Screwed by our FSA

Hey guess what? Did you know that if you lose your job you also lose all the money you've saved in your FSA account for medical expenses?

And, to make matters worse, we never even activated our card that allows you to pay bills. The reason is stupid, really. I called the 1-800 number on the card and sat there forever, listening to some horribly long frickin' message about the rights and responsibilities of the cardholder. Seriously, it was painful. It was so long that I sat there fiddling around with the little sticker that was plastered onto the card. I peeled it off, rolled it into a little ball. And then it fell somewhere. I don't know where. All I know is that when I got to the point where you enter in the last four digits of the social security number, I remembered Ed's number incorrectly.

And after I spoke to Ed and got the correct number, I couldn't find that stupid little sticker with the 1-800 number to activate the card. AND there was no number on the card to call.

Can you imagine anything more irritating? We finally got around to googling ADP to get a number. Ed called in and some lady said something like she couldn't find the information and that he needed to call back on such and such day and talk to so and so. So when he called in a few days later, he was told that the account was frozen due to him being laid off.

And the HR person at Ed's company informed us that the money is locked in the employer account until the end of the year. At that time, if they have extra money in the account, they have the option of giving it back. But, if the account is negative, they can keep it.

So we saved up $500 so far this year and it looks like we can just going to lose it. And, from doing research on the internet, it looks like this is the way the accounts were set up--intentionally.

What a racket.