Friend accidentally contributed to a dependent care account, help!!

[MVal]

Mustachians, I need your help! My friend is really clueless when it comes to benefit enrollment time and after looking at his final paystub for the year, it appears last year he enrolled in a Dependent Care account, which I assume is an FSA of some sort, by accident! He's got $500 sitting there and I want to help him find some way to use the money before he loses it...I assume he has until March or April at some point like a regular medical FSA to find expenses to spend it on.

He doesn't have any kids and his parents live in another town. He has no dependents. His parents have needed quite a bit of care over the last year due to his mother's health problems, but since they are not his dependents, I don't suppose we can find anything there. Is there any way we can extract this money and not lose it??

[seattlecyclone]

I think your friend is out of luck. You kind of need qualifying dependent care expenses to use that money. Hope he didn't sign up for this year too!

[MVal]

I think your friend is out of luck. You kind of need qualifying dependent care expenses to use that money. Hope he didn't sign up for this year too!

I know...I'm asking him to show me a copy of his first paystub of the year so I can see if he did or not. Hopefully if he accidentally did it again this last enrollment, he could have his HR get him out of it for the rest of the year. I'm wondering if it might be possible for him to move the funds from the dependent care FSA to his limited purpose FSA, but I'm sure I'll have to call his HR department myself to find out.

[seattlecyclone]

I've never heard of the option to transfer money between the different FSA types. I would have done the opposite transfer last year if I could!