Longer pole …
The IRS just released the news that HSA contribution limits will increase by a whopping $200/$450 (single/family respectively) in a single year. That’s a significant jump over the $50/$100 increases we’ve seen in the last few years.
The 2023 limits are $3,850 (self-only) and $7,750 (family).
As welcome as this news is, the increased savings limit won’t cover the increased cost-sharing limits on your high deductible health plan [HDHP].
… even bigger hole
In order to qualify to make an annual HSA contribution you must be enrolled in a qualifying HDHP. In fact, the point of an HDHP is for individuals to shoulder more of the upfront costs and risks of health care. In return, those same individuals can make tax-advantaged contributions to savings accounts. Those savings can then be used to cover approved medical expenses, if necessary.
Therefore the HSA savings limits and the HDHP cost-sharing limits are directly related — at least in terms of your budget and wallet.
So what’s the bottom line:
- if you’re the only person covered under your health insurance plan, you can save an additional $200 in 2023 — but your MOOP will likely increase up to $450;
- if you have a family plan, your savings bump is $450 — but your MOOP bump is potentially $900.
Ouch.
Is there a more noble intellectual exercise than regularly confirming that the core concepts — the pillars truths on which we’ve built the foundation of our knowledge and understanding — are, indeed, true and have withheld the tests of time? Noble it may be but it’s a lot of work to dig out and replace outdated concepts — even when we didn’t fully accept them.
Richard Vague writes that rapid growth in money supply, rapid growth in government debt, and declining interest rates — all common Inflation-Causing Boogymen — do not cause inflation. Does that challenge your foundational understanding of national debt and economics?
Every once in a while I read an article that leaves me speechless. This is one such article. [Excuse me while I go weep in a corner.]
We bought a fixer-upper. I was a first-time home-owner. I honestly had no realistic idea of what I was getting myself into. I don’t have any major regrets about the house or the projects we’ve done but homeownership is, on the whole, a lot of more work and a lot more expensive than I’d imagined it would be.
I see it every single day in my work – those earning top salaries deal with the same financial wellness demons as their lower-wage-earning counterparts. Lifestyle inflation, destructive money scripts, and other self-sabotaging behaviors and habits are issues that cross all gender, race, educational, and economic lines.
In the US, women are paid less than men. Black women are paid less than their white counterparts. And LGBTQ women are paid less than the cis-gendered population. At the bottom of this steaming pile of vile, systemic discrimination and bias and hate are transgender people who, even in a tight employment market, face a 15% unemployment rate. According to this article, “in most states you can still be fired for being LGBTQ.”
No amount of budgeting and financial literacy will fix the systemic, structural inequities present in our financial system. That doesn’t mean we, as individuals, should give up, not budget, not learn or care… we need to work to effect change on both a macro and a micro level.
I learned early in life that being seen as intelligent and competent had much more to do with one’s gender, skin color, and personality than actual intelligence or demonstrated level of skill. The study discussed in this article is just verifying what most of us already know: classism and elitism are alive and well in America.
Surprise, surprise! It’s not the much touted tropes of financial indiscretion keeping millennials out of the housing market, it’s structural and systemic policies coming back to bite a generation that had no hand in the policy-making.
This is not the time nor the place to re-litigate my arguments in favor of higher education. I’ll let the arguments and supporting data in this article do the work for me.