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Love them or hate them, it’s hard to see health savings accounts losing traction anytime soon. Used with high-deductible health care plans, the accounts are touted as a way to put downward pressure on health care costs. Though HSAs are the only triple tax-advantaged vehicle in the tax code — allowing for pretax contributions, tax-free compounding and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses — few HSA owners fund the accounts to the maximum. Critics say the high-deductible health care plan/HSA combination is a good fit for the “healthy and wealthy” but is apt to be less advantageous for lower-income workers. Even wealthy consumers may avoid taking full advantage of their HSAs because the one their employer chose simply isn’t very compelling. Here’s a closer look at how to know if an HSA is subpar, and ways to get around it if it is. HSAs appear to have it all over other tax-advantaged savings vehicles, especially for investors who know they will have some out-of-pocket health care expenses. Yet HSA expenses and shortcomings on the investment front can erode the accounts’ prodigious tax benefits. That’s particularly true for smaller HSA investors: Not only do flat dollar-based account-maintenance fees — say, $45 per year — hit smaller HSA investors harder than ones with larger balances, but interest rates for smaller investors’ health savings accounts may also be lower. Thus, it’s valuable to conduct due diligence. Assess the following: Setup fees: A one-time fee imposed at the time of the health savings account setup; it may be covered by your employer. Account-maintenance fees: These fees are for maintaining your account at a bank or credit union; they can be levied on a monthly or annual basis. They may be covered by the employer, and HSA investors with larger balances may be able to circumvent them. Transaction fees: These fees may be levied each time an individual pays for services using the health savings account. Interest rate on savings accounts: Many HSAs offer lower interest rates on smaller balances than they do for larger ones; that, combined with the fact that account-maintenance fees are apt to hit smaller HSA savers harder than larger ones, argues for building and maintaining critical mass in your HSA. Investment choices: Assess the investment lineup on offer to make sure it aligns with your investment philosophy. Many HSA investment lineups tilt heavily toward low-cost index funds, but others feature primarily actively managed funds, often with higher expenses. If you’ve found your employer-provided HSA lacking, you have three options. Contribute to an HSA on your own. As long as you’re enrolled in a high-deductible health care plan, you are technically free to pick another HSA rather than steering contributions into an employer-selected one. You could then deduct your HSA contributions on your tax return. However, that’s more cumbersome and requires more discipline than steering a portion of your paycheck directly into the “captive” HSA. Additionally, HSA contributions made under a salary reduction arrangement in a section 125 cafeteria plan are not subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes, whereas those taxes will come out of your paycheck even if you ultimately divert those dollars to your own HSA. For those reasons, forgoing payroll deductions for an HSA is usually not the best option. Transfer the money from your employer-provided HSA into another one. After your HSA contribution is deducted from your paycheck and sent to your employer-provided HSA, you can periodically transfer all or a portion of that balance to an external HSA of your choosing. There are no tax consequences on HSA transfers, and you can conduct multiple transfers per year. The employee can contribute enough to the savings account to cover anticipated out-of-pocket health care costs but steer any excess funds into an HSA with better investment options. Roll over money from your employer-provided HSA into another one. You contribute to your employer-provided HSA via payroll deduction, then roll over the money to an HSA provider of your choice. This strategy is similar to Option 2 but there are two key differences. The first is that in contrast to a transfer, where the two trustees handle the funds and leave you out of it, a rollover means you get a check for your balance. You must deposit that money into another HSA within 60 days or it counts as an early withdrawal and a 20% penalty will apply if you’re not yet 65 or if you don’t have receipts to support medical expenses equal to the amount of your withdrawal. Another key difference is that multiple transfers are permitted between HSAs, but you’re only allowed one HSA rollover per 12-month period. For more personal finance content, visit morningstar.com . Get local news delivered to your inbox!