If you have a flexible spending account through work, there is a decent chance you are sitting on a few hundred dollars that will evaporate at midnight on December 31.
Unlike a health savings account, which lets balances grow year after year, a healthcare FSA is a use-it-or-lose-it arrangement.
Miss the deadline and the money simply goes back to your employer.
The rules are stricter than most people assume.
Plan years typically end on December 31, and while some employers offer a grace period of up to 2.5 months or let you carry over a limited amount, many offer neither.
The 2025 carryover cap sits at $660, and a plan can choose the grace period or the carryover, but never both.
If yours has no such feature, anything left after the final bell is gone.
The good news is that eligible spending is broader than the pharmacy aisle.
Bandages, contact lens solution, thermometers, blood pressure monitors, and most over-the-counter medications qualify without a prescription.
So do eyeglasses, dental work, copays, and even some sunscreen if it meets the SPF threshold.
You can also book appointments before the deadline and pay for services that happen in the new year, as long as the care is scheduled during your plan year.
Check with your administrator before assuming that works.
A receipt dated January 2 does not count toward a December 31 deadline, even if you ordered the item in December.
Swipe your FSA card at checkout or submit the claim before the cutoff, or you may be filing an appeal instead of a reimbursement.
Dependent care accounts follow similar logic, though the rules differ.
If you set aside money for daycare, after-school programs, or summer camp, those funds also tend to expire.
Summer camp counts even though the expense lands months before the deadline.
The average household forfeits somewhere in the low hundreds of dollars each year, and that money is not refunded, credited, or rolled into next year's account.
One more wrinkle: your employer controls the plan document, not the IRS alone.
That means two coworkers at different companies can have identical salaries and completely different forfeiture rules.
Read your summary plan description, not a blog, and call your benefits line if anything is unclear.
Log into your account this week, check the balance, and compare it against the deadline and any grace period.
Then spend deliberately: refill prescriptions, restock the medicine cabinet, schedule that eye exam, replace the kids' glasses.
Do not buy things you will never use just to zero out the balance.
Spending $200 to save $150 in forfeited funds is not a win, it is a different loss.
As a closing thought: this deadline is one of the few financial events you can control entirely.
Final Thoughts
Ten minutes of checking today beats a January spent realizing that money you earned is now funding someone else's budget instead of your own.