It seems I'm moving in a couple months' time. I'm going to grab the rollover paperwork from my plan manager soon, anyone have any experience with this? how smooth of a process is it? The current one is citistreet, the new one will be managed by vanguard. Anyway, pointers from anyone who's done this before would be much appreciated if the process is tedious ... Also, I've already received my entire flex account balance for this year. When changing jobs would I need to refund the balance minus my contributions to the plan manager, or is it possible to arrange for the flex acct mgr at the new company to take care of it with the old company's plan mgr? thanks in advance...
FSA, don't know. My 401k rollover was dead easy - I had to repay the last bits of a few loans, and then I simply requested a full disbursement for rollover - they have to send the check directly to you, but it's marked "for rollover". Had to fax in a form to get that released. The new 401k manager simply took it as a deposit, of type rollover. My current manager (Fidelity) keeps current-job deposits separate from rollover deposits (not sure if that's SOP or not), but it took about four days, and the $$'s showed up in the portfolio. I have to invest them separately (again, separate sources), but that's about it. Two phone calls, once faxed form, one mailed form+check.
The FSA surplus you received is yours to keep. That is the law and you cannot pay it back. The FSA is required to function like insurance, so there have to be winners (you) and losers (the employer). Don't cry for them though, there are always forfeitures they take from other participants to soften the blow.
You definitely don't have to repay the flex spending. I had Lasik in April of 05 and got married in May of 05. I changed my benefits when I got married and changed my flex spending contribution to zero. I essentially paid 40% (pretax) of the costs of the surgery out of pocket. My wife put in her 2 weeks notice and had Lasik last week. So her surgery will cost us ~$150 (pretax).
