Our dental surgery and other related work got postponed, at the last
minute, to next year (long story-dentist moved etc); Now we have about
$2K in our Flex Spending plan that we would like not to get forfeited
by the IRS; Are there any areas that I may be overlooking? We are
looking at eye care, and dentistry and being generally frugal and in
good health, there does not seem to be a whole lot, after reviewing
the documents for the plan.

We will be away from Dec. 21st onwards and so, need to have a
qualified expense in about 6 days;  We looked into paying off the
orthodontics for one of the kids and that has been disallowed as we
have been paying per monthly plans;

There's some wiggle room for OTC meds but that won't come to much and
also, I can buy a blood pressure monitoring kit etc but that requires
a note from the physician, which is hard to come by and willbe slow at
best;

Any ideas? We work hard for our money and this is a non-trivial amount to us !!

Thank you

My FSA reimburses for "medical expenses paid during the plan year" and
not necessarily incurred during that year. Can you (that is, are you
allowed to) prepay your dental work or other medical expenses?

Pap smears, colon exams, mammograms, skin screen for skin cancer,
testicular exam, PSA test, routine electrocardiogram for a baseline,
glaucoma screen, diabetes screen, thyroid test, lipid screen,
osteoporosis screen--I'm just throwing out ideas since I don't know
what your plan will pay for, but it's just some things I thought of
that are nice to have a baseline for in case something does go wrong
:)

You may be in luck.  Back in May of 2005, the IRS made a ruling that
the deadline for incuring medical expenses would be extended to March
15, not December 31 as had been the previous rule (IRS NOTICE
2005-42).  The administrator of my flex-spending account informed me
of this change several months ago, and you can several wesites
mentioning the change:

http://ria.thomson.com/about/pressroom/pr051905.asp

My understanding is that the change was made for cases just like
yours.  The IRS has been taking quite a bit of flak for it's "use it
or lose it" policy.

You should contact your plan administrator to make sure that the new
change does effect your plan.  I would imagine that it would though.

You can use FSA funds to pay for anything that the IRS recognizes as a
valid medical deduction.  So, the list of things you can buy comes
from the IRS.  I was in a similar jamb several years ago and
determined that I could submit claims for the eyeglasses I bought and
paid for earlier in the year.  The IRS list was very helpful.  There
is a IRS publication 502 on www.irs.gov (search for "medical
deduction")