After you learn how beneficial it can be to save, create an emergency fund, and invest money through your HSA, you might get excited about figuring out how to contribute more money. Remember, every dollar that goes into the HSA is a dollar you’re not paying taxes on!

Meet your goals for HSA contributions

Your goal might be to max out your HSA each year. Or it might be a lower amount, and that’s okay. Either way, decide how much you want to contribute each year (we covered this in a previous lesson!) and make a plan for doing so.

Here are some tips on meeting your contribution goals for your HSA:

• Automate recurring contributions to your account. Making ongoing contributions will help ensure you don’t accidentally spend your dollars before they hit the HSA. If you are lucky enough to find yourself with extra income, you can increase your contributions whenever you want. And if you hit a rough spot and want to lower how much you are contributing, that is also an option for you.

• Make pre-tax contributions through your employer if you can. If your employer offers an HSA contribution, make sure you’re getting all of it.

• If you get any tax refunds or bonuses, direct some (or all) of it to your HSA. You can make a one-time contribution anytime you have extra money, on top of your regular contributions.

• You can fund your HSA for a prior year up to the tax filing deadline, so you have a few extra months to max out your yearly contributions.

Fund more to your HSA by lowering expenses

Maybe you are also trying to increase how much you put into your HSA by reducing spending. Here are a few points you might not have considered yet when it comes to redirecting more funds to your HSA:

• Review monthly expenses and find areas you can cut, or cut back. For example, you might be able to cancel unused subscriptions or plans, or change to a lower tier. If you haven’t set up a budget before, it might be a good time to go through that exercise of identifying where your money is going and how you might be able to regularly spend less.

• Try to renegotiate bills like your cable, internet, and phone.

• Sign up for new promotional offers to take advantage of discounted services.

• Prior to paying for HSA-eligible expenses, make sure you shop around, use discounts and coupons, and sign up for the HSA Perks Rewards Program to maximize your dollars through HSA Store.

Let your HSA savings grow

If you don’t need to use your HSA funds, you can let your money grow in your account. For health-related expenses, consider paying with your normal credit card and delaying reimbursement from your HSA if you can — and letting your HSA funds grow tax-free for a longer period of time. Again, you can always reimburse yourself later if you need to (and the HSA Store Expense Dashboard makes it easy for you to keep track).