Why My Medical Bills are Free... Sort of.

So, I started a Flex account at work this year. There's two of us with medical expenses (mostly dental and vision related, not so much physical or mental problems), but that really adds up. So it seemed like a good idea to distribute those payments out over a year's time. I don't feel the loss of the $50 (pre-tax) that come out of my paychecks and I can pretend all of my medical expenses are free! Ok, so I know they're not, but I can still pretend.

This is great, because instead of being completely unhappy about actually having to pay our dentist (which in the normal realm of customer service expectancies, I would not have paid for... can you return dental service?) I can just pretend that I didn't have to pay him at all, because I'm getting reimbursed for every cent I just paid him... from my own money. In fact, the payflex claim went through in about a day, after our dental insurance took months to come through for us.

It's totally worth it not to have to worry about almost $400 coming out of your account at once (although I still have to pay the dentist first, before I file the claim with payflex) and instead putting aside small amounts from every paycheck. It totally helps with the budgeting too, because I can just enter the same sum in for medical expenses every month and not have to worry about being wrong and having unforeseen expenses pop up in my budget. And did I mention the pre-tax thing? Yeah, I don't have to pay taxes on $400 and my mother (also my accountant/tax person) doesn't have to worry about itemized deductions (or maybe she does, but I really wouldn't know, because I've never done my own taxes).