Can I Sign Connecticut Banking Form

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i want to say good evening to everyone my name is catherine sullivan de carlo and i am vice president of admissions and marketing at chapel haven schleifer center and we really are delighted to have you join us tonight as we explore the new connecticut able accounts and this is a brand new development and we want to find out more about how it can benefit not only our families but all families and so i'd like to thank our two presenters um and they will be andrew komarow of planning across the spectrum and renault levesque who i think goes by ray who is the deputy chief investment officer for the office of the state treasurer sean wooden and we're really delighted to have both presenters with us i also want to thank from my team christy chandler and marissa witkowski eldred and so um i'm just going to give you a quick overview about chapel haven schleifer center and then we're going to get into our presentation so as we're going along if you have questions while our presenters are speaking you can use the chat feature should be at the bottom of your um zoom screen also here are the contacts for us admission at chapelhaven.org or andrew planning across the spectrum dot com and a final note that we are recording the session because we've had a number of people who can't make it tonight and would like to have the information okay so chapel haven schleifer center that's a mouthful but that's who we are we're uh an award-winning non-profit based in westville which is a section of new haven connecticut we also have a satellite campus in tucson arizona called chapel haven west and just to boil it down to a quick mission statement we serve adults with a wide variety of profiles and our goal is to help them learn how to live independently and we serve about 250 people you can learn more about us there's our website at chapelhaven.org and i did want to mention some upcoming events that might be of interest to our viewers tonight we are doing a student panel with our asperger syndrome adult transition program called stories from the road that will be on zoom wednesday december 2nd at 5 30 and then we have a very wonderful partnership with the yale child study center and so we're going to be doing two a two-parter the first part will be about the genetics of autism on december 3rd at noon and that'll be about an hour and then the second part will be about medication mental health and autism with dr roger joe and that'll be the following week at noon and then if you're really jazzed up after tonight and you want to learn more about us we will be having our next virtual open house on saturday january 16th so there's my email see de carlo at chapelhaven.org and let me know if you're interested in any of those things all right so next i'm going to turn this over to andrew komarow to give us the big picture about why able and why able accounts thank you you're welcome go to the next slide um perfect i think um so again so one of the things that i found and i've done a lot of able account presentations around the state done some with the around the country uh able ambassador for 2020 with the able national resource center i was invited along with ray in order to at the press conference with the release of the uh able accounts and one of the things that i found when i started presenting able accounts was we have to talk about the reason to consider opening an able account so as excited as we are that connecticut has a an able account and that's why ray's here today it did want to take a few minutes to explain some of the reasons to open an able account because on one hand yes it's good for everyone to save money and saving money is never a bad thing but there's also the part about government benefits and services so it's not necessarily a government benefit presentation but i have found it's good to do just a real brief overview so i really like to simplify government benefits into three parts mainly two and again this is a very condensed version there's money which is pretty self-explanatory somebody gives me money or is it or it's i pay money to the state treasurer's office for my taxes there's medical insurance and that's medicare medicaid and then there's also housing so when it comes to social security there are two main social security there is social security disability ssdi and there's supplemental social security and that so normally ssdi pays benefits for disabled workers who are unable to work regardless of you know their income and resources and that is income from other investments or real rental property and ssi is anyone who is unable to work but it's limited income and resources and the reason i mention these is because the relationship so there's ssi means medicaid so a lot of times if people say they're receiving social security rather than ask them which social security they're on i will ask them if they're on medicaid or medicare again short of seeing documents it can be a good way to help answer the question ssi is the gateway to medicaid so in order to qualify for ssi you can have more than 2 000 to your name connecticut is something of a technicality called a 209 b state that is the reason why our medicaid limit is sixteen hundred dollars for all intents and purposes you can't have more than sixteen hundred dollars into a bank account that is one of the reasons why i find it's a good starter for mentioning well an able account is exempt from that so an ssi in medicaid medicaid is also husky husky a c or d are all versions of medicaid so and again just because you get ssi doesn't automatically mean you get medicaid in connecticut but essentially it does most of the time when an individual turns 18 is when they'll apply for medicaid and get approved prior to 18 the assets and income of the parent are counted that of the child which really means again you know the income's really low the asset limit i find very much generally speaking most children are not eligible for ssi prior to 18. ssdi and medicare so medicare is not just for the elderly right which is not that elderly it's only 65. medicare is also for those who are disabled and who qualify for ssdi now you need to be on ssdi for two years in order to qualify for medicare there are certain exceptions but for the most part it's two years one other important note is there's something called the dac disabled adult child benefit doesn't the government have such great terms for describing things and what this means is when a parent passes away retires becomes disabled themselves the child even if they've never worked will get to receive ss what looks like traditional social security ssdi in addition to then qualifying for medicare so they can be on medicare and medicaid and be getting an ss uh we'll call it ssdi payment it's called the dac it's very very common but one of the most important benefits if not the most important benefit is what comes from having medicaid and that is the paying for the services so there's medicaid is health insurance right and health insurance is great it's important to have but it's the services and support that come with dds it's things that chapelhaven is funded again medicaid partially right and that is from the medicaid as a service that is many times the most valuable benefit an individual receive and that is one of the reasons an able account is so important is an able account can help an individual save and still qualify for medicaid again i have some nice little just overviews and graphs explaining a little bit of the difference between medicare and medicaid so just again to overly simplify ssi is medicaid ssdi is medicare you can absolutely have both medicaid is husky and medicaid is the gateway to services with that unless there's any questions i'll turn it over to ray thank you andrew um first thank you i'm excited to be here to talk to everyone about able ct the treasurer's program for abel in state of connecticut uh thank you to chapel haven for um organizing this event and um also uh very happy to be uh presenting online alongside andrew a big fan of his and his knowledge um my name is renault levesque i'm the deputy uh chief investors investment officer at st at the state of connecticut office of the treasurer um i have oversight for the chat program the higher the 529 program for the state of connecticut the recently established able program or 529 a as well as various duties within the pension fund management division um it's been almost about a year uh for me to be at the state of connecticut so very excited to be part of the family here and um my and i also have a son uh in uh in the community so my son has down syndrome and this is almost also labor of love for me as well so i'm very excited to talk to you about that and um you know my background is really you know 22 plus years in investment management across both the public and private sectors uh so i'm really more of a finance guy but uh with with with the 529 program and the 529a able program uh these are our treasure wooden um marquee programs for the state of connecticut and how he's trying to make a difference and we'll talk a little bit about that as you'll see on the next slide um andrew talked a little bit about the history of uh of a talk a little bit about abel and for connecticut specifically we all know that the law was established in 2014 uh that gave um that was federal the federal government established that but for connecticut uh in 2015 the state legislature passed legislation allowing the state treasurer to implement the federal law in connecticut um you know there was a different treasure at the time and you know we have a new treasurer treasurer sean t wooden who was elected in uh 2019 who came into into the into connecticut and the first thing he did is made it a priority uh to get abel off the ground and um through our rfp process uh that we went through an rfp process is really a competitive bid process that that the state does for uh engaging in in contracts what we wanted to do is select the best partner for connecticut for the connecticut residents so in october uh october 15th treasurer wooden officially launched able ct and that's the savings program for abel in connecticut so a little quote from sean and if you for those who you probably well know who sean t wooden is he made a quote here and uh i want to just mention it it's well overdue for connecticut to help individuals living with disability to achieve greater financial independence expand self-reliance and increase access to opportunities and that's exactly what able ct program will provide treasure wooden is very serious about this program and about making a difference in the lives of all residences of connecticut and um you know hopefully to talk a little bit about that in particular the mission of chapel haven lends itself well for able to provide uh this type of support to be able to allow a resident residences to to to live normal lives and now we hope that you know able the able ct program will make a difference for this uh constituency here as well as throughout the state so let's talk a little bit about able ct and i'll give you a little bit of the inside ball game of what's happening here um so that you have a better idea of all of the things that happened behind the scenes um beyond just going to the website so the way treasure wooden structured the program was to partner with the national able alliance and you may not know who they are but the national alliances is a consortium about 18 states now with connecticut that all kind of group together to be able to provide uh an able program in each individual respective state um the pro the alliance is one of the largest groups that are have organized to do this and every state can implement it their own way uh but but with the consortium you know connecticut gets the ability to leverage on leverage off of other states and other implementations to be able to offer the best program for uh for persons with disabilities the alliance represents about 25 percent of the national able eligible population right now we hope that you know and and part of the end alliance allows you to be able to allows connecticut to be able to have a voice in enacting changes in legislation to be able to benefit the program for for persons with disabilities so for example um there is a legislative there is a bill to raise the age limit um you know on able eligible account owners and that would help the program tremendously by allowing it to to grow into and to recap more to be able to be applicable to more individuals uh particularly folks from the armed services so you know that's things that the alliance helps us to kind of pull together our ideas to be able to you know to keep up with what's happening and to advocate on the behalf of us of of connecticut the other thing that able ct offer offers is high high quality features so it's low-cost index based investment options uh a checking account to be able to pay for eligible expenses um access your savings online and the other thing that that's important about able ct is that it allows folks to be able to not only access online but to pick up the phone and call someone and you know these days a lot of a lot of services are going you know digital and oftentimes it's hard to get someone on the phone um one thing about able ct is that if you call between hours of nine or five monday through friday you'll get someone and you'll be able to talk through any questions you may have about the program about your eligibility any questions about the investment options checking and i and we feel that that's very important and in addition to that it's multilingual um the last thing i'll talk about is account oversight and security as you may hear you know there's these days with everything that's going online there's a lot of um ability for to not have good protections for account owners and one thing that the alliance through the partner that implements the program at census does is they provide that account oversight to help account owners so you can trust that there is you know multiple layers of of account oversight and security the last thing i already talked about is really the customer service um you know we try to make it accessible to all you know the widest population that we can and uh we feel that that services is very superior in answering questions that you may have about able ct and you know last thing is that our focus is really to deliver to connecticut residents is the best um in class able savings program so one of the ability one of the things that we we felt was important is to make it easy to understand and use so you know and investing is a very it could be a challenging um endeavor you know particularly for folks who you know your folks may be familiar with 401ks and you know there's a lot of different investment options that you can choose from but you know with ablect we we make it very easy to just look at six different risk-based investment options and those investment options are catered for risk tolerance so if you go from conservative to aggressive you figure out where you want to be in that spectrum of of of of investing your your your savings and that is is invested in market with with top-tier um investment managers uh managers such as vanguard charles schwab blackrock and sally may and as i talked about before there's a checking option that allows you to contribute to you know to an fdic insurer checking account and you get to use a a debit card to be able to withdraw money for qualified disability expenses we also think this is a very important option to be able to allow your money to grow but also to access your money to pay for expenses um last thing i'll talk about which i've already kind of discussed is really the user experience and we want everyone to take a look at the able ct website the the url is ct.savewithable.com if you just type able ct in your web browser you should be able to pull it up and that the website is very easy uh to navigate and to use uh it only takes a couple of minutes to open up account and the thing that we want to do is make it easy to it's on as little as 15 minutes uh it can be done online but also you can call up um you can do it through paper as well so for folks who are not uh comfortable with the technology there are forms that you can access and download and you can fill it out over paper and then and mail that in um same thing as you could also call someone on the on the support line customer service line and you can get that assistance that you may need the other thing that we wanted to highlight here is this you gift which is the ability to to have friends and families make contributions to able accounts and it's it's a free free easy to use service that allows others to do that and that could be done on the website itself uh so we we ask everyone who is interested to you know talk to your financial advisor about able ct um you know firms such as andrew who provides a service can can can help out as well as others uh but also visit the website and uh and take a look and um we we've we hope that you find it to be very easy to use very easy to set up and we we feel that and the treasurer wouldn't knows it would make a big difference in the lives of our community in connecticut with that i'll pass back over to andrew actually ray real quick we do have a question that came in who manages the fund and can you let it grow sorry over the years or are there restrictions about taking money out can it compound up to a hundred thousand dollars of contributions or market value okay so i think the question is who manages the fund and can the and um are there restrictions on redrawing the the savings out is that the two questions correct and then it looks like there's a third that says can it compound up to a hundred thousands of dollars or contributions or market value right okay so for the first for the first question that's a very good question thank you for asking um the the fund management is done well it's two two two parts of the answer one it's administered by the census uh record keeping college savings program there it's a firm that administers the program uh for us as well as the other states in the consortium um the actual investments are are are managed by the four firms that i mentioned uh earlier vanguard blackrock charles schwab and sally may and those are blended portfolios and and those firms are if you look on the website you'll see the different allocations based on risk tolerance and then you should you know and there'll be different weightings to those different uh investment managers those are index options that are high quality and those firms are very very reputable uh in the industry um questions about restrictions uh the restricted your money will grow in those allocations over time and and you're able to choose the allocation there are restrictions on on how many changes you can make i i don't have the specific number uh to be able to quote but there are some restrictions that you can't day trade in and out of these in vehicles but there are going to be restrictions the money will compound the longer you leave it in obviously with the market and if you're a long-term investor um you know that the the the assets will you know over time diversify um you know but with respect to the time that you you started so if you have a long time horizon uh it gives a lot more opportunity for the money to for your savings to grow as you make contributions to it and i think to oh piggyback all right i'm sorry um so it is two a year although i find most people don't ever even move out of the investments other than that right or more than two a year i don't run into that being an issue it's the same as the chet the 529 um i will answer the question from dwr uh within the next part of the slide the other thing i did want to address too is there's a hundred thousand dollars when you get over a hundred thousand the payments for ssi are suspended that is a hundred thousand dollar balance that's not contributions and how the contributions can be spent is also something i'm going to talk about momentarily so right did you have anything else i'm sorry to steal this no no no you absolutely covered it andrew um that was the last part of the question you're right it is two times uh and then uh the hundred thousand dollars is a is a limit uh but your benefits from from andrew you could probably talk about this a little bit better the benefits are are suspended or don't disappear so there's not going to be a uh a disadvantage or something that that that um that um is a a negative um obviously hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money uh to grow an account uh too uh but there are some some limits around that nature can talk more about it yeah ray promised me that within five years my ten thousand dollars would be a hundred thousand for the stellar investment management of the state treasurer okay i'm glad this is being recorded so um and ray do you want to answer that one question for you before we get started the account management fees and the account opening fees yeah um there are a number of that could be a longer discussion but there are there are some fees that are going to be they're going to be applied to the account uh with some uh based on the options that you choose um let me i'll come back and see if i can answer that in a couple of minutes after um after you you could go on i'll answer that at the end of the presentation okay perfect so a fi enable account is also called a 529 a and if you've heard 529 before that's because the chat in connecticut the college savings connecticut higher education trust is called the 529. it was modeled after very similar regulation that's also one of the reasons i believe that we have this age limit the disability had to occur prior right because it was really you know for the individuals who wanted to save when an individual was younger again as an alternative to college and i think that it's rooted in that benefit so what's really nice about a 529a enable account is money you take out it doesn't impact any benefits ssi snap hud additionally if you have fifty thousand dollars in an able account then it does not count towards your sixteen hundred dollar limit and again i'm going to use the sixteen hundred dollar limit because in connecticut that is medicaid and we always go with the lowest common denominator as far as qualifying for benefits as a general rule so again we've done a little bit overview of enable something that i do get a lot of questions on is what is considered a qualified disability expense so this is what you are able to take it money out of an able account for now a really important note and this is the same for college savings chats and it's the same for abel's is it's only the money that it makes has to be used for a higher education or what's called a qualified disability expense so if you put in 10 000 into enable and ray grew it to twenty thousand in a month then i'm able to take out the first ten thousand use it on whatever i want i could go to vegas the other 10 000 the money i made that has to be used for a qualified disability expense and you can see the list here and what i can say is if you can justify it as a reason right and it's for the individual then it's probably okay i've really only run into one instance where i felt it was not okay uh and actually the last time i mentioned this i think that person was actually on the call but it was uh it was a provider wanted to build a new gazebo or in a ramp for the gazebo and it was a large population and that really wasn't just for the individual right the gazebo it benefited everyone at the church so i said that really wasn't the reason if it was a ramp for the individual and they had a wheelchair okay but building a gazebo that's like saying i need a new deck i don't know that quite qualifies but for the most part i i find a lot of people get very stuck on what it can be used for it can absolutely be used for basically anything at chapel haven i don't think anything at chapel haven it wouldn't cover so i do want to say that you have to stretch really hard to find something that it can't be used for so please don't not use the money definitely go spend it at the chapel having gift shop they didn't send me tell me to say that i'm actually don't even know if they have a gift shop i'm just assuming okay andrew one other question we talked about what we you can take money out to use um there was a question can you transfer money from a chat to an able account yeah so yes you can and i was gonna get to that but i'll answer it now you can transfer up to the limits so if you can do fifteen thousand dollars a year into an able account you can move fifteen thousand from a chat into an able account so you are able to do that um now you are able to do a little bit more if an individual is working so but you are still stuck with the limits if you have 50 000 in a chat you can't just move it all to enable account and uh lisa so to clarify um it is the total max it is the market value so it is not the contribution sorry i thought i answered that so the hundred thousand is market value who is eligible individuals with significant disabilities that was onset prior to age 26. so what this means is the disability occurred prior to age 26. i'll give you a great example i have an able account myself i have not yet transferred mine to connecticut mostly because i'm just too busy i've been too busy so mine's with massachusetts fidelity and i was diagnosed with autism at 28. i am still able to open an able account because you're born with autism so anyone with autism no matter when it was diagnosed they had the disability at an onset prior to age 26. if an individual is on ssi ssdi that makes them automatically eligible if you are not on ssi or ssdi then you need to have a letter from a doctor which is what i did you know certifying the disability and i i don't think that's ever even questioned it's probably not even checked by anyone um but you are supposed to submit a letter in connecticut it's one letter certain other states it's different so it can be established by the beneficiary which is the able account holder the person with a disability parent legal guardian agent under a durable power of attorney so able account contributions are made post-tax again if you're familiar with the chat in a 529 very very similar they are not deductible for federal income tax purposes in connecticut able account contributions are currently not deductible but you are able to contribute to a chat and you are able to then move it into an able account right thereafter you are able to do that in connecticut whether you're moving to connecticut's able account hopefully or if you're moving to another able account so there was some legislation pending last year on to make able contributions tax deductible at a state level with covet in the crisis that bill never got anywhere but that is something that we're going to keep an eye on in the next legislative session in connecticut especially now that connecticut does have its own able account a very nice feature is the money does grow tax-free for what we called qualified disability expenses which again is essentially anything that you can justify i mean i like to hold a contest for people to try to come up with something that's not a justifiable expense it almost certainly is right it's a very very liberal definition you know cell phone computer transportation housing even clothing and sensory you know obviously anything at chapel haven right we've been through that so just the list is very long um i really encourage parents not to overthink it as well so yes all right question came in about can parents be the beneficiaries and is there a penalty if the account holder passes away so currently in connecticut there is you can make the beneficiary again whoever you want however the state has the right to be paid back first for any benefits that they've paid so if the state has paid under medicaid an individual for you know two hundred thousand dollars and there's a hundred thousand in the able account the state will get paid back first but there can be a beneficiary named for example i have a client you know i have an able account i'm not on medicaid right so my beneficiary would get the money first answer another question uh dwr vacation again as long as you can warrant that i i think i could warrant it right who doesn't need some like you know relaxation in these times so again if you can justify it in your head then i think you're good so absolutely i again i feel you know vacation would count or at least parts enough to it and remember it's only the amazing growth that rey has guaranteed and promised me from my able account that is really going to count towards needing to be a qualified expense the money you put in can be used for whatever you would like and if you move connecticut is more than happy to keep your money in ctable if you're in another state uh connecticut does not have a restriction on you opening in connecticut so if you're in the lovely state of massachusetts and you want to open one in connecticut because the investment expenses are lower and that is true then you are more than welcome able to do that so you can keep it you can move to another state there's only a few states like tennessee where you can't open one unless you live there but that's not really relevant and too technical anyway so i think i answered the majority of this already and this is again qualified disability expenses the inc you don't pay any taxes on the growth it's income tax deferred it comes out tax-free and again if you do take out money not for a qualified disability expense above your contributions that is the only time where it's subject to income tax and a 10 penalty so once again your contributions come out tax-free and it's only the gains that you have made that are subject to the qualified disability expense and the 10 tax penalty um and a good question is who reviews it i'm pretty sure nobody catherine um but i don't think that means that they can't so um ray might actually be able to answer this but you know there's if you're using the debit card too you know similar to a credit card right it keeps tracks of where you do your purchases so it's pretty easy to say hey okay best buy bought a computer right or if it's the gas station well it's probably gas right so it's not that hard to keep track of it you should i have not known anyone who's had this question or reviewed but again just because you haven't been audited by the irs doesn't mean that you shouldn't you know document either just so the audience knows the question was when you go to take the money out who would review it or want to see the reason for taking the money out that was the question oh yes yes ray do you have something dad no no i i don't um that's a good question um but yeah i mean anecdotally i mean not the treasurer's position here uh but you know it it all should be on the up and up and everyone should have some kind of documentation for it just probably good practice to have of course so i have a business when i deduct my business expenses i have documentation but i don't need to show that to the irs unless i'm audited that doesn't mean that i'm not doing everything above board but um like i said i encourage people to be a little bit more liberal on the definitions you know we have these accounts so people can save with disabilities right we want to encourage saving we want to encourage saving on disability related expenses so as long as we're doing it within the spirit of what it was intended for i i feel really comfortable recommending it that way you can put in 15 000 per year into enable unless the beneficiary is working and not contributing to a retirement plan it's above 26 000 a year or so that they are able to put in and it is a calendar year options for opening an able account yes one second i wanted to there was a question on opening account that there was an account fee question on able ct so as you're about to start this let me just give the answer it was a question from d dwr and the cost for the able account able ct is 45 paid quarterly if you have electronic statements and electronic statements make it a little bit cheaper so you save on that if you want to get paper statements it will be fifteen dollars per quarter or sixty dollars annually uh for uh and for it uh just the account itself um and then if you you h ve the debit card uh there is a i think there's a slight fee of two dollars uh you know per year so um i have the information the information is on the website i just want to give you that information for uh for dwr so and do we have any more uh so lisa the 15 000 per cap per person no so the lisa so that's a great question lisa asked there's a 15 000 per cap per person so she asked if it's a parent could it be 30 000 a year and with an able account everything is centered on the beneficiary of the able account who is the individual with a disability also you are only allowed one able account open at a time so you can't have like a very common with college savings plans you know a grandparent and a parent or somebody else open uh multiple chats so you can only have one able account and it's the total for the individual with the disability is what matters so the cap is per the person with the disability that was a great question lisa did you see the one above that to andrew about can a parent open an account for their child but the parent retain control of the spending from the able account yeah don't tell your child and hide the debit card i i mean that's i i mean that that's the answer right um i mean it's again assuming you have all the legal permissions and authorities to be able to do that right you know if you have a bank account for someone and you don't tell them then you know then there's nothing they can do however i will add that i do think an able account is a great way to help teach an individual maybe some spending and i do find that a lot of parents should be using an able account in the debit card as an opportunity knowing that they won't be around forever knowing it's good to try to teach some financial independence which i am a big fan of so i find given that they're able to track what the individual's spending it can be a very limited dollar amount so you know you can control how much individual spending by loading the debit card so not all the money in the able account is available on the debit card you have to load it on the debit card uh correct right yes the money comes yeah the money comes from the savings investment so you can move it into the the checking option and then they'll be available to you to be able to use the debit card option but for those um there are those part um account owners who want to just use the checking option that's also available to you as well so if they are working and they're not really taking advantage of the or they have allocated to the the risk-based portfolios they could also use the checking option just for their usual daily expenses exactly so um oh dwr uh great question couldn't could inheritance be earmarked to enable account the answer is yes but it should oh it should never be that's that's a poor idea and i could go into why if we have time um again you know i think my wife tells me just because i can do something doesn't mean i should so i think we should uh take get to that if we have some time at the end again funding enable account um so you can roll over from a chat or from other states able 529 ongoing contributions check direct deposit i i don't think the treasurer's office takes bitcoin yet but for the most part pretty much anything or any way you can you know contribute the money to them they're eligible uh some employers are you know if an employer wants to work with again somebody like me to help set up automatic deposits for employees and able accounts for example we offer that to our employees they're able to do that so there's lots of ways to be able to fund an able account uh you just go online direct deposit send it in however yeah and now and i'll just make a quick comment here um yeah the rollovers are are allowed in the able ct program uh one thing that we the treasurer's office wants to do is we want to make able ct more widely used in connecticut and that allows us to be able to advocate on the on your behalf with the legislative legislature in connecticut to be able to you know get more benefits for the able program so you know we encourage you to you know consider thinking about it and uh you're opening up your account at connecticut uh but also thinking about rolling over if you're in another state to connecticut to be able to have your voice count uh and allows the treasurer to be able to to um to do that within the state and uh elaine asks can a person with an able account even if they have another account at which the ssi funds are deposited the answer is absolutely a lot of times the deposit with ssi right as a separate bank account and for example if you're a rep payee you know um having an able account you know is again a different type of savings account so absolutely can have multiple accounts good question so again as far as opening enable account goes if you're transferring from another state into connecticut and again connecticut will have the lower the lowest fees right do you know if we charge out of state residents more if they want to use connecticut table or is it okay same for everyone correct yeah that was a question that i think richard asked as well so glad you brought it up uh yeah the same fees uh for both in-state and out-of-state there are no differences which which is a great question because you know some states like ohio for example do charge a little bit more if you're an out-of-state resident uh so connecticut does have some a very low expenses a little lower than really any of the other states that are available to us so you are able to move from another state to connecticut just keep in mind that you can't have to open at the same time so you open one and you fill up some very simple paperwork one thing i find is investment companies one of the things where they're the most helpful to you is when you're trying to give them money so i find that if you have an issue where you're trying to move money from another state into ctable i find them to be very supportive of that so if anyone's ever moved from an ira or retirement plan over then you know it's very easy elaine asks do you need a financial advisor to navigate the able account options as a financial advisor i would say no i would say if you're not sure what to do i would just pick the most conservative investment option or cash if you haven't invested before the nice thing about ctable is you don't have to pick all these options right there's you know um cash you know like a checking or savings account there's conservative moderate and aggressive the more risk you take the more money you'll make and again if you're looking to you know grow it a lot and you don't need to touch it for a long time right similar to if you're younger you'd invest more aggressively you can be more aggressive if you simply want an open enable account more for the benefits of protecting your assets put it in an fdic insured you know checking savings account i will say that there's you know i less than a few advisors in the entire state of connecticut including myself who i think could even speak to the pros and cons of an able account three or four but we've made it so you don't need to talk to people like me about enable account and when i am advising individuals on able accounts it's more about the parts that we're talking about today how to open one why to open one the actual investment options are so simple i actually don't even need to advise my clients on them and connecticut's done a great job of making that really simple so i'm going to go over just a really quick couple minutes on special needs trusts uh this does answer a question from dwr we do not have an attorney with us today which um means this presentation will be a lot shorter and in a good way but no um so i bring this up because there's really two types of special needs trust there's what's called a first party and that means it's an individual's money they're approved by the state they're very regulated they're they're a pain now the reason an individual has oh and by the way being a pain is a technical legal term in my in the financial world so in case anyone's curious so but a first party special needs trust is when individual has the money first so let's say that ray and i are discussing able accounts tonight and ray takes me to dinner okay and we're discussing who wants to pay for dinner and ray gives me 50 ray gives me a hundred dollars because he took me to capitol grill and i gave the waiter the check to pay for dinner well that was my money so that was that would be a first party so even though i paid you know for dinner he gave me the money first i touched the money so for example this is very common when there's a lawsuit or a law settlement or money's left to an individual when and again money's left to an individual without setting up a trust otherwise they have to do what's called a first party special needs trust and these just like the able account do have a medicaid clawback but they also have lots of other not nice features trust pay higher taxes there's trust accounting they have to be approved by the state there's oversight they're they're a mess they're a nightmare so when it comes to a first party special needs trust right it's always better not to use my money right so if again we're at dinner capital grill i want to get ready to pay for dinner and i don't ever want to touch it at all so that would be what i we would call a third party special needs trust so a third party would be the example where rey just pays for dinner directly he uses um the treasurer's corporate card he pays for dinner i never took the money so that's better it's always better to use somebody else's money to pay for dinner is the way i look at it now the one of the reasons it's better beyond the flexibility is there is no payback provision right because it was never the individual's money in the first place so it's usually less expensive it's it's the way when a parent or somebody is looking to leave money to an individual with a disability you know a third party special needs trust is the way to do it not saying that first party special needs trust don't have a place they absolutely do but if they can be avoided then they should be now one last thing about trusts is oh and i really like this slide i like this image i just think it's funny more than anything else but [Laughter] um so but one other really important thing is when it comes to third-party special needs trust there's two kinds there is one that is in your will and then there is one that that is created separate from your will i am making an over generalization because i'm not an attorney and therefore i'm allowed to do that you almost always want a separate document it's usually a little extra money with an attorney but it is so much cheaper in the long run and it's a lot more flexibility and a lot better what i like to tell parents is this is one of the most important things you'll ever do because you won't be around when it matters for when it's being set up so i find it so important to make sure that it's done correctly so it's a little less expensive to in the will say after i pass set up a special needs trust for so and so what i find is a lot better is you're able to set up the special needs trust now and you can specify the terms you can specify the details you can specify who will manage the money who will do all of these things the trust doesn't need to be funded for all intents and purposes beyond maybe the extra few hundred dollars or a little more you might pay the attorney you would never know the difference because it's still only funded after something happens to you another example is if you have more than one person who wants to leave money to a special needs beneficiary then if it's a what's called a testamentary trust in the will if you had six people and i use six because it's a real example i've seen it you would need six separate special needs trusts right instead what i usually find is well ask the rich uncle or the grandparent to pay for the special needs trust then you can use it too i always again if you can't tell i'm a big fan of using other people's money um when possible so you know that's there's a lot of reasons to have what's called a stand-alone special needs trust and you know there's reasons to have all of these other types of trust they exist i am making an over-generalization now an able account is not an alternative to a special needs trust they do have lots of commonalities but an able account is easy to open you can open in a couple minutes right and it empowers the individual when it comes to any of these other types of trusts the individual needs to go and ask for money the individual can't buy groceries right they can't you know have any really sort of financial true financial independence that to me is one of the best features about enable account is the individual the able account holder can decide what they want to save for what they want to do it for right when it comes to a special needs trust the trustee could say i don't want to pay for your new computer i don't want to pay for your food i don't want to you know pay for those things so you know that is one of the really nice things about enable account so i think that everyone if they're eligible should open an able account and if you're thinking about whether you should open one or not you just should it's never a bad idea to save money so i really strongly recommend just getting started saving money open enable account with the again state of connecticut they make it really easy also a lot of states like ohio won't even let you do paper it's only online so i do like that connecticut does have the option for people to be able to do a paper application if they would like to but they do have online as well and it's very easy it's never a bad idea to save money the trusts are a little bit more complicated a longer discussion but you can have i most people who have a trust should also have an able account but i think everyone who qualifies should have an able account saving money tax-free is never a bad thing andrew you came in almost right at 7 30 there perfect you have it down to a sign so christy how are we doing uh lisa just ssi should technically because it just suspends ssi medicaid is up to i don't know some level like 400 000 however lisa i will say that if you're very concerned about funding enable account and you're very concerned about getting over that hundred thousand dollars you should probably be talking to financial advisor slash estate planning attorney to consider other options as well such as third party special needs trust in the payback provision not that you shouldn't have an able account but again given all the questions about that especially if it's a concern um you know it shouldn't be as much of a concern if that makes sense you know spend the money on something if you want ideas i mean i could give you plenty of ways to spend money too yeah so we did well andrew and ray both incorporated all the questions throughout so if there's no final questions then we thank you all thank you again thank you thank you for having us thank you thank you email it uh can you you can give people my email if you'd like to if they just have more questions or if anybody does on able account i'm always happy to answer um i consider a part of my advocacy not you know my business i don't try to sell you an able account i just think they're great and everyone should have one who's eligible yeah and the only thing i'll say is that if if you have any feedback from any anyone on the on ct.savewithable.com uh we'll always be happy to take a look at and listen to uh feedback to make it better so thank you very much for having us thank you okay thanks so much have a great holiday everyone thank you