I diaried last week on Health Savings Accounts, and my experience with my own such account. To recap, I'm extremely healthy, earning well, and thus the perfect customer for such a program. It's absurdly advantageous for me personally.
My deductible, $3,500 per year, goes into my savings account (a money market account that earns about 3%, compounded quarterly, no fees), and I pay my routine expenses from debit withdrawals from that account. As a 33 year old single woman, my expenses consist almost completely of dental checkups and birth control - about 500 dollars per year. The required premium for my high-deductible insurance policy, a required companion to a health savings account, is about 50 dollars a month, or 600 per year. Entering my third year of this kind of account, the accumulated interest alone is more than my routine health care expenses. By the end of year five, at which time I'll be 36 years old, the accumulated interest will be more than my insurance premiums, too. And finally, by the time I'm 40, the accumulated interest will be more than my annual deductible.
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