Question about 2019 HSA contribution limits

[kms]

Not sure how HSA works since I'm fairly new to this country and the clusterfuck that is American health insurance, so please forgive me if this is a stupid question.

We are a family of three: me, my wife, and our daughter. My wife has health insurance through her employer, and added our daughter to her plan after she was born in early January. She is thus on a family plan. I am self-employed and have purchased my own health insurance through the Marketplace. I am thus on an individual plan.

We both have separate HSA accounts - mine is with Fidelity, my wife's is through her employer with Health Equity. According to the IRS, the 2019 contribution limits are as follows:

Individual: $3,500
Family: $7,000

Unfortunately, I see two different interpretations of these numbers:

a) I get $3,500 for my individual health insurance plan. My wife gets $7,000 for her family health insurance plan. The 2019 total for our family of three is $10,500.

b) I get $3,500 for my individual health insurance plan. My wife gets $7,000 for her family health insurance plan. The 2019 total for our family of three is $7,000 split between our two HSA accounts.

Which one is it, a or b?

[MDM]

b.

See Pub. 969.

[Dave1442397]

Yeah, the limit applies to your family, no matter how many accounts it's spread across.

My HSA account only requires that a cash balance of $1000 be kept for immediate expenses. The rest of the money can be invested, and we have access to some Vanguard and Fidelity funds, so make sure you look into that.

[radram]

I realize this is not at all the reason for your post, but I like to learn stuff wherever I can.

Once your wife switched to a family plan, wouldn't it have been cheaper to join your wife's insurance? It might be too late for this year,but maybe next year?

[swinginbeef]

not always. I'm offered 4 different options, 3 of which are "family" plans. We're offered Employee, Employee + Spouse, Employee + Kids or Employee + Spouse + Kids. Since my wife's job pays 100% for her, I cover myself and the kids. And our total HSA withholdings between the two of us is $7k.

[kms]

It's the same with us. My wife's plan has four options: employee, employee & spouse, employee & kids or employee & family. She's almost 100% paid for, and her premium is less than $40 per paycheck, but neither spouse nor kids are paid for at all by her employer. Which means that my premium would have been $428 per month, which is almost $100 more than what I'm paying for right now with my own insurance purchased through the Marketplace ($333). Our daughter would've been cheaper on my plan as well, however her insurance company's pediatric network is much better than mine in this neighborhood so we decided to bite the bullet and pay a little bit more per month to avoid the hassle of having to drive across town every time the little one needs to see a doctor.

Thanks everybody for your answers. $7,000 for the family it is then.