On the bright side, financial planners love that HSAs are “triple tax-advantaged.” Money goes in pre-tax, earnings on that money aren’t taxed, and the money can be used, without being taxed, for qualified medical expenses. If people have the means to pay for health-care costs out of pocket and leave the HSA money growing tax-free, it can be another tax-advantaged way to save for retirement. Health-care costs will likely keep climbing, so one of the best investments anyone can make is to work at staying healthy, if possible. For a sense of how much health care could cost you in retirement, and how staying healthy can lower those costs, try AARP’s health-care costs calculator. It provides a rough cost estimate based on your height, weight, gender, and state. Users can add in various health conditions to see how much they might add to projected health-care costs in retirement, or subtract from them if, for instance, an overweight person slimmed down.
Whether you're 60 or 25 or somewhere in between, the prospect of retirement should be more inspiring -- cities to visit, languages to learn, books to read, or to write -- than the anxious business of war-gaming what your health will be like 10 or 20 or 30 years out. But if paying closer attention to your body and mind now means more money for travel and growth and relaxation after a long hard working life, it’s not a bad trade-off.
And it's not available to everyone. In the real world, high costs and steep deductibles discourage many people from using the health care they've bought, starting a cascade of ills. Staying healthy can be expensive.