Fidelity offers individual HSA accounts?

audreyh1 said:
In that bogleheads link listed above, there is a number to talk directly with the Fidelity HSA department. They should be able to explain how to contribute to the account. No way it’s from paycheck only - that’s just from the old days when Fidelity only offered HSA accounts through employers.
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I have an employer based HSA at Fidelity and can contribute from brokerage/checking account. This is how I funded to the max for 2017.

The option is available under “Contribute to Health Savings Account” as part of your HSA on Fidelity’s website. I have the option to contribute from both a Fidelity brokerage account and a checking account from an external bank.

I’d be surprised if Fidelity doesn’t have the same option for individual accounts. Otherwise, what’s the point? You can only rollover money into an HSA but not add anything later?

This is a great move by Fidelity. I hope that Vanguard will eventually offer an HSA too.
 
tulak said:
I have an employer based HSA at Fidelity and can contribute from brokerage/checking account. This is how I funded to the max for 2017.

The option is available under “Contribute to Health Savings Account” as part of your HSA on Fidelity’s website. I have the option to contribute from both a Fidelity brokerage account and a checking account from an external bank.

I’d be surprised if Fidelity doesn’t have the same option for individual accounts. Otherwise, what’s the point? You can only rollover money into an HSA but not add anything later?

This is a great move by Fidelity. I hope that Vanguard will eventually offer an HSA too.
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It certainly must be there then if it’s available for the older HSA accounts. It’s just a matter of finding it.

They do have to make a distinction between a contribution for a given year which have annual limits, and rollovers from other acccounts. So I’m not surprised if it can only be initiated from within the Fidelity HSA account.

Thanks!
 
And today Fidelity's website allowed the transfer from my individual taxable account to my new HSA with no fuss exactly as I'd originally hoped. I assume my problem doing this two days ago was just some initial glitch with Fido's HSA rollout.

I would almost suspect I'd just done something incorrectly if I hadn't verified the problem with my Fidelity rep. I guess I'll give him the good news that we were both wrong when he gets back in on Monday.
 
stepford said:
And today Fidelity's website allowed the transfer from my individual taxable account to my new HSA with no fuss exactly as I'd originally hoped. I assume my problem doing this two days ago was just some initial glitch with Fido's HSA rollout.

I would almost suspect I'd just done something incorrectly if I hadn't verified the problem with my Fidelity rep. I guess I'll give him the good news that we were both wrong when he gets back in on Monday.
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Just to be clear:

This transfer is identified as a contribution, right?

Such things really matter for taxes.
 
audreyh1 said:
Just to be clear:

This transfer is identified as a contribution, right?

Such things really matter for taxes.
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Well, it only explicitly called it a transfer, but in the transfer window that opened up when I identified the HSA as the target account it listed the annual HSA contribution limits for 2018 and 2019. This strongly implied to me that the transfer was, in fact, a contribution, but I guess I'll find out in due course.
 
MooreBonds said:
Can you please confirm when the securities are transferred in to Fidelity that you can truly do an in-kind transfer? I also have an HSA Bank/TD Ameritrade investment account set-up for my HSA with a boatload of preferreds/BDCs, and would like to avoid the annual $60 fees from HSA Bank.
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Wife's account has transferred in kind. Just held some SPY. fractional shares sold and cash moved with the other cash in the account. Still waiting for mine, but it should work the same way.
 
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Oooohhh this could be tempting

Would prefer Schwab but Fido is still better than the big insurance co plan I have.
 
Fidelity called me this afternoon. Seems they cannot finalize the transfer from my TD account (HSA Bank) to my new Fido HSA, as HSA Bank said no.



I chatted with HSA Bank for an interesting 42 minutes. There was some confusion and obfuscation, but the rep eventually said 1) the funds must be in HSA Bank, not TD, 2) the process may take 4-6 weeks, 3) they "strongly recommend" I print, sign and physically mail the transfer docs. My impression is they are deliberately making this as complicated as possible. So, this afternoon I'm transferring the funds from TD back to HSA Bank, and then I'll once again initiate the transfer from Fidelity.
 
MichaelB said:
Fidelity called me this afternoon. Seems they cannot finalize the transfer from my TD account (HSA Bank) to my new Fido HSA, as HSA Bank said no.

I chatted with HSA Bank for an interesting 42 minutes. There was some confusion and obfuscation, but the rep eventually said 1) the funds must be in HSA Bank, not TD, 2) the process may take 4-6 weeks, 3) they "strongly recommend" I print, sign and physically mail the transfer docs. My impression is they are deliberately making this as complicated as possible. So, this afternoon I'm transferring the funds from TD back to HSA Bank, and then I'll once again initiate the transfer from Fidelity.
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As a result of the way all of these HSAs have their relationship with TD (seems that most of them offering brokerage are with TD), this does not seem surprising. TD is not your HSA administrator and aren't the ones involved with the HSA side of things. Consider if you needed the money for HSA expenses - you'd need to transfer the money out of TD back to the HSA account and then withdraw from there. So, in my mind, it seems reasonable that the transfer has to be done from HSA Bank.

Now, 4-6 weeks seems a bit ridiculous to get it done. I don't think anyone would disagree on that.

My folks over at Elements called today having received my paperwork to withdraw the funds and close our HSAs. They said I should initiate it from Fidelity's side. Based on their paper instructions, it appeared that just having them send me a check with the proceeds and then handing over to Fidelity as a rollover would be the fastest/easiest way. The rep said that to be sure the IRS transfer coding gets done properly it's easier/safer to let Fidelity handle it - she said she's done it many times with them. So, after I got off the phone, I initiated the transfer from within the new Fidelity HSA accounts, printed out the paperwork and ran over to the local office to give it to them. It estimates 9 business days to complete. We'll see.
 
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There have been reports on Bogleheads that transfers are happening directly from TDA to Fidelity. This is provided the HSA administrator agrees. As of now, Lively is known to allow this.
 
I was able to convert my Vanguard investments at HSA Administrators to cash, but I have no estimate of when it gets moved to Fidelity. Did I mention that I will be so glad to be rid of HSA Administrators?
 
travelover said:
I was able to convert my Vanguard investments at HSA Administrators to cash, but I have no estimate of when it gets moved to Fidelity. Did I mention that I will be so glad to be rid of HSA Administrators?
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Same here.

Although I decided to finish my contributions for this tax year, and make the transfer to Fidelity in Jan and do next years contributions there.
 
Checked on status this morning for both my and DW's HSAs. Last week we had a glitch because the securities had not been sold and they could not transfer Admiral shares in-kind. Now, the securities have been sold and the sending HSAs are all cash and Fidelity has resubmitted the paperwork to HealthSavings Administrators.

Now the wait begins.
 

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I have a HSA through my employer, and also a personal HSA I've contributed to for over a decade. The personal HSA is currently at HSA Administrators.

Employer recently changed providers from UMB Bank to Optum. UMB charged an asset based fee on investments (as does HSA Administrators). I tried to figure out the fees at Optum, and their website borked. Cow*rker told me we had been mailed a fee schedule, and sure enough, I had gotten one a few weeks back. Looks like no asset based fees on investments, and they have some attractive funds. $1/month maintenance fee, which I have to pay anyway to receive my employer's contribution. Tried to transfer the old employer provided UMB account to Optum, and the funds are out of the UMB account, but haven't yet appeared in the Optum account, plus I couldn't log in to the Optum account for a while.

I'm planning to move my personal HSA from HSA Administrators to Optum to consolidate accounts and reduce costs, so I converted the HSA Administrators fund to cash and made a trade in a tax-advantaged account to offset the conversion to cash--I'd suggest the same for anyone who can't make an in-kind transfer and is concerned about market volatility.

I hope this Fidelity thing opens the door for Vanguard to offer HSAs. It would be nice to have as much as possible under one roof.
 
Optum HSA website stinks

Navigation around the Optum Bank website is painful.

Trying to look up Investment options & the performance is even worse. I finally put them into a spreadsheet & used Google Finance formulas to get the data.

The monthly statement looks like it was done on a typewriter.

Yes, I'm annoyed.
 
pb4uski said:
Checked on status this morning for both my and DW's HSAs. Last week we had a glitch because the securities had not been sold and they could not transfer Admiral shares in-kind. Now, the securities have been sold and the sending HSAs are all cash and Fidelity has resubmitted the paperwork to HealthSavings Administrators.

Now the wait begins.
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Just noticed that the request has an estimated completion date of 01/07/2019!!! :mad:
 
pb4uski said:
Just noticed that the request has an estimated completion date of 01/07/2019!!! :mad:
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I was told that a month or more was normal when I moved my money to SelectAccount (now Further). http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/hsa-transfer-delays-normal-91331.html

What's frustrating me now is that I mailed my form last Wednesday, the 21st, handing it to the postman at my delivery kiosk, so I know it got out that day. Fidelity is still reporting that the paperwork has not been received. Yeah, Thanksgiving, and holiday mail, and it usually takes my mail an extra day to get out of my podunk PO, but it should be there by now. Maybe the mail is extra slow, or maybe Fidelity's mail room is. They say 17 days from there, but it sounds like they are backed up. That's time out of the market, probably eating up the 0 fee savings for my lifetime. It was looking like no big deal until yesterday's recovery.
 
Ah, a lot can happen between now and then. I guess if time out of the market really bothered me I could buy stock in my IRA equal to what I cashed out in the HSAs and then sell it later once I bought stock in my HSAs.

Perhaps I should be more worried about that time out of the market thing, but I'm really not.
 
pb4uski said:
Just noticed that the request has an estimated completion date of 01/07/2019!!! :mad:
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Interesting/surprising. I started my transfer at a similar time and have a much shorter completion estimate, The transfer tracker shows:

Estimated Completion Date: 12/14/18
11/27/18 Fidelity has finished processing your transfer request, and has sent it to Renasant Bank for review.
11/27/18 Your paperwork has been received, and is now being processed by Fidelity.
11/16/18 Printed Online : View your transfer request (PDF) Opens new window.
11/16/18 Started Online

I mailed in the paper request on the 17th. It took a long time to be processed so I suspect the receiving mail room is swamped.
 
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I submitted a request to transfer from TDA/Lively to Fidelity on 11/27. On that afternoon, Fidelity said it had sent out the transfer request to TDA for processing. On 11/28, the list of assets for transfer appeared on Fidelity for review. My estimated completion date is 12/4 (one calendar week).

I believe transfers which can be submitted electronically goes a lot faster.
 
Yeah, I suspect things have become backlogged.

The other HSA account companies must be freaking out about this!
 
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