catch up HSA contribution for persons over 55

[haapai]

I'll be turning 55 in late December 2023.  Can I contribute the extra $1000 this year?  Can I do it with each paycheck i.e. before I actually turn 55 or do I have to wait until my birthday? 

[minnesotapaintlady]

You're eligible to contribute to the catch-up at any time in the year you turn 55.  Payroll should have let you set it up starting in January.

[bookkeeper]

This is one of the only tax breaks we get as retirees not yet on Medicare.  We contribute the max each year.

[bookkeeper]

You can even wait to figure your tax liability and then still have time to contribute until tax day in April.

[bean29]

JIC you are not already aware, you can change your HSA election at the beginning of every Month.  You have to change your election Prospectively going forward.  In other words you take you new election amount, deduct what you have already contributed and divide by the number of Months remaining in the year.  

[haapai]

Somehow, either the HR programing didn't catch it or I saw it and didn't believe that I was eligible to make the catch-up contribution.  Either way, it's getting boosted as soon as I can figure out which of many bits of HR/payroll programming is the right one to use and I get through the multi-step verification process. 

Knocking down my 401(k) contributions a smidge in order to afford the much better goodie might involve a completely separate program and verification process.  I'm not looking forward to this much.  I'm trying to tell myself that it is gobs better than what I faced when I first started working (when changing any allocation took weeks or months) but I am still annoyed. 

[teen persuasion]

Any chance there's a person in HR who can set it up for you correctly?

DH would bring home paper forms from his last employer, I'd fill them out, he'd take them back to HR, who would set things up. Once I luckily caught it immediately when his contributions hit the max and shut off instead of continuing thru the 50+ catch-up. I realized they must use the two-separate buckets method, and I must have missed the catch-up contribution section, so asked DH to bring home paperwork again. Nope, I missed nothing, it wasn't even on there. When DH went to HR to explain the issue, it became clear that most never got anywhere near the max, so the paper didn't bother to address it. But, oh, there was *one* other person who was in the same boat maxing it out - they just met with her in person to work out the details specially.

So we got contributions restarted in time and HR now knew DH was a special case.

Next open enrollment, HR proudly showed DH how they'd updated the papers to properly address both buckets so he could fully max it out. They were confused when he declined filling out the catch-up contribution form - because I'd finally gotten my own retirement account and we shifted to filling mine instead, reducing his.