LASIK: A Holiday gift to yourself!
It’s that time of year again. We just passed Halloween but Christmass decorations are already up all over the mall! We haven’t even made it to Thanksgiving!
Maybe you should be more pro-active like those little elves that hang the Christmas lights so early. Give yourself the gift you know you need more than anything else. Vision. Stop messing with those contacts or glasses every day. Think about the options you have and come in from a free, complimentary LASIK evaluation with the first doctor in the United States to ever do LASIK, Dr. Stephen Slade!
One of the major advantages of having an FSA is the great tax break that it gives the account holder. Usually FSA payments are withdrawn directly from your paycheck, but they are withdrawn before taxes are taken out. This allows the clever investor that you are to pay into your flexible spending account (FSA) with your pre-tax salary, reducing the cost of that payment and lowering the amount of taxes you pay overall.
Usually September and October are the months in which companies that offer flex plans will notify their employees of the need for enrollment in their flex plans. What this means is that YOU (as the employee) need to think about how much money you want to put into that account during this time.
You don’t want to allocate too much money to the account if you don’t think you will use it all in the upcoming year. Why? Because if you don’t use it, you will lose it. This brings us to the major disadvantage of FSA’s: unlike your cell phone minutes, you cannot roll an FSA over. As annoying as this sounds, it can actually be a benefit to you. Bear with me, I know this sounds crazy…
Instead of sitting around waiting to get sick with the flu (or something more interesting), you now have an excuse to take a proactive approach to your health. Around the end of the coverage cycle, you may have X dollars left in your FSA that is unspent. It is at this time of year that you (a shrewd investor) may want to look at making expensive health care decisions. So besides shoving your garage full of cough syrup and thermometers, you may want to research the elective procedures that are available and use your well-earned FSA money there.
I will be the first to admit that we do not give our eye health the attention it deserves. Unless we wake up with pink eye, or notice we can’t see out of our glasses or contact lenses, we do not usually call our eye doctors.
When you have been wearing glasses or contact lenses for what feels like your whole life, you do not realize the many tasks that come along with your eyes and how much of an inconvenience these tasks really are. We deal with these tasks for so long, it has become like second nature. Not until you can imagine what life would be like AFTER having LASIK surgery do you realize how bothersome these tasks really are.
Let me paint a BEFORE picture: when you go on vacation you have to worry about packing contact lens solution and whether it is under the liquid limit for your carry on bag, packing extra contact lenses, packing a clean contact lens case, and packing a pair of glasses. When not on vacation you worry about your glasses fogging up while running or the ever-so-famous waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to see. Who wants to fall down the stairs when they need a drink of water at 3 a.m.?
Many people already use their FSA’s for laser eye surgeries such as LASIK or PRK. An account holder that deals daily with vision problems should definitely think about getting refractive surgery. I mean, let’s think about this…what is the first thing we use when we wake up in the morning. Our eyes!
Not only do the results from LASIK last for years (possibly a lifetime), but the savings on eyeglasses and contact lenses in the upcoming coverage cycles can allow your next pile of FSA dollars to go towards other things that can improve your health. Give us a call at
today to schedule a free screening that will determine if you are a LASIK candidate. Use your flex dollars to get rid of those glasses or contact lenses!
Take care of your health by starting with your vision!
