Hellobee Boards

@littlejoy: I guess it's always worth it, since it comes out of your paycheck before taxes, so it makes your income lower. For me, it's such a small drop in the bucket for yearly child care, but it's better than nothing.

Generally you just sign up and the amount is taken from your paycheck--then after you pay daycare, you apply for reimbursements from your FSA

So easy to use. I just file my monthly invoices with the managing company. Then I get my month deposited into my bank account.

I get paid every other Friday, so every other Monday I would get my money back that came out of my check.

I actually run these programs for my company, and they're so beneficial.

What sort of questions do you have? If you want, PM me and I can send you my email address, or I can answer any questions on here too!

We have the Dependent Care FSA and like others have said, it's super easy to use. I contribute the maximum of $5,000 a year (pitiful compared to actual daycare costs, but something is better than nothing) and it works out to just under $200 from each check if you're paid bi-weekly. I usually just leave it in there until the end of the year and then take out the full $5k and use that for vacation or home improvement or whatever.

I'm hoping to finally take advantage of this benefit in 2016. Every year it's offered and I have to really consider if I will be pregnant, but I declined 2015 because I should ( ) give birth in Oct and be back at work in December. So 2016 should hopefully be the year I can use this benefit. I have heard from co-workers that you have to pay for the daycare costs yourself and then apply for reimbursement. Also, I believe the daycare has to have a tax ID, so it can't be an in-home undocumented (?) daycare. That's what my coworker told me 2 years ago... when I asked him.

The way ours works is I have to fill out a form and have our daycare sign it and then submit it to HR and they will add that requested amount to my paycheck the next week (I get paid weekly.) We can only take out the amount of which we have put in (with our medical we can take it out before we actually have contributed it for the year.)

It lowers my income enough and our accountant says it's better than the other options/right offs. We usually only take it out when we need it (every couple months we take out the lump sum) but I know people who turn in the forms weekly so they aren't missing out on that on their paycheck. Just depends on what you want to do.

We use it. The only thing that is hard for us is that we basically pay for childcare twice each month - it comes out of my paycheck, then we have to pay preschool - then we are reimbursed for what came out of my check. It can make the beginning of the month a little rough, but it always works out.