Anyone with a flexible spending account, or FSA, knows that if they don’t use what’s in their accounts before the annual deadline, they lose it. But too many employees forget or can’t remember their deadline, and that can cause them to lose out on money they’ve already set aside.
Unless an employer offers a deadline extension (typically to March 15), most FSA users must use all their funds by December 31. In fact, the FSA Store, a shopping platform specifically for FSA-eligible products, estimates that nearly 70% of FSA users have the earlier deadline, and consumers forfeit $3 billion in unused funds each year.
