The theory behind a flex spending plan is great. Put some money aside for health care expenses, get a debit card, pay your bills out of that fund. You don’t even need to keep receipts, it’s all done automatically.

Except when, months later, the flex spending people say “yeah, that $10 copay you had 3 months ago? We want a receipt for that one.” Because sometimes the computer kicks out certain expenses as anomalous and now they want proof.

Or in this case, they want the receipt for the $250 glasses I bought specifically to use up the money at the end of the year. Still trying to find the darned thing. True I could just save every receipt – but in a context where you know ahead of time that you’re not going to need 90% of them, and most of them are of the $10 copay variety, it’s pretty annoying to have to go through the trouble.