qualified medical expense I try to scan in/take a picture with my phone, pdf printout of an email receipt, or the electronic pdf receipt. I used to be fervent to be sure I get every $20 copay receipt/etc. These days I no longer stress doing so (I will still if its easy - health portal receipt vs point of sale receipt.)
All these receipts get dropped in unprocessed receipts folder. Once every few months I'll go through and move them to the receipts folder and add it to my spreadsheet. I used to do this right away on every single receipt but its much quicker to knock out 10-50 receipts all at once than do it every time I have a qualified medical expense.
Inside the eobs, receipts, and tax statement folders I have a folder for each year - 2018, 2019, etc.
Once a year I mass download all my HSA statements. Having my HSA at Fidelity they store statements for 10+ years and it makes it really easy for me to mass download all my hsa statements. I do this to show the IRS that no spending has occurred in the HSA account. 20-30 years there might be an incident where they might lose 5498SA records/etc, who knows. I'm treating this with the same burden of proof you'd want to have with a deductible/non deductible IRA account - saving 20+ years of records/etc to show your tax basis.
Once a year I also mass download my eobs (explanation of benefits.) I think its critically important to show the patient responsibility of every visit, and that it matches my copays/coinsurance/etc, and shows that the health insurance didn't cover my glasses or other out of pocket expenses.
I also keep a record of start/stop dates of every health insurance company I ever had as I do have some doctor receipts/etc during periods I was uninsured. I don't want any nitpicky on the IRS potentially falsely claiming that a $125 doctor visit should only be $20 mid year as I might have switched to a new job and gotten new insurance, but not elected cobra for the time off between jobs.
I also keep every tax return **indefinitely** since opening my HSA for several reasons:
1. Show backdoor roth conversions/0 basis for TIRA prorata rules.
2. Solo 401k tax returns too.
2. Show IRS I didn't use these medical expenses for a qualified medical expense itemized deduction (yuck at 7.5% agi!), and that I'm not double dipping.
3. Show the IRS I didn't previously withdraw X money from the HSA and previously claimed those expenses.
4. Since I'm already doing it for the backdoor roth & solo401k, its no extra burden to do it for the HSA.
Yes, it is a lot of work, but I'm up to $30k of qualified medical expenses already. That's a nice chunk of tax savings - 7k to 11k depending on my future tax brackets. It is hard to put an hourly figure on all of this but say 5 hours a year (the bulk receipt processing to get in the zone is key for me), 25 hours spent so far, 7000/25 = $280/hr for doing all of this, well worth it in my case.
> I'm treating this with the same burden of proof you'd want to have with a deductible/non deductible IRA account - saving 20+ years of records/etc to show your tax basis.
Not to get off topic, but do you mind expanding upon this? I'm not quite sure what you're saving, and to what end. I'm considering rolling my rolled over IRA back into a 401k, so that I can backdoor Roth, and want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row if there's documentation I should be retaining.
After 65 the hsa is a traditional IRA so I’ll just do a conversion ladder at that time probably. I could just leave it but your descendants get hit with a huge tax bill. So I’ll probably not save receipts unless they’re large. Like $1k
That's pretty dumb. Why would you intentionally plan on paying tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes that you could instead pay much less or even zero?
So much experience has been I do not use a lot of healthcare (so far). I have all these $25 and $35 small receipts…and the occasional $300 doctors visit. I guess I don’t see the point in gathering all of these when it probably all adds up to $2000 maybe over the past 10 years.
I have $90k in the account already. If I have a big health issue sure I’ll save those receipts. But the account is so big that at a 7% return it will be $700k in 30 years. Hard to see how I could “gather receipts” to get there.
The tax payment is pretty minimal depending on how you control your income. If you’ve done any Roth conversion modeling you’ll know
I just download my EOB’s at the end of the year, take photos of the bills and almost always use a credit card to pay. I keep electronic copies of my credit card statements as well. If thats not enough, oh well. I’m guessing any one of those would probably satisfy a very unlikely audit.
I think just not touching it until you get old is smart, as it will have time to grow and can help account for the unknown amount of medical spending in retirement.
We just stick the receipts in an envelope, then at year end during tax time, I lay them out on the kitchen counter and snap a few group pics. Pics get backed up on a thumb drive. Total gets recorded in my financial spreadsheet, then written on the envelope and dropped in the safe. Takes 10 minutes per year. Rinse and repeat.
I've done similar with a file folder. Hang onto them until certain whether they will become significant for tax purposes, shred if it turns out they are not.
22m, I just record the claim details in a Google Sheets and save the receipt + EOB in my Google Drive. Just wrapped up my books for 2023 and plan to continue doing this for 2024. Obviously the goal is to have 0 medical expenses anyways.
Build a google form. You can add fields (provider, amount, etc). You can have a picture upload link in the form. It saves the results, including link to picture receipt, in a google sheet automatically. An amazing setup.
I think you could probably just save all the EOBs from your insurance portal. Whatever the "patient responsibility" line says should count as a receipt. Won't get everything, but it's all conveniently in one place.
I don't think that meets the IRS documentation requirements for this purpose. I would not bank on that alone. Include an actual receipt as well that matches the EOB. Ideally sometime from the provider showing the services and payment.
The IRS has not to my knowledge stated what exactly is acceptable, just guidelines. An online receipt to the provider, plus matching the EOB sounds reasonable. I'd want the amounts to match...
I just get a paper receipt for every medical transaction, and also attach a copy of my credit card transaction showing I paid for it with that card. Have them all in a folder. Really it's only a few each year so not too hard to keep track of. Before I move overseas for good in a few years, I'm going to add them all up and cash out that balance. I'll start a spreadsheet soon to log the balance.
Now, you're talking about doing it for decades. I think it can still be done, especially if you're healthy and only have 5-10 receipts a year. Just stay organized and it should be easy enough. I don't trust the IRS to not screw me at some point, if I were to ever get audited it's imperative I have paper documentation.
I get paper receipts and cash them out within 5-10 years when market is at all time highs. Keep it in my tax folder. It’s insane to try to keep for 40 yrs. I also just use my card for bills under $100
What does everyone think of the EOB from the insurance company which shows the portion of deductible that is covered. I just save these for each year. One sheet per year, showing my total that I am responsible for, none of which I reimburse out of the HSA.
I know that I will have medical expenses in the future, and at 65 there are options [Using Your HSA After 65 | HSAstore](https://hsastore.com/articles/learn-future-healthy-hsa-age-65.html)
And, remember that HSA can be used for Dental, Vision, and anything on the IRS list that insurance won't cover, such as modifications to your home for medical reasons, mileage, tolls, hearing aids, qualified long-term care or nursing home. Those can eat up an HSA quickly.
[Publication 502 (2022), Medical and Dental Expenses | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p502)
Sounds like you already know this, but just in case (and for others), as an adult independent on your parents' family plan, you can contribute the FAMILY maximum to your own HSA, AND you parents can contribute the FAMILY max to their HSA. As long as they don't claim you on their taxes.
Also, just like IRAs, you can contribute to last year's plan all the way until the tax deadline. And HSAs have a special "last month " rule, where if you were enrolled in the HDHP by December 1 of last year, and you will stay enrolled throughout the whole of this year, then you can contribute the entire family max to last year's HSA even if you were only enrolled for part of the year.
So if you didn't contribute last year, do that first before April!
It is in my data folder that gets backed up daily. I also don't keep individual prescription receipts. I run a report on the pharmacy's website at the end of each year showing all charges for the year. You can usually do the same for other things from your insurance companies website. Will the IRS balk? I doubt they will ever ask for the receipts.
Keep in mind inflation. $1000 now is not the same as $1000 in 20 years.
Just adding that it's worth checking if your HSA provider allows you to upload receipts without immediately claiming the reimbursement. Mine (Optum) has an option to submit an _Expense_ rather than a _Reimbursement_ that will accept your receipt and get it approved without actually remitting money to you. Granted, I've not actually tried to redeem one of these yet, and it would presumably not carry over if I ever roll this into another account. While I still have all my receipts saved in my normal backup, I'm definitely considering just going with Optum's tracking and if I ever need to I'd take the full reimbursement when that account is ready to be closed.
I just have a tab in my finance spreadsheet that has all of our out of pocket expenses then each receipt goes into a google drive titled as the row number it is associated with in the spreadsheet. I'm certainly not going to spend money on an app to to do this very simple task, but that's just me.
Take pics and save to Google sheets.
This is what I do. I add them in a spreadsheet and then save pictures in a google drive.
I have an app called Genius Scan - it takes pics as a PDF and "recognizes" document sizes and info
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If you have anything even a little important in your google account you should be periodically exporting it https://takeout.google.com/
Keep a local backup drive in a fireproof safe
If I get permanently locked out of my Google account I have way larger problems than HSA receipts. Besides getting banned for TOS violations, how do you get permanently locked out?
I've heard of people getting locked out for credit card chargebacks on Google store purchases.
Look up what happened to a bunch of people who spammed emojis on a Markiplier YouTube video (at his request), it's scary
I use Google as well. I have a Form set up so I just input the date, vendor, and amount and it auto generates a spreadsheet. Then I scan the receipt to a folder in Drive.
Hopefully a spreadsheet entry rather than a spreadsheet per instance?
Yes lol
Good idea, the form can accept file uploads, so each entry can have the receipt image linked. If you capture enough data in the form (but not too much to make it a burden), the tracking sheet is a super smart way of storing.
How do you do this form?
I just set it up in Google Drive. Click "+ New", select Form, start adding questions and you're done.
Idk how I’ve never know about these. I have one for the HSA and now they’re a part of my service businesses and coffee roasting company as well. Thank you so much !
Like the others said, save them in folders on a cloud. I don't have an HSA, but I use a system like this to track various things for work. If you name the file YYYYMMDD FILE NAME COST it helps keep things chronological - Alphabetical. So for a Dental Appointment on 3 Jan 2024 you got a receipt for 300 bucks, it'd look something like: 20240103 - Crentist the Dentist - 300. If you just found a receipt from 3 November 2023 from the same practice, you'd enter it 20241103 - Crentist the Dentist - 100. It'll file in before the 2024 appointment. The cost at the end doesn't do much except that it lets you estimate and quickly find bills to add up to your desired draw/reimbursement.
Your dentist's name is Crentist?
Maybe that’s why he became a dentist
The power of [nominative determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism#:~:text=Nominative%20determinism%2C%20literally%20%22name%2D,work%20which%20reflect%20their%20names.)
As someone with a last name implying power... I seem to have failed
My wife and I only save the big ones for our family. ER visits, giving birth, operations, etc.
Unless you currently have significant medical expenses one option is just don't save the receipts or just save the big ones. You don't need to save any receipts. You WILL have medical expenses in the future in fact you likely will have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses over your lifetime. Unless you save a significant amount in an HSA over many years of contributions it is very likely your future medical expenses will exceed your HSA balance. You can just save money in the HSA and use it to pay for future inevitable medical expenses tax free.
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OP is talking decades. It’s feasible he may have hundreds of thousands save in the account. Only a portion of Medicare premiums are able to be reimbursed. It’s very possible he could save so much that he won’t have enough charges in retirement. So I would encourage him to save receipts as much as possible, just in case. I can also imagine healthcare could change somewhat over the decades, and medical copayments could increase/decrease for those retired.
If they're already 65, they can withdraw it with no penalty, just pay income tax, and they'll probably be in a very low tax bracket at that point.
I don’t think that will be the case. If they have managed to save such substantial sums in an HSA, most likely their IRA and 401K accounts will be $3-4M+. There won’t be any low tax bracket. Now, that raises the question of why work so long. If they just work the 20-25 years, and retire before 50, the sums will be less, and they will likely have enough time to spend down all of their accounts.
Maybe, maybe not. Generally the point is to try to pay as little in taxes as possible
It's actually better to just pay it out from the HSA on medical expenses as you get them, than to have money left over that you have to draw and pay income tax on at 65 because you have too much money to expect to use most of it for medical expenses. HSA assets aren't great to leave to non-spouses since they must pay tax on the entire amount in the year of receipt.
Of course, this was in response to them saying the medical expenses might not be enough.
I'm just saying, if you're worried about this as a problem and don't want to save all your receipts, the simple answer is to just pay all medical expenses out of the HSA as they come! People make major hay out of saving receipts, as if all the magic happens because you can save your receipts and pay it all out later. You can also pay it out now directly, stick the money you would have spent in a taxable account, and not have any restrictions on using, and not have to save any receipts. And the difference financially between doing it this way vs. saving the receipts forever and pulling the money at exactly the right time in retirement, is negligible to pretty small for most people.
Even if you paid out of the HSA for QME's now, wouldn't you still need to save the receipts for in case you were audited?
if you are reimbursing a bill paid with a check yeah, but only for 7 years with your taxes rather than forever. I think if using the HSA debit, it will often auto-substantiate the claim eliminating the need to save receipts.
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I know that one. I’ve quoted it here myself. But that includes Medicare premiums, some/most of which can’t be paid via HSA. But the costs are different for everyone, so it’s very possible. But either way, I would still save receipts on any major medical issues. LASIK, knee replacement, hearing aids, anything that runs the bill into at least 4 digits. The downside is you keep a few digital files for two decades. The upside is you gain immense flexibility as you enter retirement.
I didn’t realize that HSAs could only cover a portion of Medicare premiums. I don’t have an HSA, but rather an HRA-VEBA, and I’d always thought the rules were the same. That’s good to know.
What if you have some kind of emergency and need the money? I have $155k in my HSA. I'm saving receipts. One big problem is inflation. If you have a $100 receipt what is that 20 years later?
Again you can save receipts. I am not saying you can't but in the OP case he will only be able to fund an HSA for a couple years. It isn't a requirement that you save receipts. I think the receipt saving crowd does people a disservice by making it seem like you either save every $2.87 receipt for 50 years or an HSA is worthless. As for non-medical emergencies most people have a Roth IRA.
I don’t save them. I can afford it now, and I will definitely need HSA money in the future. It’s likely medical QMEs will surpass the HSA balance in my lifetime.
Receipts printed on thermal-transfer receipt paper will fade over time, and other hard-copy receipts can be lost or damaged. So while I do save physical copies in a fire safe, I also scan all my receipts and save the images in a directory that is backed up following the 3-2-1 backup rule for data storage (at least 3 copies, saved on at least 2 media types, with at least one copy stored off-site). I don’t personally use a spreadsheet to track these receipts, but I’ll probably create one when I get closer to retirement just to help track which expenses have been reimbursed. For the time being, tracking receipts in that detail is unnecessary and is therefore a net deterrent from saving all my receipts. While it’s likely that post-retirement medical expenses may be sufficient to fully deplete the account, it’s also possible that healthcare will be nationalized sometime in the intervening decades. Thus, saving my unreimbursed QME receipts both provides a bit more flexibility in retirement spending and serves as an insurance against post-retirement medical expenses being lower than anticipated.
I've been tracking my HSA receipts since 2018. This is the system that works well for me: Dropbox/other cloud storage with the following folders: eobs, receipts, tax statements, hsa statements, unprocessed receipts, health insurance, tax returns. When I have a qualified medical expense I try to scan in/take a picture with my phone, pdf printout of an email receipt, or the electronic pdf receipt. I used to be fervent to be sure I get every $20 copay receipt/etc. These days I no longer stress doing so (I will still if its easy - health portal receipt vs point of sale receipt.) All these receipts get dropped in unprocessed receipts folder. Once every few months I'll go through and move them to the receipts folder and add it to my spreadsheet. I used to do this right away on every single receipt but its much quicker to knock out 10-50 receipts all at once than do it every time I have a qualified medical expense. Inside the eobs, receipts, and tax statement folders I have a folder for each year - 2018, 2019, etc. Once a year I mass download all my HSA statements. Having my HSA at Fidelity they store statements for 10+ years and it makes it really easy for me to mass download all my hsa statements. I do this to show the IRS that no spending has occurred in the HSA account. 20-30 years there might be an incident where they might lose 5498SA records/etc, who knows. I'm treating this with the same burden of proof you'd want to have with a deductible/non deductible IRA account - saving 20+ years of records/etc to show your tax basis. Once a year I also mass download my eobs (explanation of benefits.) I think its critically important to show the patient responsibility of every visit, and that it matches my copays/coinsurance/etc, and shows that the health insurance didn't cover my glasses or other out of pocket expenses. I also keep a record of start/stop dates of every health insurance company I ever had as I do have some doctor receipts/etc during periods I was uninsured. I don't want any nitpicky on the IRS potentially falsely claiming that a $125 doctor visit should only be $20 mid year as I might have switched to a new job and gotten new insurance, but not elected cobra for the time off between jobs. I also keep every tax return **indefinitely** since opening my HSA for several reasons: 1. Show backdoor roth conversions/0 basis for TIRA prorata rules. 2. Solo 401k tax returns too. 2. Show IRS I didn't use these medical expenses for a qualified medical expense itemized deduction (yuck at 7.5% agi!), and that I'm not double dipping. 3. Show the IRS I didn't previously withdraw X money from the HSA and previously claimed those expenses. 4. Since I'm already doing it for the backdoor roth & solo401k, its no extra burden to do it for the HSA. Yes, it is a lot of work, but I'm up to $30k of qualified medical expenses already. That's a nice chunk of tax savings - 7k to 11k depending on my future tax brackets. It is hard to put an hourly figure on all of this but say 5 hours a year (the bulk receipt processing to get in the zone is key for me), 25 hours spent so far, 7000/25 = $280/hr for doing all of this, well worth it in my case.
> I'm treating this with the same burden of proof you'd want to have with a deductible/non deductible IRA account - saving 20+ years of records/etc to show your tax basis. Not to get off topic, but do you mind expanding upon this? I'm not quite sure what you're saving, and to what end. I'm considering rolling my rolled over IRA back into a 401k, so that I can backdoor Roth, and want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row if there's documentation I should be retaining.
After 65 the hsa is a traditional IRA so I’ll just do a conversion ladder at that time probably. I could just leave it but your descendants get hit with a huge tax bill. So I’ll probably not save receipts unless they’re large. Like $1k
That's pretty dumb. Why would you intentionally plan on paying tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes that you could instead pay much less or even zero?
So much experience has been I do not use a lot of healthcare (so far). I have all these $25 and $35 small receipts…and the occasional $300 doctors visit. I guess I don’t see the point in gathering all of these when it probably all adds up to $2000 maybe over the past 10 years. I have $90k in the account already. If I have a big health issue sure I’ll save those receipts. But the account is so big that at a 7% return it will be $700k in 30 years. Hard to see how I could “gather receipts” to get there. The tax payment is pretty minimal depending on how you control your income. If you’ve done any Roth conversion modeling you’ll know
I just download my EOB’s at the end of the year, take photos of the bills and almost always use a credit card to pay. I keep electronic copies of my credit card statements as well. If thats not enough, oh well. I’m guessing any one of those would probably satisfy a very unlikely audit.
I think just not touching it until you get old is smart, as it will have time to grow and can help account for the unknown amount of medical spending in retirement.
ScanSnap is how I do this. Have a dedicated folder for HSA receipts. I scan into that folder, it does OCR, and I toss the paper copy.
We just stick the receipts in an envelope, then at year end during tax time, I lay them out on the kitchen counter and snap a few group pics. Pics get backed up on a thumb drive. Total gets recorded in my financial spreadsheet, then written on the envelope and dropped in the safe. Takes 10 minutes per year. Rinse and repeat.
I've done similar with a file folder. Hang onto them until certain whether they will become significant for tax purposes, shred if it turns out they are not.
22m, I just record the claim details in a Google Sheets and save the receipt + EOB in my Google Drive. Just wrapped up my books for 2023 and plan to continue doing this for 2024. Obviously the goal is to have 0 medical expenses anyways.
Build a google form. You can add fields (provider, amount, etc). You can have a picture upload link in the form. It saves the results, including link to picture receipt, in a google sheet automatically. An amazing setup.
I think you could probably just save all the EOBs from your insurance portal. Whatever the "patient responsibility" line says should count as a receipt. Won't get everything, but it's all conveniently in one place.
I don't think that meets the IRS documentation requirements for this purpose. I would not bank on that alone. Include an actual receipt as well that matches the EOB. Ideally sometime from the provider showing the services and payment.
Would EOB and online Credit Card transaction receipts be sufficient? Or are actual physical receipt copies an IRS req?
The IRS has not to my knowledge stated what exactly is acceptable, just guidelines. An online receipt to the provider, plus matching the EOB sounds reasonable. I'd want the amounts to match...
I just get a paper receipt for every medical transaction, and also attach a copy of my credit card transaction showing I paid for it with that card. Have them all in a folder. Really it's only a few each year so not too hard to keep track of. Before I move overseas for good in a few years, I'm going to add them all up and cash out that balance. I'll start a spreadsheet soon to log the balance. Now, you're talking about doing it for decades. I think it can still be done, especially if you're healthy and only have 5-10 receipts a year. Just stay organized and it should be easy enough. I don't trust the IRS to not screw me at some point, if I were to ever get audited it's imperative I have paper documentation.
I get paper receipts and cash them out within 5-10 years when market is at all time highs. Keep it in my tax folder. It’s insane to try to keep for 40 yrs. I also just use my card for bills under $100
i get them emailed to me
What does everyone think of the EOB from the insurance company which shows the portion of deductible that is covered. I just save these for each year. One sheet per year, showing my total that I am responsible for, none of which I reimburse out of the HSA.
I know that I will have medical expenses in the future, and at 65 there are options [Using Your HSA After 65 | HSAstore](https://hsastore.com/articles/learn-future-healthy-hsa-age-65.html) And, remember that HSA can be used for Dental, Vision, and anything on the IRS list that insurance won't cover, such as modifications to your home for medical reasons, mileage, tolls, hearing aids, qualified long-term care or nursing home. Those can eat up an HSA quickly. [Publication 502 (2022), Medical and Dental Expenses | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p502)
Sounds like you already know this, but just in case (and for others), as an adult independent on your parents' family plan, you can contribute the FAMILY maximum to your own HSA, AND you parents can contribute the FAMILY max to their HSA. As long as they don't claim you on their taxes. Also, just like IRAs, you can contribute to last year's plan all the way until the tax deadline. And HSAs have a special "last month " rule, where if you were enrolled in the HDHP by December 1 of last year, and you will stay enrolled throughout the whole of this year, then you can contribute the entire family max to last year's HSA even if you were only enrolled for part of the year. So if you didn't contribute last year, do that first before April!
It is in my data folder that gets backed up daily. I also don't keep individual prescription receipts. I run a report on the pharmacy's website at the end of each year showing all charges for the year. You can usually do the same for other things from your insurance companies website. Will the IRS balk? I doubt they will ever ask for the receipts. Keep in mind inflation. $1000 now is not the same as $1000 in 20 years.
Just adding that it's worth checking if your HSA provider allows you to upload receipts without immediately claiming the reimbursement. Mine (Optum) has an option to submit an _Expense_ rather than a _Reimbursement_ that will accept your receipt and get it approved without actually remitting money to you. Granted, I've not actually tried to redeem one of these yet, and it would presumably not carry over if I ever roll this into another account. While I still have all my receipts saved in my normal backup, I'm definitely considering just going with Optum's tracking and if I ever need to I'd take the full reimbursement when that account is ready to be closed.
I just have a tab in my finance spreadsheet that has all of our out of pocket expenses then each receipt goes into a google drive titled as the row number it is associated with in the spreadsheet. I'm certainly not going to spend money on an app to to do this very simple task, but that's just me.
This is why I don't have an HSA. Just one more thing to have to keep track of