Podcast

What caught our attention this week?

• 4 Ways to Get Your Partner on Board with Money
• Twitter- look for the communities you serve

Discussion Topic

• All About HSAs (Health Savings Account)
• IRS Form 8889
• Lively
• HSA Bank

Quick Tip

• Adapt your cancellation policy to allow clients to send a substitute client in their place.

Sponsors

• Acuity Scheduling
• The Jojoba Company
• Yomassage

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by Acuity, our software of choice. Acuity Scheduling is your online assistant working 24/7 to fill your schedule. No more phone tag. Clients can quickly view your real-time availability and self-book their own appointments and even pay online and reschedule with a click. Handle all of your forms before the appointment so you can get right to doing the massage you do best. Look and act professional by offering convenient scheduling to your clients that matches your brand and your voice. Customer support is a delight, and Acuity’s style will help you relax and have fun running your business again. Check out the special 45-day free offer at massagebusinessblueprint.com/acuity.

Allissa Haines Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we help you attract more clients, make more money, and improve the quality of your life. My name is Allissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds I’m Michael Reynolds.

AH And we are here to talk about some stuff, I guess. This is what happens when we revamp the script, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say next.

MR You’re way more dynamic than I am. I kind of like it.

AH I’m trying. I had a lot of coffee. We’re recording on a Monday morning.

Michael, how’re you feeling?

MR Doing great. Got back from Disney a couple days ago, so my feet are still recovering, but it was a lot of fun. We had a blast. Yeah.

AH Excellent. I want to know what you’ve been reading, even though you haven’t been reading anything this past week because you were on vacation.

But what’re you up to? What have you been reading? What’s caught your attention this week?

MR So what caught my attention before we left, actually, was a video from YNAB, which is our — meaning yours and my — favorite budgeting tool. YNAB —

AH What does YNAB stand for, Michael?

MR I was about to tell you before you interrupted me.

AH Sorry.

MR [Laughing] It’s called You Need a Budget. So YNAB for short, but the app is called You Need a Budget. And it’s a web tool, a mobile app. And Allissa, you actually turned me on to YNAB. You’re the one that introduced me to it, so credit where credit is due. And I love it. I think it’s the best budgeting tool in the world. It’s like kind of a whole separate class, so I really love recommending YNAB to anybody who’d looking for a good budgeting tool. But this is not a commercial for YNAB. I will tell you why I’m interested in this particular video from YNAB. They put out a lot of really cool articles and videos about budgeting and about money. And this one I really love because — first of all, it’s called Four Ways to Get your Partner on Board with Money.

And the reason I like this video so much — the topic is just so universally relevant because when you’re talking about budgeting and personal finance and money management, one of the most prominent challenges that keeps rising to the surface for most people is how do I get my partner on board. Usually if there’s a — if you’re with a partner, one of you is like, hey, I want to do budgeting and get my money in order! And the other one often is like, oh, what? That sounds hard. And they don’t want to be on the same page. And so this video gives you some really good ways to — actually, four ways to help get your partner on board with money. So if you like, I can quickly bump through them.

AH Yes.

MR So the first one they recommend is create a separate fun-money budget. So a lot of people, when they first start budgeting together as a couple, they feel like, oh, well, I’m going to have to give up all my stuff, and I’m going to have to give up all my individuality and my independence and autonomy and bleh, and they get really concerned about that. And so YNAB — which I agree with — that they recommend creating separate fun-money budgets so each person has their own individual spending money that is theirs, that no one can touch or talk about or judge them on, and they can do whatever they want to with it. And so there’s different ways of doing this on a spectrum, but YNAB recommends doing it in some form to help people make sure they retain their independence.

Two, save up for something that’s important to your partner. When you’re trying to get your partner on board with money and budgeting, one good technique to kind of ease them into it is to make sure that you prioritize something that’s really important to them. Make sure that you’re saying, hey, you know what? We’re budgeting together, and it’s really important that we budget for something that is important to you, whether it’s something fun or something more lifestyle-focused. Whatever it is, prioritizing something that is important to your partner really helps them get on board.

Number three, it’s okay to make it easier on your partner by removing friction by doing most of the work. A lot of people think, well, if you’re budgeting as a couple, you have to both really equally do all the work. You know what? It’s okay to do most of the work and just kind of check in with your partner to make sure that they’re on board. Some people just don’t want to open up apps and tools and look at the numbers. They just don’t want to do it. And it’s okay. So if you’re the one that’s in that zone, go ahead and do most of the work. Just make sure you include them in the decision-making.

And then, the last point, number four, they made was have a regular budgeting date. And they recommend that on a regular basis sitting down together and communicating about the budget together on a regular basis. So those are the four tips from YNAB on how to get your partner on board with money. And I agree with all of them. I think they’re really great tips, and I think it’s a good kind of walkthrough of ways to get your partner on board if they’re not quite as enthusiastic about budgeting as you are. So that’s what I’ve been reading or rather, watching.

AH I got to say, Michael, I love these budgeting — I love this partner-budgeting tips, and as you were talking through it, I hadn’t watched this video yet, and I — turns out I’m doing some of these by default. Walt is not as into tight and budget management. I hate using even the word budget. I have really come to love the “cash flow” planning because “budget” sounds restrictive, whereas YNAB is really good about being flexible. Because I found if I put myself on too restrictive of a budget, I would just be — I would rebel and immediately spend too much money on something stupid. And the thing I really loved about You Need a Budget is that it’s a very flexible plan. But Walt does not like that. He’s really smart about how he handles his money, but as far as automatically saving all kinds of things, but he’s not as intentional about the daily and weekly kinds of expenditures that just kind of fly out of your pocket and out of your mind.

So I have by default, I guess, started to do these things. We have separate budgets anyway because of the way we manage our household. But I created a household fund for us that I contribute to that certain bills get paid out of. And I started saving up for some stuff that we wanted to do. And when it came time a couple weeks ago to actually talk about redoing the half bathroom in the house where I was like, you know, I think it’s going to cost this, this, and this. And he’s like, all right. And I was like, no, no, I have — he’s like, I’ll move some money around. And I went, no, no, no. I have the money saved for it already. I have the budget for the half bath saved out of the household fund that we’ve been working with. And he was like, oh. So he only had to buy the toilet and the sink, and I covered everything else.

It worked out really well. And I do the bulk of managing that joint account to remove friction from him. And we do have a regular budgeting date, sort of, every other weekend when we’re alone. When the kids go to their mom’s, we just talk about what’s coming up next with the money and what are the next big things that we’re saving for. So it makes me really proud that I did these by default without watching that resource.

MR Nice. Yeah.

AH Sorry. That was more banter-y than I wanted to get into. Well, anything else to say about that, Michael, before I move into mine?

MR [Laughing] Yeah. No, glad you liked it. What do you got?

AH All right. So here’s a thing that I’ve been reading, and it’s caught my attention. Twitter, which sounds silly, and I know a lot of people really smash on social media and particularly Twitter as being useless and rage tools and all that stuff. But I definitely found, like a year or so ago, that I was doing that “mindlessly addicted to social media” thing, and I was scanning Twitter and getting enraged by stuff. I consciously changed my Twitter, and I unfollowed almost everyone I was following. And I mindfully only followed people within a certain interest. And what I’m talking about is I started following actually autistic people because I got a kid on the spectrum. It’s a community that I serve a little bit now in my massage practice, not as much as I used to, but nonetheless.

And there’s a lot of autistic adults out there talking about being autistic from an adult point of view and what they dealt with as kids that was good and bad for their particular variety of autism. And I learned so much just by listening to this community of people. It’s helped me in my parenting, and it’s helped me in my work, and it’s helped me just in general in my humanity and advocacy for people with disabilities. And I recently expanded that community a little bit to follow more adults with ADHD for the same reasons. And also because of when — I found when I was learning more about productivity, I was running into a lot of resources for people with ADHD to manage their time management and stuff. And also there’s a huge connection with the autistic community, so I started following more adults with ADHD and adults with ADHD who create resources for other people with ADHD.

It has been so enlightening. And I removed from my Twitter — I don’t follow — I follow a few feminist authors and stuff, but outside of that, I don’t get a lot of news on my Twitter anymore. I’m reducing that. It’s been more lately because news is intense right now. But I want everyone to know that Twitter can be really great tool for learning from a community you wish to serve. So you can — if you’re already on Twitter, you’ll understand a little bit about hashtags. You can search for key words and search for hashtags and find people to follow. And when you see who these leaders — I follow a woman called — I don’t remember her name, but her Twitter handle and her website are called Black Girl, Lost Keys. And she writes a lot about what it’s like to be a woman and a black woman and have ADHD. And she creates tools for other people with ADHD.

I found her through following someone else, and it becomes really easy to find more people. Just be quiet and listen. Read the tweets. Read the blog posts attached. Read threads that are people’s experiences of learning how to drive when you have ADHD. Don’t respond except to say, thank you so much for sharing this information. Don’t argue. Don’t be contrary. Don’t talk over someone else’s experience. Just shut up and listen. Read from the community that you want to serve and learn more about. It’s really, really helpful.

Yeah, and that’s all I’m going to say. I’m actually going to dive next, I think, into — I’ve got a little bit of this going on already, but people with anxiety and how they’re supporting each other online and learn more about that. So that is what I’m reading and what I think you should be reading on social media. Specifically on Twitter is where I found that community.

MR That’s a good idea. I like it.

AH And that’s what I got. Michael, who’s our first sponsor today?

MR Our sponsor today is Acuity, our friends over at Acuity.

Sponsor message Yay, Acuity! They are our software of choice. Acuity Scheduling is your online assistant working 24/7 to fill your schedule. You don’t have to play phone tag. You can handle forms. You can look and sound professional with a scheduling screen that matches your own branding. Customer support is a delight. Acuity’s style will help you chill out and have fun running your business. I just love the part where I don’t have to answer the phone anymore. And you can get a special 45-day free offer when you sign up today. You can check it out at massagebusinessblueprint.com/acuity.

AH And Michael, what’s our big discussion topic today? You’re covering it, so I’m all excited.

MR Oh, man. Well, I’m going to — I hope our listeners don’t find this too boring, but we’re going to talk about HSAs, which is a health savings account. But I want you guys to stay with me because I think you will be interested in this despite the fact that it’s not a super shiny, exciting topic. Through the course of prepping for this episode — and even before because I have been researching it for a while — I’ve convinced myself that I want to switch to an HSA. So I’ve really gotten kind of excited about how cool HSAs are in the grand scheme of financial planning and health care. So with that, I do want to dive into HSAs today.

And I think we’re doing this because we’ve had some questions in the premium member community about HSAs, right?

AH Yes. We’ve gotten some questions about HSAs in the premium group a couple of times. My friend Jason and I have been talking about it a lot lately because he just started one. And in the women’s finance groups that I’m part of, it’s come up a lot in the past couple of weeks. Maybe I’m just noticing it more since it popped up in the premium community, but I’m super excited, and that’s why I’m paying attention.

MR All right. Cool. So let’s talk about HSAs. HSA, again, stands for Health Savings Account. So what is an HSA? An HSA is an account designed for medical expenses. It’s set aside for that purpose. Now, it has a lot of flexibility with it, but basically, the account is designed to save up some money that you use for medical expenses, health care expenses.

Now, what does that mean? Generally, an HSA can be used for the standard stuff you would expect: copays, doctor visits, dentist visits, things like that, kind of the standard stuff you would expect. But it’s pretty flexible. It can be used for a wide variety of things you may not even think of that could be used with an HSA. For example, hearing aids, psychological counseling, chiropractic services, condoms, breast pumps, eyeglasses, physical therapy, smoking cessation programs, things like that. This is obviously a very limited list, but there’s a wide variety of things that you can use an HSA for that are approved for HSA expenditures. And there are sites out there. You can just Google it, find sites that give you HSA-approved medical expenses. But it’s pretty flexible, so it gives you a lot of flexibility in choosing how you use the money for things that are general health care, wellness, medical expenses. It’s pretty flexible, which is nice.

So why is an HSA so cool from a tax standpoint? A lot of people call HSAs kind of a triple tax benefit account or a triple tax advantage account because it has three angles of tax advantage to it. One angle is an HSA is tax deductible. If you’re doing it through payroll through an employer, it comes out pre-tax, and it’s taken care of for you. But a lot of our audience is self-employed. You’re doing an HSA directly, perhaps, and maybe your health care, or your health insurance went through the exchange, so it is tax deductible. So when you contribute money to your HSA, it is tax deductible. Just to — like you were — if you were putting money into an IRA, a traditional IRA, it would be tax deductible.

Now, a caveat here, to make that it actually is tax deductible, you’ve got to file IRS Form 8889. So talk to your tax preparer about that. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Make sure that you’re filing that form with your taxes so that you do get that tax deduction when you’re filing your taxes. So number one tax benefit, it is tax deductible with you make those contributions to your HSA. Number two, it grows tax deferred. So just like a retirement account, it is tax deferred. So any growth gains, interest, dividends, anything within the account that you earn inside the account grows tax deferred. You’re not taxed as that money grows in the account, which is nice. So it’s just like an IRA, a traditional IRA or Roth IRA. The money is growing without being taxed as the account grows.

Number three. A third angle of tax benefit is withdrawals are tax free if they are for medical purposes. So when you withdraw that money, the gains are not taxed, you’re not paying any tax on the growth. It is completely tax free if you are using them for medical expenses. So —

AH I have a question.

MR Yes?

AH So you talked about how what kinds of standard medical expenses are generally eligible for HSA use. You can pay your doctor visit copays and stuff too?

MR Yes.

AH And the money — okay. That answers my question for now. Thanks.

MR Yeah. Yeah. So those are kind of the three tax benefits. It kind of acts like a traditional IRA. It’s tax deductible. It acts like any IRA, which grows tax deferred. And it kind of acts like a Roth IRA in that you can withdraw money tax free if it’s for medical. So it’s got the best of all these different worlds combined. It’s really kind of cool.

So what do you need to have an HSA? To have an HSA, you have to — I’m sorry, let me — my terminology needs to be very precise here because it’s important. To contribute to an HSA, you need to have an HSA-approved high-deductible health plan. The acronym is HDHP, for example. So if you see that acronym, HDHP, that means high-deductible health plan.

It can’t just be a health plan with high deductible. It has to actually be an HSA-approved high-deductible health plan. So you have to look for plans that are actually HSA-approved. You can only get HSA-compatible plans through an employer or through the exchange. So if you’re using something like a Christian healthcare ministry — or health share ministry, I’m sorry — or like some of the direct plans like through Kemper or some of the direct plans that you can get as an individual, those are not HSA-compatible. The HSA-compatible plans are only through the exchange or through an employer, so be aware of that.

You also can’t be enrolled in Medicare, and you can’t be a dependent on someone else’s tax return. So as long as those conditions are satisfied and you have an HSA-compatible high-deductible health plan, you can contribute to an HSA. Now, the caveat here is you can own an HSA anytime, but you can only contribute while you meet those requirements. So for example —

AH I have a question.

MR Yes?

AH So what is considered a high-deductible health plan? So ballpark, is that a plan with a deductible of $5,000 or a plan with a deductible of $10,000? Or does it vary — you just need to get one of these approved plans, health insurance plans?

MR Yeah. Generally, I think — you know what? I don’t have don’t have the numbers in front of me. I should’ve included that in my notes. I don’t know the exact numbers. I think it’s like in the $2,000 range, give or take. So it’s not a massive deductible, but it’s high enough that it’s considered high-deductible.

AH Okay. All right. Thank you. Got it.

MR Yeah. It’s a good question. I don’t have the exact numbers so I’ll have to Google that one.

Again, you can own — so example, if you owned versus contribute. Let’s say you have a high-deductible HSA-approved health plan this year. You can contribute. You can max it out. We’ll get that to a minute, but you can max it out. You can contribute. And then next year, you switch to a plan that is not HSA-approved. Maybe it’s a standard PPO, no high deductible, no HSA-approved, compatible plans. You switch the plan. You can keep your HSA and keep the money in it. You just can’t contribute. And then the following year, let’s say you switched to an HSA-compatible plan. You can then start contributing again and add to what’s already there. You don’t lose it like a flexible spending account. You keep the money there. It is your money. It stays there indefinitely.

So that’s what’s really nice about an HSA is you can own the HSA and own the money inside of it any time you want to, but you only make contributions when you are with an HSA-approved plan at that time. So that’s pretty nice. It’s not a “use it or lose it” situation like flexible spending accounts. It’s your money to keep. All right.

So what are the limits of an HSA? The annual limits as of 2020 right now are $3,550 if you’re single, and the $7,100 family maximum. So in 2020, those are the annual limits, $3,550 for single, $7,100 for family. You also get a $1,000 catch-up contribution allowance after age 55. So if you’re over 55, add a $1,000 to each of those annual limits, and that’s your additional contribution you can make. It’s called a catch-up contribution.

So caveat on that, a lot of people say, well, what if you exceed those limits? What happens? So if you exceed those limits, you might be liable to pay what’s called a six percent excise fee on the excess contribution. So you may be penalized if you exceed that. So just be aware of that.

Here’s something else that’s cool about an HSA. If you are older than age — after age 65, you can use HSA funds for anything you want to, not just medical expenses. Now, if you use them for non-medical expenses after age 65, you are taxed at your ordinary tax rate, which is pretty normal for a retirement account anyway. A traditional IRA would function the same way. With an IRA, you would put money in pre-tax or tax-deductible, and then when you withdraw it at retirement, in theory, after age 65, you’re taxed at your normal tax rate. HSA functions the same way. So basically, it kind of converts to acting just like a traditional IRA after age 65. However, even after age 65, if you still use those funds for medical expenses, they are still tax free. So it’s really nice and flexible. You can use it for a supplement to your general retirement accounts, or you can still use it for a medical expense account like it was intended. And that — again, that’s after age 65.

So again, I’ve talked about this before, but I want to reiterate this. With an HSA, funds roll over and belong to you forever. After your death, any funds remaining in your HSA are payable to the beneficiary in your account, so you don’t lose it on death. You can pass those funds on to your beneficiaries, which is really nice. Again, I want to stress that these funds are yours to keep. It’s just like putting it into a bank account, an IRA, a retirement account. This is your money. You keep it. You can pass it along on your death as well.

AH I have a question.

MR Yes?

AH The money in the HSA, that can be used to pay for some of your dependent’s health expenses as well?

MR Yes.

AH Okay. And does that apply — and you might not have the answer to this. Like, if you have an adult child who’s a dependent because of disability reasons, would that be able to be — would those funds be able to be used for an adult child dependent too?

MR That’s a good question. I do not know the answer to that.

AH Interesting. All right. So this is like — in theory, this could be a — if you’re eligible, this could be a good way to save for health expenses in your retirement, tax free.

MR Yes. Exactly.

AH Got it.

MR That’s exactly how it’s used by a lot of people, yeah. Yeah, so funds inside the HSA can also be invested. You can just put it in your standard cash account or money market account. But if you want to, you can put them into mutual funds or ETFs or index funds or whatever you want. A lot of people, they will put it into — if they have a long-time horizon, their health care expenses are expected to be pretty low early on, they might have a ten-year plus horizon and put it into mutual funds. Some people might make it more conservative, put it into maybe more conservative funds or maybe money market or a mixture of those.

But anyway, the point is, you can invest your money just like you would into an IRA. So you can choose what you’re investing your money in inside of that HSA, which is nice. Again, a lot of people see an HSA as a supplement to other retirement accounts. It is designed for health care expenses, but the flexibility and the tax advantage makes it really flexible. So if you have an HSA and you have medical expenses that come up and you’re using it as you go for medical expenses, you’re using it as intended. And that’s great. However, if you plan to contribute to your HSA — you make it part of your savings plan and you don’t use much of it — maybe you’re fortunate enough not to have many health issues or medical expenses along the way — then it kind of converts by default to just a supplemental retirement account because then it continues growing tax free — I’m sorry, tax deferred. And then, after age 65, it can be used for any expense you want it to. So it kind of converts itself to a dual-purpose, medical or general, retirement account. So it’s really nice. It’s really flexible.

So how do you open an HSA? Well, there’s various ways. If you’re going through an employer, which is probably the minority of our listeners — but if you’re going through an employer — maybe your spouse or your partner is through an employer — a lot of times HSAs are just kind of bundled with that HSA-approved plan. So if you’re choosing an HSA-compatible health plan through the employer, they will often just bundle and say, hey, this bank has your HSA; we’ve opened it for you. The money goes in there when you contribute pre-tax through your payroll deduction, it’s all kind of taken care of for you. That’s fine. You can also open an HSA through your local bank or credit union. Often, they have HSA accounts available there. I’m a big fan of online banks for most things, and a couple online banks that get really good feedback are Lively and HSA Bank. We’ll link to those in the show notes as well. We’re not affiliated with them. I haven’t used them personally. I’m not endorsing them, but they do get a lot of discussion, and a lot of people seem to talk about these particular online HSA banks. Again, Lively and HSA Bank are a couple that are pretty popular.

So that is a general overview — not exhaustive, obviously, but a general overview of how HSAs work. And again, I want to state that through digging in to some of the nitty-grittier details of this as prepping, I kind of convinced myself that I’d really love to switch to an HSA because I like the flexibility. And kind of here’s what — this is just me personally — this is my opinion — but whenever I have a chance to take on a little more of the risk myself and keep the money, I generally will strongly consider doing that. What I mean by that is if you are — maybe you have a choice between an HSA-compatible plan with lower premiums but higher deductible and therefore a little higher risk, or the other option would be maybe higher premiums and lower deductible and therefore, a little lower risk. The difference in those is the lower premiums, generally a higher risk, but you’re offloading the risk onto yourself and therefore, saving your own money into the account, and you’re kind of effectively self-insuring.

Therefore, if you don’t use the insurance as much as maybe you might expect or as much as the health insurance company expects, you keep that money for yourself, as opposed to just kind of “throwing it away on premiums”. When you pay premiums, you never get that money back. You’re just paying the premiums. It’s disappearing into the health insurance companies. They take it. It’s gone. But if you’re paying those premiums or the difference in those premiums into your HSA, you’ve got a decent chance or some chance that you would keep that money for yourself, and you don’t lose it. So it’s not right for everybody, but personally, that’s kind of the way I look at it. And if life situation lines up appropriately, that kind of appeals to me. So that’s my take on HSAs as well.

But I would love to hear any other thoughts you have, Allissa, or any questions that maybe we didn’t cover.

AH I’m fascinated about this. So in the hierarchy of things that we’re saving for, where would you put an HSA? For example, if someone — when you talk to people about money, of course, the first thing that you want people to do is create a small emergency fund. And then they pay off all of their debt. And they create a bigger, three-to-six-month emergency fund. And then they maybe pay off their house. And then they start contributing more to retirement. Where would you put HSA on this, right after “are you putting enough away for retirement”?

MR This is a hard answer because it’s so nuanced. You want to look at your health situation first. A lot of people make the statement that HSAs are good for people that are very healthy or very unhealthy. If you’re in between, it’s kind of a hit or miss. But if you’re extremely healthy and don’t expect to incur a lot of health care expenses, then it often works really well because you don’t necessarily use up that deductible. You can put that money away and not use it for expenses, and it kind of builds up. If you’re needing a lot of health care expenses — I’m sorry — you’re incurring a lot of health care expense on a regular basis, you’re going to max out the deductible quickly, and then the rest is paid 100 percent. That tends to work really well for people at that end of the spectrum. You want to look at that as well. Look at what your health situation is in your life first.

It’s also really good for people that want to add more to retirement but don’t have any other vehicle. One example would be, let’s say, you are a business owner and therefore, you — let’s say you’re a single business owner that does not have a spouse insurance plan through an employer. You’ve got maybe a Roth IRA, but you don’t have any other options after your Roth IRA for retirement. An HSA might make sense. Maybe your health insurance is through the exchange. You’ve got a high-deductible plan. You can use an HSA as kind of a supplement or an additional retirement account after your Roth IRA. That would be one way to look at it. So it’s a little more nuanced than I feel like I can answer with what order does it follow because it’s so different for different people.

AH I think that was a good answer explaining that nuance.

MR [Laughing]

AH That wraps it up for my question. This is a lot to think about. I’m really curious if it would be useful for me at my stage because I am that single business owner who buys my insurance on the exchange. I’m going to think about this. And this actually might be a factor as I’m looking at my plan. I’ve already enrolled for 2020, but as I look at plans for next year, do I want to buy a plan that is an approved high-deductible health plan? It’s an interesting, interesting concept.

MR Yeah. I like the idea of — the flexibility is nice because if you’re with — when you’re buying medical stuff or paying medical expenses and you’re going through insurance, a lot of times fights happen. Oh, is this approved by my health insurance? Are they going to cover it? Are they going to reimburse me? There’s this whole fight that happens sometimes. And with an HSA, you have a debit card that’s attached to your HSA account, and if you want to go buy a breast pump, you swipe your debit card, and it comes out of your HSA. There’s no fight; it just happens. If you want to buy some other approved medical thing or pay for an expense, you swipe your debit card and it comes out of your HSA. It’s just your money to spend on approved things as you see fit. And I really like that choice. I think that’s really nice.

AH Also, I want to note that I’m delighted we have a podcast episode that has forced you to say things like condoms and breast pump. I’m doing —

MR Well, it’s not forced. These are real things that people use. I have no problem saying it. [Laughing]

AH I know. It’s just not — if you had said years ago we’re going to do a podcast about massage therapists that eventually will involve those terms, I never would’ve thought it.

MR [Laughing] We’re pushing the boundaries, pushing the envelope here.

AH All right. All right. We are fully submerged in HSA information.

Michael, who’s our sponsor? Who’s our next sponsor?

MR Right on. Time to show some love to Jojoba.

Sponsor message Yay, Jojoba! Jojoba is non-comedogenic. It won’t clog the pores of your clients, or your own for that matter. And if you have a client that’s prone to acne breakouts, Jojoba is a great choice for them. It won’t go rancid. So if you use lots of essential oils and you mix up an eight-ounce bottle and you add some essential oil to it and you don’t use it all that often, it’s not going to go rancid and wreck your expensive essential oils. That’s helpful. It won’t stain your 100 percent cotton sheets, so your linens are going to last longer, look better, and smell better.

The Jojoba Company is the only company in the world that carries 100 % pure, first-press quality jojoba. Other companies squeeze the crap out of that seed, and they get a lower quality oil. Jojoba Company does — it’s not an oil, it’s an ester. My bad. The Jojoba Company does a light first press on the seed, so they don’t get quite as much, but it’s a higher quality jojoba. You, my friends, can get 10 % off the price of the products on orders of $35 or more when you shop through our link, massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

MR Yay.

AH We got quick tips today.

MR We got one because I got nothing. It’s all you.

AH All right. So my quick tip, super easy. This came up in office hours last week with our premium members. We do live web conferences where people can bring up any topic and every topic. We were talking about cancellation policies, and a few people noted that they have a cancellation policy that allows a client to send in a sub. So if my 3 p.m. client for today can’t come in, she might call and say, hey, I cannot come in. I have the flu. But I’m going to send my cousin in. That’s awesome. You might be able to adjust and adapt your cancellation policy to let people know that if they can’t make it, they can send someone in their place.

Now, this might not be appropriate for everyone. If you have a super niched practice and you do not want to see some general client, this wouldn’t be appropriate for you. But if you’re cool with the occasional random client or other person or you’re accepting lots of new clients because you’re building your business, this could be a great way to get new clients in the door. And also, I think for some clients, they don’t want to cancel an appointment and pay the fee. But they’d be okay paying for the full appointment price if it was a gift for someone. So they kind of recruit the client to fill their space versus you having to call through a waiting list. I think it could be good for a lot of people in a lot of ways.

So if you’ve never thought about this, maybe consider adapting your cancellation policy to allow clients to send a substitute in their place. This could be a really great blog post idea. It could be a great video idea. If you want to adapt your policy — or if you already have this policy but you haven’t really made it widely known, it could be a really useful tool. So hey, consider adapting your cancellation policy to allow clients to send a substitute. And if you do this effectively, I’d love to hear how you do it and how it’s worked for you. You can send us that feedback at podcast@massagebusinessbluprint.com. Yeah, if you have other questions that you want us — or other topics you want us to cover, give us a holler. Send us your podcast questions or topic ideas at podcast@massagebusinessbluprint.com.

Michael, am I leaving anything out?

MR No. I don’t think so. That’s a really good idea. Never heard of that before.

AH All right. Then that is it for today, people. We hope that you enjoyed this deep-dive into HSAs. And if you didn’t, it’s all good. Just come back next week. We’ll have another topic for you. That’s all I got.

MR Thanks, everyone.