Financial Planning with ABLE Accounts

Julie Shields-Rutyna:  All right. Welcome and good afternoon. My name is Julie Shields-Rutyna, and I am the Director of College Planning, Education, and Training at MEFA, and this webinar this afternoon is about ABLE accounts and special needs planning, important tools for individuals with disabilities and their families.

And we have two wonderful presenters, Adam Hartwell, who manages the Attainable® program, the Massachusetts ABLE program at MEFA, and Cynthia Haddad, who is from Sequoia Financial Group, formerly Affinia, but she’ll tell you about that. And I'll just tell you a tiny bit about MEFA and then turn it right over to our presenters. But MEFA is a state-based organization that has been around since 1982 and originally started to help families plan, save, and pay for college.

And over the years, we have expanded our many offerings beyond college savings plans, now to the ABLE plan, Attainable®, which is for an individual with a disability to be able to save for a wide variety of expenses. So you're going to hear all about that. And the other thing I'll tell you about MEFA is that MEFA offers free guidance on all of the topics that we're involved in.

And so you can always reach out to us, connect with us to ask questions, talk things over. And so please know that going into this. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you, Adam, and we'll go from there. Oh, but let me just say if you need to ask questions during this webinar, please use the Q&A section on your bar on your computer.

If you need closed captioning, please hit the live transcript button, and an additional benefit with live transcript besides that you'll see the words across the screen, is you can choose the language that you'd like to see those words in. And other than that, we will be recording this session, and we will be sending you a link to the recording and the slides tomorrow. So thank you very much. All right, Adam.

Adam Hartwell: All right. Thank you everyone for being here. Again, my name is Adam Hartwell. So I'm going to be talking mostly about the ABLE accounts, which in Massachusetts, is the Attainable® Program. So the Stephen Beck Jr. Achieving a Better Life Experience, or ABLE Act, amended the federal tax code in 2014 to add Section 529A.

A lot of people are probably very familiar with 529 College Savings Accounts, and that's kind of the skeleton on which ABLE accounts were built. Whereas 529 accounts are for qualified educational expenses, 529A is for qualified disability expenses. The established ABLE accounts are tax exempt accounts for eligible individuals with disabilities to be used for those qualified disability expenses while still keeping their eligibility for federal public benefits.

That goes beyond what most people just think about it right off the top of the bat, which is things like the SSI, but also includes things like federal housing waivers in Massachusetts, as each state gets to administer these in their own way. And they all have different names. So if you want to open it in another state, you're going to find it under another name.

Accounts here in Massachusetts are called Attainable® Savings Accounts. So the Attainable® Savings Plan was launched in 2017. MEFA is the state sponsor and Fidelity Investments is the program manager. Fidelity has trained a specialized division to assist individuals with setting up and answering questions regarding their Attainable® accounts.

So when you go to open an Attainable® account, you go to their website that, you know, is fidelity.com/able. There is a phone number on that page that goes straight to this specialized division. If you just Google “Fidelity” and call up the number that comes up, you're going to get their general brokerage numbers.

And a lot of those individuals don't know a lot or even anything about Attainable®. So you really want to make sure that you're reaching out to that specialized group for information about setting up these accounts.

When it comes to qualified expenses, Attainable® savings plans can benefit. Oh, I apologize. That's actually the wrong slide, but I'll talk about it anyways. These can be utilized for a lot of different purposes including anything pertaining to health, housing, education, transportation, assistive technology and assistive technology support, employment training and support, and personal support services, as well as basic living needs.

That means that you can pay your rent. We actually verified that a couple of years ago with your Attainable® account. You can pay for groceries with your Attainable® account. You can pay for your co-pays, your medication. You can pay for your Uber, your bus pass. You can buy a car. You can buy a house if you put enough into your Attainable® account.

You can use it to buy applications to add to mobile technology you already own. Personal support services goes far beyond just one-on-one community support. There could also be an accountant or a lawyer, anyone who allows you to live independently. So there is a great variety of access that you can utilize your Attainable® account for.

At the end of the day, it's essentially anything that's not recreation. Due to the fact that there are a lot of different ways to, you know, apologies. I feel like I've actually brought up educational based slides here and I thought I had the other one. And so that that's on me and I apologize for it.

Adam, it's still good information. You know, it's absolutely good information, but you know, this was the slides that were developed for a different presentation and well, you know, it seems that I have made a mistake, but it's still great information that you can utilize your Attainable® account for a lot of different access and planning.

This slide is actually pertaining to the fact that, you know, under the IDEA, the Individual Disabilities Education Act. You want to be talking about financial planning and adult life and transition at age 14. So when you're talking about setting up your Attainable® account, that could be set up when somebody is born, but it can also apply to anyone across the board.

As long as if you're going to be qualified for an Attainable® account, you need to have received your diagnosis before the age of 26, regardless of current age. So if you are 76 now, but you got diagnosed at age 10, you can still open an Attainable® account. In the year 2026 on January 1, that age will be changing to the age of 46.

So if you have an acquired brain injury that you got when you were 30, right now, you can't open an Attainable® account. But a couple of years from now, you will be able to. So Attainable® gives you the opportunity for long term savings in a lot of different ways, including because education is on the list, you can use your Attainable® account to pay for your college education or a trade school or anything that is in career development as far as what your generalized life goals might be.

We talked a moment ago about sort of some of the eligibility criteria is essentially you also need to be eligible to receive SSI or SSDI, or you need to self-certify as meeting requirements such with functional limitations, such as those on this list to my right here, or the ones on their compassionate allowances conditions list.

This goes far beyond just developmental disability, but also to mental health and things like long term cancer recovery. Or musculoskeletal conditions and so on. And so there's a lot of different conditions that would enable you to be eligible for the opening of an Attainable® account. The accounts allow the account owner or beneficiary to save over $2,000, which is the current asset limit, without affecting federal benefits.

I'm aware that there is current legislation that's being voted on to perhaps raise that to $10,000. Hopefully that does get passed. But regardless, essentially what that $2,000 is right now and $10,000 may be later, is what is currently considered the entire pie that you're allowed to have to split up between all your expenses as needed.

What the Attainable® account would allow you to do is be at $100,000 to that account, because that's how much you can have before it affects your SSI. The full limit would on the account is $500,000 as things are currently ending in the year 2023. The numbers went up again. Your annual contribution cannot exceed $17,000 if you are not working. If you are working, you can add an additional $13,590 per year into that.

So a total per year that you could put into the account if you are working There is no annual account maintenance fee. They are investment accounts. So there are investment portfolio fees that tend to range between 0.57% to 0.94% of assets, which generally speaking is significantly less than the return on the investments themselves.

Provided the beneficiary is the same on both accounts, or one beneficiary is the family member of another, you can transfer funds from a 529 college savings account into an ABLE account without incurring any taxes or penalties. In addition, due to the saver's credit, account owners may, who meet certain criteria, can receive a saver's credit on their federal taxes.

These are, you're eligible if you're age 18 or older, are not a full time student, and are not claimed as a dependent on someone else's tax return. Additionally, as long as withdrawals are spent on those qualified disability expenses, that blue list we looked at a moment ago, Attainable® account growth is federal income tax free.

So if you put money into the account and the investments earn money, those investments, that additional money that you earn, does not get taxed as income.

These are professionally managed portfolios. You can see that regular investments can add up over time. If you utilize these as a savings program, we have some examples here of $50, $100, and $300 per month with a hypothetical example based on historical understandings. We never want to guess what the market might do in the future, but this is based on what the data that we've had from the history. The example that I like to use is that middle one, which is sort of the middle range, all of these are using sort of the middle range of portfolios that are offered.

If you took $100 and put it every month, put $100 into a jar under your bed, you would end up with $24,000 but with these accounts, you might have something more closer to $46,000 in that account. Given that a lot of the individuals that I work with don't have access to retirement accounts, because they are only able to work part time, this could be what someone could utilize as a way to start saving for retirement as well.

There are eight portfolio options when it comes to an Attainable® account. One of the things that you're going to want to do is really research those. They range from being a full money market account all the way up to having 85% of your funds in the stock market.

Most, the majority, of folk that we serve tend to go for that middle sort of 30, 40, 50% invested zone, but you definitely want to know how much you want. What are those portfolios you want before you go through the process of opening an account? Because it's going to be one of the questions in the course of that event.

So one of the things you're going to want to do is go to fidelity.com/able. That is actually a bounce page. It's going to bring you to fidelity.com/Attainable/overview. I like to say that just in case somebody's doesn't allow it to move on its own. So you know where you need to go.

You're going to want to download the disclosure document. That's their legal disclosure document about Attainable® accounts. It essentially has a page written on it about everything I say a sentence about, and you're going to choose those options for yourself, and you are allowed to change whatever option you pick twice per calendar year.

So you could maybe say, things are looking good. I want to make my account a little bit more aggressive. Things are looking a little, I'm a little worried about the market right now. I'm going to pull back a little bit, make things a little bit more conservative. And that's something you're allowed to do twice per calendar year. And with that, I'm going to hand things over to Cynthia to sort of give an overview of some of the other aspects of special needs planning.

Cynthia Haddad: Thank you, Adam. I am going to just shortly share my screen. That was a wonderful overview. There's a lot of information on ABLE and a lot to process. So I think it's great to have the overview.

And now we'll talk about ways that I want you to know what ABLE is and how we can utilize it. Right. We want to make sure we can utilize it. So if you give me just one minute, I can start sharing my screen with you. I'm assuming you can see my screen. Looks great. Okay. Wonderful. Are the pictures in the way? Nothing's in the way.

Okay, great. Great. Just by full disclosure, I am not affiliated with MEFA. I am not affiliated with Fidelity, ABLE, Attainable® Accounts, or ABLE accounts. I am part of the Special Needs Financial Planning team, formerly Affinia Financial Group. We just merged into a great team with Sequoia Financial Group.

And we're bringing all of our special needs planning expertise with us to integrate into the Sequoia Financial Group. We're still in Burlington, Massachusetts, and we're still providing the same comprehensive financial planning and wealth management services to families that have a family member or individuals with disabilities themselves.

We are also, and there's my team, is my partner, John Nadworny, who we've been working with for many, many years, and his daughter, Alexandria Nadworny. She's also joined our team as well. And Julie, so kind to hold up the, I just wanted to show you that we have your book. Thank you. Thank you.

And in our book, one of the driving forces for us to update our book was to include information about ABLE. Our first edition was written in 2007 and one of the biggest changes since then has been including ABLE accounts in our planning. But really what we're talking about, especially in planning, is striking a balance with parents, personal resources, individuals, personal resources, and government benefits.

And as Adam had mentioned, if an individual has certain government benefits, such as SSI, Supplemental Security Income, they cannot have more than $2,000 of assets in their names. Otherwise, they will jeopardize their eligibility for those government benefits. But also how do families save for their family member with a disability?

Because it's really important to make sure that you can save as best you can without disqualifying an individual for government benefits. So what we're not, and we always tell family, parents, you know, put on your own oxygen mask first and make sure your financial planning needs are tended, to your goals for your own short term, midterm, and long term goals are tended to first, and then we can overlay the needs of your family member.

And do a combination of government benefits and personal resources. And then we talk about the five factors of special needs financial planning just to frame our discussion for now. We talked a lot about the family and the support, who's who, and your family members’ life. Is it, you know, professionals? Is it family?

And what types of supports are they receiving? It's also very emotional. So where are you with the emotional acceptance, denial? Is it a new onset of a disability? And again, as Adam had said, if it's an onset of a disability past age 26, you really can't use an ABLE account yet until the year of 2026, where that age goes up to age 46.

So there's, sometimes we're just understanding a diagnosis, but we need to have a diagnosis before we can even contribute to an ABLE account. But we also talk in special needs planning about the legal aspects, meaning special needs trusts and alternatives to guardianship.

We also talk about all the various government benefits that are out there. And of course, we talk about the money. So what we're what we're not going to go into all of those other things, but today we're just really focusing about the money. And in our special needs planning toolbox, we have different types of savings accounts that allow families and individuals to put money aside for the future needs of your children with and without disabilities.

And those are, in general, we have now an ABLE account, Achieving a Better Life Experience, called the 529A plan. We also have, most folks are familiar with the 529 college savings account. But if somebody has a 529 college savings account, they can't always get that money out unless it's for qualifying higher education expenses without jeopardizing their eligibility for that $2,000 threshold on it.

But then there's other custodial accounts that, you know, parents set up, grandparents set up. A Uniform Gift to Minors Account, Uniform Transfer to Miners Account. And these are all wonderful tools to save. But once you have to deal with eligibility for government benefits and keeping that number under the $2,000, it's tricky, right?

So we don't want to discourage people from a financial planning standpoint, to make sure that they're saving, even if they just save money in the parents name. That and use different types of savings accounts that we won't get into today. It's just really important. And as Adam's example, even $100 a month, just save whatever you can. Good ways to gift into, you know, from grandparents or parents are using ABLE accounts.

But the most important thing is to start saving. If you're not sure if you should open up an ABLE, 529, or Custodial Account for a Minor Child, save in your own name if you're the parent, or if you're the sibling like me, you know, try to save and leave money aside for my brother. And then we started to get into Supplemental Needs Trust, which is another way to protect eligibility for government benefits.

But if it's a smaller amount of money, an ABLE account is a great place to save money. A couple of things just to review. Adam had mentioned earlier is an individual can only have one ABLE account, whereas a 529 college savings plan, every grandparent, every aunt and uncle, every parent can set up a 529 college savings plan or a custodial account, those UGMAs or UGMA accounts for an individual, but with an ABLE account, they can only have one.

So that means you have to communicate with people that might want to give money for your child or for you as an individual. And the really cool thing is that all the savings are tax exempt. And when you take the money out, if it's for a qualifying disability expense, it's not taxable income. So it's really cool.

And some good resources to check out are the ABLE National Resource Center and abletoday.org through the National Association of State Treasurers. And they have a nice general overview about what 529As, what ABLE accounts, and each state has a different one. Many of our clients use the Fidelity Attainable® and are very happy with that.

We're not advocating or promoting, full disclosure, in any specific one. You don't need an advisor, financial advisor, to open up an ABLE account, except for the Virginia ABLE account. You have to have an advisor attached to that, but Fidelity and other companies that offer ABLE accounts have really well trained staff to help families open up those accounts and answer any questions.

But also very important, you have to watch the rules, making sure that those distributions are for qualified disability expenses that Adam had a nice list there. The other piece is make sure there's a known disability prior to the age of 26, again, until 2026 when it can be prior to the age of 46.

And then if there's too much money in the ABLE account over $100,000, your SSI may be compromised. And in certain accounts Attainable®, the maximum you can have is $500,000. So the idea with an ABLE account is really not to transfer a lot of wealth. Again, you can only put in $17,000 per year. And if you're employed, you can add that extra $12,000 plus.

But it's really a good way to save some money, have some flexibility, and pay for certain expenses. Upon the death of the beneficiary, whoever you opened up the ABLE account for, even though during their lifetime, they put money into the ABLE account so they could keep their eligibility for government benefits, including Medicaid, which if you're on SSI, automatically gets you Medicaid benefits aid, not Medicare, but Medicaid.

So upon the death of the beneficiary, Medicaid can do a claw back and they can say, Okay, we've been providing all this funding all this time. So we're entitled to what's remaining in that ABLE account. So a traditional third party special needs trust, you could put more than the $17,000 a year in, there's no Medicaid payback on a traditional common third party special needs trust.

So something very important is to look at that, you know, beneficiary. But some tip tips and strategies. One of the big wins with having money in an ABLE account is that ABLE account funds can be used for housing, and it won't offset the amount that an individual would receive for SSI.

For example, when somebody is living at home with their parents, their parents are considered to be providing in kind supports and services. So they get a reduced SSI check. And we've had this happen. It's a perfect example of a parent who bought a condominium for their child and he received his SSI check and did whatever he wanted with it.

Mom and dad were paying for the taxes on the condo. They were paying the condo fee. And they were really doing a great job for their son. And he got to do whatever he wanted with his SSI in their planning. Then when they called me, it was because they, their son kept getting a reduced amount of SSI. And I kept thinking, make sure he's paying you rent.

So they had him pay a little bit of rent. And I, what I didn't know is that they were paying for all these other expenses. So social security SSI said, well, the parents are providing in kind support and maintenance. The kid's not paying for any of his housing, so he doesn't need as much in his SSI check.

Finally, he lost his SSI income. So what we did, the go around, ABLE to the rescue, and we were able to have the parents put in $17,000 a year into the ABLE account and they pulled from the ABLE account to pay for his housing expenses because that rent, his SSI check would not cover that amount of rent for the condo.

It's in a beautiful area. Would be the fair market rent that he would pay anywhere else. So we were able to use the ABLE account, ABLE, to pay for his housing expenses. And then he was able to get back onto SSI at a full, about $$700 a month receiving SSI income to help him pay for his housing.

So it was a great tool to use. Also, if there is a Supplemental Needs Trust, or you can use some of the money from the Special Needs Trust and fund an ABLE account. And that ABLE account can be used, again, for housing, whereas in a certain types of Special Needs Trust, you can't pay for housing because they're supposed to supplement what the government will provide.

So, the SSI is government benefits paying for housing, well then you can't supplement with the Supplemental Needs Trust for housing. But an ABLE account can certainly supplement. So it's a great tool to work around for housing. So when you have questions about housing, or any, you know, talk to the folks at Attainable® and maybe about using ABLE funds to pay for housing expenses.

Another cool strategy with ABLE is if somebody has a 529 College Savings Plan account, and then we find out, you know, mom and dad did a great job starting at a young age, they set up a 529 College Savings Plan account before there was any known diagnosis of a disability. And then around age 14, 15, they keep thinking, gee, we've got all this money in a 529.

It doesn't look like Johnny's going to go to college. Could he go to a trade school and we could use that money? Absolutely. He's not going to go to any continuing education after high school. So what do they do with these 529 plan money? If they take it out of the 529 plan and they don't use it for education, there's a penalty, tax penalty, plus it's taxable.

So what we were able to do for Johnny was we were able to transfer $17,000 per year into an ABLE account and we were chipping away at that 529 college savings plan account. Before you knew it, he was 18 years old and we had depleted his 529 pretty much, and he could go and apply for SSI and not worry about it.

With the balance that was still in that 529 plan, we moved it to his brother's 529 college savings plan, tax free, and it didn't disqualify him for his government benefits. So there's ways to work around if parents have been great or grandparents have been great about saving in 529 college savings plans and flipping them over to ABLE accounts.

And then, you know, we have distributions for qualified disability, disability expenses. And those are the key points that I wanted to make about ABLE. We have a whole bunch of information in our book, more details, and also our website at specialneedsplanning.com. We have a whole bunch of FAQs about ABLE as well.

But I encourage you to tap into MEFA, they're a great resource. All sorts, anything ABLE. So with this, I'm going to pass the baton back and maybe we can talk about some cases and any questions.

Adam Hartwell: And I also just wanted to sort of since we have a little bit of extra time, I wanted to build on some of the things that you brought up there if you don't mind.

One of the big things, one of the biggest concerns that we see a lot of is that whole claw back thing, right? The repayment stuff that happens. And we consulted around a little bit and I've read in several places and several people I've trusted have indicated that it looks like that actually really wouldn't apply if you had less than $25,000 in the account.

Additionally, there are several waiver programs that exist that can also help you get around that limitation, but one of the biggest things I'd like to point out is the fact that, after someone passes, the account is frozen for 12 months until all actions on the account have been completed. And that includes any outstanding qualified disability expenses.

So that includes all any hospital bills that took place while the person was passing on and their burial and funeral expenses. And that can deplete the account pretty much entirely just right there. So all of that happens before Medicaid takes its swing. So, there's not as big a concern as I think a lot of people believe it might be going into that whole process.

Another really great usage of the account that, you know, just because we have a little moment here that you can do with it is that if you can save up enough to cover all of your bills for three or four months, that'll take you a minute. Sure. But you know, if you can save up enough to cover your bills for a couple of months, if you have someone who's really wanting to try working full time, but hasn't been allowed to, because of that income limit, “I can only work less than 25 hours a week” is a big thing that we hear all the time.

If someone was to save up enough for a couple of months of expenses, they could try working full time. And if it's successful, they can work full time. Fantastic. They still have an ABLE account with that money in it, you know, that they can use for their needs along the line as they go.

If it doesn't work, they now have a buffer to make sure all their bills are paid while they get SSI reestablished. And if that's within 12 months, that won't be a problem to have happen. So it gives people an opportunity to say, I think I can do this. I think I can be fully independent. I can work a full-time job and ABLE can give you the opportunity to make that opportunity a reality. So there's a lot of, you can sort of go around things with it. As things go along, that's a great one.

Cynthia Haddad: You know, we also, gifting from grandparents right now. It's an uncle's gifting. You know, people want to give to all the grandchildren or the nieces and nephews and all well intentioned. And I can't tell you how often I hear people, “I wish my father in law would stop giving all my kids money because I don't know what to do with Johnny's money.”

And now we can say, right? Put it in the ABLE account and grandparents are so excited about being able to gift 529 college savings and then 529A ABLE account for the child that we're not sure, or they are already receiving government benefits, but they might be doing some estate tax planning so gifting is great. But they didn't, you know, if grandparents, aunts, uncles, or just people in your child's lifetimes, and they've included someone with a disability to receive a portion of their inheritance, you know, maybe it's, you know, $12,000, it's not enough to make a huge difference in their life, but it's enough to knock them off some of those benefits.

It's that's where ABLE to the rescue, right? We had a situation where an aunt had included their child in her inheritance, which was so thoughtful. And obviously the aunt was just being thoughtful. But it was quite a bit of money and we could have either gone through the path. It was about $35,000. I think.

Maybe not quite a bit of money, but it was enough money that we couldn't put it all into an ABLE account at once. But what we were able to do is have the personal representative of that estate put money, $17,000 in year one, waited 12 months and put the next $17,000 in. And so we were able to protect that inheritance.

Whereas an attorney had said, oh, you better disclaim that inheritance, you know, just give it away. Don't take it. We were able to use that ABLE as a way to receive the funds. We didn't have to spend a couple of thousand dollars of the money to set up a special needs trust. We didn't have to go to a pool trust. We just were able to use ABLE and that individual is just thrilled to be able to have that tool. And years ago, we wouldn't have had that.

Adam Hartwell: And it also gives you some really wonderful disaster planning, because again, you know, just once again, as far as like, you know, I need a surgery, that's got to be out of pocket, right?

And I wasn't allowed to save money prior, right? Or I found out about a specialist that I would like to go to because I think they can help me a lot with whatever my condition is, but that specialist lives 100 miles away from me. I need to move again. Housing is a qualified Attainable® expense. So, okay, that's another thing that would, you know, once again, you can be able to do that.

Or again, we're talking about that $2,000 pie. If you're trying to pay all your bills out of that $2,000 pie and you're allowed to have one car without it affecting your SSI benefits, but what kind of car are you going to have? With what's left over after you've paid all your bills, if you only got $2,000, you know, Attainable® can give you the ability to maybe have a car that's not going to cost you $1,000 in repairs every week, because that's right, a little bit better for long term planning, you know, it's a better pair of boots idea, you know, so there's a lot of fun ways where Attainable® isn't, you know, silver bullet to solve all problems, but it can help with a lot of them.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: And we actually have a question. And I think someone's very happy to be beyond this webinar because their family paid out of pocket where they now see they could have used an ABLE account for something. So there is a question. However, is there a way to transfer traditional savings such as in an IRA to an ABLE account as future expenses come up so that she could take advantage of an ABLE account?

Cynthia Haddad: Yeah, pulling money out of an IRA is taxable. If it's the individual's IRA account, we might be able to get a wrap around from IRS to avoid the 10%, you know, pre-pay early withdrawal distribution tax, you know, penalty. But it's still taxable to the individual. So maybe, you know, we could look at possibly converting it to a Roth IRA, but it's hard to get it direct.

You can't go direct from IRA to ABLE. Yeah. But there's some workarounds that you can think about doing and if it's a parent's IRA to go, to enable, I would probably just use regular savings and put that into the ABLE versus taking money out of an IRA.

And remember what I had said earlier, is make sure you take care of your own financial needs, right parents? So we discourage parents from taking money out of their retirement plans for paying for college tuition for their kids. So same thing, we would discourage from taking out of your own retirement bucket of funds.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Yeah, I don't know if you want to say a little bit about just how easy it is to open an ABLE account. And so that maybe these folks could start now, just opening with small amounts, you know.

Adam Hartwell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, the two things I want to say on that. Well, first off, you know, opening an ABLE account is a very simple process.

You go to fidelity.com /able and you're just going to follow the prompts to open it up. You do want to make sure that you have discussed with your, with any financial advisors you might have, which level of portfolio you want to sign up for. One of the big things is whoever signs up the account, whoever creates the account and is going to be in control of the finances is what we call a person with signature authority. That's the person who's going to be in charge of the account and a place where we have seen some people create an accidental hassle is where they think, this is for my child, you know, we all use Johnny for Cindy here.

This is for Johnny. So Johnny is not legally competent, but I'm making this bank account for Johnny, so I'm going to do everything in Johnny's name and fill out everything for them. And then when it comes time for Johnny to do anything, because Johnny is not legally competent, it creates, Johnny should not, is always going to be considered the owner of the account, but the owner of the account and the person with signature authority don't have to be the same person.

So, you know, the beneficiary is the owner. That's always the individual with the disability, but the individual with the disability can also be the person with signature authority, the person who opens and controls the account, or it can be a parent, a spouse, a rep payee, a guardian, a power of attorney. So if there's somebody who you really feel is going to be making the financial decisions, they should be the person who's listed as a person with signature authority.

So, but yeah, that's all part of that just set up process. One of the things we also run into is some people aren't sure exactly how to get the money back out after they put the money into these accounts You can transfer money from an Attainable® account into any bank account you want for any bank you want. You can take it in.

But one of the things that we've taken to recommending because it just makes life easy is at the same time, since you're already filling out a bunch of paperwork with Fidelity, is to open what's called a Fidelity Cash Management Account, which is essentially a bank account with Fidelity. And if you do that, then you can use Fidelity's app and just transfer money directly over quick and easy. You don't have to wait five business days for the other bank to receive it and what have you.

And that account comes with a Visa logo debit card, so you can transfer it and then be able to swipe. The card makes life very easy for people to be able to do their spending without a big challenge. I do want to address that in the question, some of the things that were mentioned are absolutely covered, you know, things having to do with the wheelchair, health, and transportation are both in there.

So one thing, the examples I often use, is like even the motor on a wheelchair van. It requires annual maintenance. It's like $1,200 at minimum So there's a lot of things that are incidental expenses that Attainable® can help someone not have to be worried about how you're spending part of those assets on that. You can use to make sure that these are successful usages.

Cynthia Haddad: Sounds great.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: So great. Well, you two have covered so many important pieces about ABLE, about Attainable®, and about how it all fits into a larger picture of working with a family. I don't know if you have any other. I know when we've spoken in the past, Cynthia, you've had a lot of examples of working with families.

I don't know if there's one that we haven't covered that you want to share. But if not, I don't see any current questions. And we can.

Cynthia Haddad: No, I think, Adam, you covered a whole bunch of stuff. And I think that, one thing that folks need to remember if they do, and the nice smoothness of that Fidelity app, people really like that. But just remember, if you move the money over into the cash management account, you have a month to spend it. Otherwise it's counted against you.

Adam Hartwell: And I'm sorry, just before I forget it because you said it, there is a special rule when it comes to qualified disability expenses when it comes to housing that that has to be used within the same calendar month.

So I think where people get tripped up is they take money out on the 30th to pay their rent on the 1st. Then they get dinged because of the housing. Right. So, yeah. You know, pay it the day early on the 30th, so you take it out and use it in the same calendar month. So you don't get that trip up happening.

Cynthia Haddad: Yeah, exactly. I think that, yeah, really good point. Really good point. But it also allows individuals with disabilities to have savings and, you know, they have goals of maybe not a new car, but, you know, they might want a pet, a support animal. And, you know, that's something that they might want to save for. So there's certain things that people with disabilities do need and do want. And there's lots of workarounds and ABLE gives them that opportunity.

Adam Hartwell: And on the support animal, animals are, you know, thousands of dollars and they require an additional many thousands of dollars to train. And a one-to-one professional that I think would absolutely be a qualified expense, would be the training professional to make sure that you have a dog that can identify when your diabetes is acting up or when your seizure is coming on or if you are about to have an elopement into a road. All things that I have done things with support dogs in the past. So there's a lot of value there that can be found.

Again, if we think about the qualified disability expenses, and how that's not recreation, right? Before you, once again, going to use my pie example. We have that $2,000 pie for all of your needs and anything you want to do that's fun, right? If you're able to put enough money into your Attainable® account that you can cover all the things that are needs and you're using your Attainable® account to cover that, then the $2,000 can become your savings for things that are purely recreational.

Instead of having, I can save $20 this month to, you know, go to the movies. All right. Okay, I would like to take a vacation. Instead of saying, I've got to take a vacation that costs $20. All right, all my needs are being utilized in my Attainable® account. I can now save up to the $2,000 in my generalized checking account to be able to do something extraordinary to give myself greater life satisfaction.

Yeah, when I was in direct services for over 20 years, I had a gentleman that I worked with. Great guy in his seventies who we took to his first Red Sox baseball game at 74. A lifelong fan living in Boston, had never been able to have that opportunity. And so those are the things that we can give people the space in their finances to be able to experience. That's cool.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: No, we have one last question. Is there a household income maximum that qualifies a parent or guardian to open an account or get assistance? That's a good one, Adam.

Adam Hartwell: What I think they're asking is, is there a limit the household can be making to where they're no longer allowed to open an ABLE account.

And that actually doesn't apply to Attainable®. What it does, it applies to whether or not you'd be perhaps receiving certain amounts of funds from SSI, but it's not going to change the reality of an individual having a disability, which is what is the eligibility requirement for having an Attainable® account.

So, once again, you could be, let's say both your parents are doing very well. They make $500 million a year or something like that. The kid isn't in that same circumstance, probably Johnny isn't making that $500 million a year, Johnny can absolutely have an Attainable® account.

Again, you are limited to the $17 000 per year in contribution and with an additional $13,590 if you're working. And I do like to just make a little note that you're only allowed to have your workplace direct deposit the initial $17,000. If you want to put the additional $13,590, you need to cash that independently and deposit it yourself.

Also just to note because we're talking about it. SSI is only allowed to be direct deposited to a single space. So if it goes into your Attainable® account, you can't split it. So if you do want those, that money's to be split, you need to deposit into your generalized bank account and then shift over the amount into your Attainable®, which is again, another good reason perhaps to use a cash management account, because making that very easy.

And just a final note, because Cynthia reminded me of it with her statement about the back and forth with the swiping, it's a contribution limit. So if you take $100 out and put it in, take it out, put it in, take it out, put it in, you can use up your entire $17,000 with the same $100 going back and forth. So take out money and use it would be the, to take out what you feel you're going to need to use, and then be considered about that process.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Great. There is one last, but there is one more question, and I'm not sure I know that. But you may know the answer to this. What is the income cap for SSI, do we, would you know the answer to that?

Cynthia Haddad: I should know the answer to that, correct? You can, if you go onto ssa.gov, I should know the, I should know that. I don't have that off the top of my head.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Yeah, that's okay. I'll put, I'll type the answer, ssa.gov should give that answer. Yeah, that's good.

Adam Hartwell: And, you know, a lot of that's based in the poverty guidelines.

It's actually the same reason for, you know, every year, generally the work based income amount goes up as well. And that's because that $13,590 it's a weird number that is based on the on the federal poverty guideline numbers, right? That's where that goes up each year as well as inflation is determined and what have you. So yeah, that's where that tends to come from.

Cynthia Haddad: Yeah, just to know qualifying for SSI, once an individual's age 18. Prior to age 18, a family may qualify for SSI supplemental security income so that's where the general poverty guidelines are on ssa.gov. But once that individual turns age 18, it's based on their own assets and their own income, nothing to do with the parents, but you need to be, by the definition of the social security's disability definition, not being able to be gainfully employed.

The disability is going to last, you know, longer than 90 days or a lifetime. And you need to look at ssa.gov to see those definitions of what the disability may entail. What's the definition of a disability? So, you have to look and dig deep. I mean, some parents will say, well, my kid has anxiety disorders. Well, you got to dig in further or they're on the spectrum. You dig in a little bit further on ssa.gov.

Adam Hartwell: Thank you. And then the good questions. Yeah, the slang within the SSA that we're looking for there is significant gainful activity. The SGA is how we determine how much they're able to contribute to the household.

And that's also where that whole household SSI reduction comes in for in kind support and maintenance. All these things are delightfully interrelated.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Well, I just want to say thank you both so much. I think you've shared so much great information and thank you for the terrific questions that we've received. And please be in touch with us and share this information and be in touch if you have further questions and we will, I wish you all well.

Cynthia Haddad: We'll see you soon. All right. Thanks, Julie. Thanks, Adam. Thank you. Appreciate it. Stay well.