Use it or lose it: what to do before your extras limits reset

If you were going to have a dental check-up or replace your glasses anyway, do it before the limit resets. If you weren’t, don’t. A benefit pays part of a bill, so “using” a limit on something you didn’t need still costs you money.

Then do the sum your fund’s reminder email leaves out: add up what you claimed this year and set it beside what you paid in premiums.

Each extras benefit has a yearly limit: so many dollars of dental, so many of optical, so many of physio. On most policies the count starts again on a fixed date and anything unclaimed is gone.

• ·1 January for most funds, including the largest ones.
• ·1 July for a smaller number that run on the financial year.
• ·Your joining anniversary for a few.

Funds change these rules, so check your own: the app or member site shows the reset date and how much of each limit you have left.

• ·A dental check-up and clean, if you are due one. Many policies pay for one or two a year, and some funds have dentists who charge members nothing for it.
• ·Glasses or contact lenses, if your prescription has changed or your current pair is on its way out. Optical is the limit people most often leave untouched.
• ·Treatment you are part way through. If you are seeing a physio or having dental work done across several visits, booking what you can before the reset spreads it over two years of limits.
• ·Receipts you never sent in. Most funds accept claims for up to two years after the visit, counted against the year the visit happened in.

Anything you would not have bought without the reminder. A $200 optical limit on a $450 pair of glasses leaves you $250 out of pocket for glasses you did not need. A massage you would not otherwise have booked costs you the gap. The limit is not money you are owed; it is the most the fund will put towards a bill you choose to run up.

The limits reset every year. The premiums do not stop. So the end of the year is a good time to check the whole of it: what you paid across twelve months against what came back.

For most light users it does not add up. Take one adult whose year is two dental visits and a pair of glasses: of the 189 extras policies from funds anyone can join that cover both, 5 pay back more than they cost. For two dental visits alone it is 7 of 219. The rankings by what you use show which.

Your year is not that year, which is the point. The calculator takes what you actually used, prices the policy you hold now, and sets it beside every other one.

Work out whether yours paid for itself →

• ·Move to a policy that fits what you use. A cheaper policy that covers only your dental and optical often comes out ahead where a broad one does not.
• ·Drop extras and keep hospital. They are separate products. Extras has no effect on the Medicare Levy Surcharge or the Lifetime Health Cover loading, so cancelling it changes nothing at tax time.
• ·Keep it, knowing why. If a child is heading for braces or you see a physio most weeks, the sums can come out well ahead. That is a reason to hold it; a reminder email is not.