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The flexible spending account, or FSA, has recently become one of the good deals among employer benefits. You can pay for out-of-pocket health expenses with pre-tax money. In other words, if you’re in the 25 percent tax bracket you get a quarter off all that spending.

FSAs became more lucrative in recent years because the IRS loosened rules on what you can buy with FSA money. For more on FSAs, see my article from August, “How to save on medical expenses.”

The downside of FSAs is that when you sign up for the FSA, you have to guess at how much out-of-pocket medical expense you’ll have for the year. Money left over is forfeited.

So if your employer sets a deadline of Dec. 31 to use FSA money, you might need to spend that money in a hurry — preferably on items you would buy anyway. (Note: Many employers give you until March to spend the previous year’s FSA money.)

Drugstore.com makes FSA spending easy by setting up a part of its Web site for FSAs. It includes more than 3,000 items. Then, you don’t have to worry about whether an item qualifies as medical spending.

It has also created bundles of items for your convenience. For example, if you have $75 left in your FSA account, you could choose and customize the First-Aid Bundle, which includes Band-Aids, Tylenol, Neosporin, etc.

I’m not saying Drugstore.com has the lowest prices on all these items; just that the site makes it quick and easy to deplete the rest of your FSA account. Convenience might be a priority during the busy holiday season, and even if you’re overpaying, it’s better than losing the FSA money altogether.