PilotWombat

Has anyone used the "Betterment" option for investing in their HSA? The Optum bank site is pretty sparse on information. All it says is that you'll take a survey and it'll recommend some ETFs for you. Once you've gone through that process, do you have a limited choice of investments to use or is it more like the BrokerageLink option in our 401ks where you can basically choose anything you want?

GogglesPisano

All the cool cats are transferring their HSA balances to Fidelity on a fairly regular basis. Just leave a few bucks in Optum or you will lose the HSA entirely.

First you have to open a Fidelity HSA.

Then perform a “Transfer of Assets.”

JamesBond

Can you expand on why this is a better option? My HSA is up 24% YOY and 7.5% YTD. Can you really do better at Fidelity? What am I missing?

GogglesPisano

You can leave it in a simple S&P Index fund as I do (it looks like you do as well) or you can trade in individual shares or anything Fidelity has to offer. Plus all of your investments are on one website.

But to each his own.

OOfff

can you automate the transfer?

positiveR8

I thought I saw something about a transfer fee in our HSA account terms. Do they charge you a fee for the transfer of assets?

GogglesPisano

Unfortunately no. And it’s a bit of a repetitive pain.

1) Open a Fidelity HSA.
2) Transfer your Optum Investments back into a Money Market fund.
3) Transfer that back into your HSA from Investments.
4) Initiative a “Transfer of Assets” through Fidelity. Make sure it’s a “Transfer of Assets” otherwise it may look like a contribution to the IRS. You will have to send Fidelity a statement from Optum.
5) Make sure you leave a few bucks in the Optum HSA or your entire Delta-provided HSA will shut down.

Another benefit is that you don’t have to leave $2000 in the HSA doing absolutely nothing for you as with Optum (Optum only allows you to invest the balance over $2000.)

The whole process take about 3 weeks. I do it twice a year.

GogglesPisano

I haven’t noticed. But I only do this twice a year. I will check tomorrow after I have some coffee.

Right now it’s boxed Malbec so take my financial advice with as much confidence as you would from any pilot in a bar. 💰😎

tennisguru

There are no fees for a transfer. Those fees probably come into play if you are just opening an HSA on your own through them, not through your employer.

As others have stated the benefits of fidelity are that you don't have to keep $2K in a non-investment account, it's easier to manage/trade, and you have practically the whole range of mutual funds and stocks to pick from, as opposed to the 20 or so that Optum offers (and even fewer of those 20 are actually good ones).

I try to get all my health dollars earned in Jan and Feb, and just do one transfer per year. You manage the transfer entirely through Fidelity, but you do need to upload your most recent quarterly statement from Optum for whatever reason. The whole request process takes less than 5 minutes, and the money takes 1-3 weeks to show up. It leaves your Optum account pretty quickly so I'm not sure why it takes so long.

GogglesPisano

Because ... Optum.