Fidelity now has individual HSAs

They apparently started this in January of this year, and I just found out. There are no account service fees with the account, unless you have an HSA with them through an employer. I’m transfering my Health Equity account to them, and I understand you get the full range of Fidelity’s products and services.

Fidelity HSA

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archive of the old FWF HSA thread: https://web.archive.org/web/20171009065717/https://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/542257

I transferred nearly all of my Health Equity balance to Fidelity about a month and a half ago. It was a fairly easy process. I must keep my Health Equity account for now since that’s where my employer sends my deferrals and their contribution.

I’m happy that I don’t have to continue to pay 40bps per year on my investments at Health Equity.

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I opened one up to take advantage of the $1,000 catch up contributions for 55+. My husband has his with Payflex through his employer. Whenever he retires, he’ll roll it over to Fidelity. I hate Payflex.

Any reason not to open a second HSA (e.g., with Fidelity) and periodically transfer funds from the Payflex HSA? A cursory Google search indicates that multiple HSA accounts and transfers between the accounts are permitted.

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Yes. I brought it up to my husband and he said it sounds like too much work. Of course, it’s not any more work than anything else I handle with our finances, but I’m letting it go. I know a lot of people are doing as you suggest.

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Thanks for the info, this was on my to-do list. I recently started a new job and chose the HSA and they use WageWorks which I am not enamored with. I just need to make sure there are no transfer fees out of WageWorks and see how many I can do per year.

I was reading the Fidelity FAQ and saw this which I had never heard of before and probably will never use but thought it was interesting:

You can make a once-in-a-lifetime5 contribution to your HSA from your IRA. This is sometimes called a “qualified HSA funding distribution from an IRA or a rollover from an IRA.” These contributions are not subject to federal income taxes or the 10% penalty for early withdrawals. If you choose to do a one-time IRA contribution, you can effectively use your IRA money to pay for medical expenses, such as a major unexpected expense, without having to pay federal income taxes or penalties on it, as you would if you took an early IRA distribution to pay for that expense. However, contributions from an IRA will count toward the IRS’s annual limits on HSA contributions—unlike a rollover between two HSAs—and those IRA contributions are not taxdeductible.

  • Fidelity IRA to Fidelity HSA transfers: Contact your Fidelity IRA representative to initiate a transfer of your Fidelity IRA to your Fidelity HSA.
  • External (non-Fidelity) IRA to Fidelity HSA transfers: Request a one-time distribution from your non-Fidelity IRA and have your IRA custodian send a check made payable in your name. Ensure the correct contribution year is included in the in the check memo field when you mail the check to Fidelity. Learn how to deposit a check by mail. If your IRA custodian needs other instructions, please call a Fidelity HSA representative.
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Thank you for posting. I have an HSA with Bank of America from a former employer. I went searching around for a better HSA company about a year ago and found out BofA was only a little bit worse than the rest of the HSA companies, so I did not bother transferring away from them. I’ll check and see if it makes sense to transfer it to Fidelity.

Sweet. I’m going to look into this. I have an account with LMCU and interest rate is 1%. But at least no fees. Fidelity might make the most sense has they have low/zero ETFs :slight_smile:

I had some through my previous employer with Health Equity which paid a pittance of interest on a mandatory $2000 cash balance. I have another HSA with NC State Employees Credit Union. At least there I get 2.5%. I probably will move that money over as well, but I’ll leave some form of it in cash at the credit union.

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I have opened a second account and will “rollover” from HealthEquity once per year to reduce monthly expenses.

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Have you done a rollover yet? Since HE loves fees, did HE charge you a fee for the transfer?

Yes, I rolled over my Health Equity account a few months ago. I was charged an account closure fee of $25 because I closed the account at the same time as the rollover. There is no fee if you do a partial rollover. You are charged the fee if you close the HE account.

@robstrash FYI. I have used WageWorks and prefer it over Health Equity’s web interface. I wish our company would drop Health Equity and return to WageWorks.

I just closed / rolled over a Wageworks HSA to Fidelity. At least I think I closed it – 4 months, 5 phone calls, and two submitted account closure forms, and I can still log into the zero balance account.

Wageworks would charge $25 to roll the account over to Fidelity. However, I chose to get a check sent to me to zero out the account. I then wrote Fidelity a check for the exact amount and used a Fidelity rollover deposit slip so they wouldn’t count it as a contribution.

An update, since this thread got bumped. Payflex instituted a monthly fee for HSA investments recently that would have cost us over $10 per month. That prompted my husband to agree to opening up a Fidelity HSA to do the allowed 12 month rolling 60 day HSA rollover from Payflex to his new Fidelity HSA. (Payflex charges for trustee to trustee transfers.) We sold all the investments in the Payflex HSA and closed the investment side of the account. We made an electronic withdrawal of most of the funds to a checking account. He filled out the Fidelity deposit form and I took it to our local office with a check, to make sure it was properly coded as a 60 day rollover.

He has to keep the Payflex HSA to receive the employer contribution and his paycheck contributions, but they’re not getting any fees out of it now. I have a calendar reminder set to repeat the rollover procedure next year. We’ll do this until he retires from the company and then he’ll be able to completely get rid of the Payflex HSA.

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I am doing it next week. I am doing it as an allowed once per year indirect transfer.

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I can’t imagine how horrible Health Equity must be that you’d prefer WageWorks. I made the decision that I’d rather give up a company-provided benefit than rely on that awful company.

I’m not sure of what problems you encountered, but I found them to be semi-okay. The biggest problems I had were

  1. their limited investment options, but that may have been limited by the employer/plan, and
  2. when dealing with reps, their competency was very hit or miss, even though they all sounded good.

I did like their website as it required very little, or no, third party Javascript.

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I have successfully done an indirect HE rollover while keeping my HE account open (you are allowed 1 indirect per year and you can have multiple HSAs open). In HE first I sold the investment then I used the add a claim called it medical and made the provider Fidelity and transferred the money to my checking account. worked great.

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