How To Sign West Virginia Travel Agency Agreement

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so it's trouble one we will go ahead and get started so good afternoon and welcome everyone we're so glad that you have joined us for our second session of the webinar series making wv able work for you presented to you by disability rights of west virginia and wba bull so my name is roxanne clay and i am with the west virginia state treasurer's office and the wb able savings program which stands for achieving a better life experience in west virginia please also welcome tiana hardy and roy mallory with disability rights of west virginia they will serve as our co-hosts for today's session and for those of you that are not familiar w v able is a savings program that allows many individuals with disabilities to save and invest without jeopardizing their eligibility for federal benefit programs such as ssi or medicaid so today's session is titled wb able easy to enroll easy to use it is the second of eight webinar sessions in the series that is being held every tuesday at noon through december the 8th if you haven't already done so you can still register for upcoming sessions and we've included the webpage in our chat box but before we begin we want to mention a few reminders all attending microphones have been muted to eliminate any background noise you may include your questions in the chat box and we will save all questions until the end of the presentation closed captioning and a sign language interpreter are available for all sessions you can find and click closed captioning at the bottom of your screen for the sign language interpreter you can find her video tile it's titled sign language interpreter ashley right click that tile and choose pin video for technical issues please include a message in the chat box that's being monitored by our co-hosts we have one hour of social work continuing ed that has been approved for this session for those that are seeking social work continue credit please ensure that you have emailed wv able at wvsto.com to let us know that you are requesting social work continuing in credit for your attendance include your full name and email address and if you've already emailed you don't have to do it again if you're attending the rest of the sessions or more sessions we do we are we're keeping an ongoing list at this time though go ahead and include your full name in the chat box toward the end of the session a link to the survey will be included in the chat box and that will also need to be completed especially by those that are seeking social work continuing ed and we also want to thank west virginia university center for excellence in disabilities for sponsoring the social work ceus and making these available to our attendees additionally we want to take a moment and recognize our co-host disability rights of west virginia our planning committee and all the scheduled presenters w v able would also like to acknowledge and thank the wva bill advisory board members for their ongoing support of wbable savings program as you can see in the slide the members are made up of numerous organizations and entities that serve and or advocate for people with disabilities they play a huge role in informing individuals around the state about the program and of course wv able program wouldn't be possible if not for the work of state treasurer john perdue he supported the many west virginia families and advocacy groups that wanted the program in our state he his staff the families and groups worked hard to bring this program to west virginia and our state became one of the first in the nation to pass local able legislation in response to the passage of the federal able act so at this time let me introduce our presenter for today's webinar session thomas hatch is the operations manager for stable account the nation's largest and most used able program he has a bachelor of arts degree in economics and masters of science in business administration both from san diego state university he began his career as a personal financial planner but later moved to ohio and transitioned to higher education where he spent 17 years administering the financial programs for the ohio state university thomas joined ohio's treasures office in august of 2017 to assist the rapid expansion of the stable account program thomas and the stable team have been busy traveling across the country talking to families disability organizations service providers other states government agencies and corporations about stable accounts welcome tom thank you roxanne i appreciate being on uh this webinar with you today and hopefully you'll find it informative as we look at uh easy ways and a quick way to be able to enroll and set up an account for those of you who would like one or can use one and also once that account is set up what are some ways in which you can use that account to your benefit these are savings and investment accounts but what we're hoping that you'll do is be able to save and invest for future expenditures or other goals that you might have and so we also want to discuss once that savings has built up what are easy ways in which you can use those savings so to start today we thought we would break the ice by asking a few questions of our audience you can answer these questions in the chat box and i will give you the answers either kind of as we go through the presentation but i'll also make sure to review them at the end so question number one is which of the following is not eligible to open an account is that the qualifying individual a b a parent c legal guardian or conservator d best friend or e power of attorney and again we'll kind of talk about this numerous times as we go through this presentation i see a couple answers in chat uh d seems like a a popular one we had somebody think maybe legal guardian excellent okay question number two when an eligible individual enrolls in an account they must provide documented evidence of eligibility is that true or false and i've i've bolded the t or f you can write t or f in the chat box for that question see a lot of a lot of truths there okay we'll answer that one as well and question number three what is the minimum initial deposit when opening the account is that a zero dollars b twenty five dollars c fifty dollars or d seventy five dollars looks like c seems to be a popular answer we got a twenty five in there all right and again we'll answer these questions as we go through but wanted to kind of start to give you an opportunity to be thinking about some of the types of of questions we'll be covering today so when we look at wanting to enroll an account where do we start and we're going to cover these four items today as we're talking about enrollment who can enroll what do i need when i enroll key considerations while enrolling and what happens after i enroll so we'll start with who can enroll this might look familiar actually question number one that we just asked related to this and this is also an interesting slide because i'll share with you in just a moment some updates to this but presently as defined by federal law there are only four individuals or groups that can enroll in an account that would be the individual with the disability otherwise known as the beneficiary or if that individual can't or doesn't have the capacity then an authorized legal representative we use the acronym alr for that can open the account on their behalf and that would be a parent a guardian or conservator or someone holding a power of attorney now i do want to mention here that uh just about two weeks ago the internal revenue service or irs which is the governing body at the federal level who oversees these accounts just issued final regulations over able accounts it was a very long document and we're still reviewing that document to understand their final rulings on a variety of issues but i can tell you that one of the major ones that we're looking at in that final document that they put together concerns who can help somebody enroll and it does appear at this point that they're going to be expanding this definition i can't get into too much detail here yet because we're still trying to understand some nuances but what you see and what we've described is applicable and it will just expand from there so if you fall into one of these categories as described you're good and then hopefully down the road we can share more positive information with you that they're opening up for other entities or other individuals to be included in that as well those new regulations by the way are final regulations are set to go into effect january 1 of next year of 2021 but they are also giving programs a two-year buffer in which to comply with or include you know some of those new rules in their plan so as we go along we'll definitely keep all of you there in west virginia informed as to how things might be changing and in what ways but generally speaking most of what they've done are to loosen up the rules a little bit and to help it you know help people to enroll and manage their accounts much more easily next item would be what do i need when i enroll so basically here if you are the individual with the disability signing up for an account for yourself then you know having contact information which is obviously your name addressing information email address phone number things like that are going to be extremely helpful also your social security number and your date of birth all of these are required pieces of information that you'll need to put into the system if you are the authorized legal representative or alr then similarly you'll need your personal contact information social security number and date of birth i will point out that for the authorized legal representative this information is only used to basically do an id verification check in no other way does it impact the account the beneficiary is the account holder so of course it's it's very important to have their social security number for tax reporting purposes and other things but if you are wanting to help them manage the account we do ask for your information just simply so we can verify that you're a real person and that you you are who you say that you are uh the final one would be banking information there is an opportunity during enrollment to set up banking instructions this would be from a personal checking or savings account that you can electronically move money back and forth between these accounts so if you want to do that during enrollment which you can also do it after it doesn't have to be done during but if you would like to establish that during then having that account number and routing number handy would be not only advisable but it will help expedite the process much faster so where do i go and what do i do if i want to open an account so first you start at west virginia wv able's website which is wvable.com and on that landing page of the website there are a couple places on that page immediately visible that you can click on to open an account one is at the very top we kind of have a header bar of various categories one is on the side the left of the page header has a very big button that says open an account any one of these links will get you to the enrollment page once you click on that you come to the enrollment page now i do want to point out here in relationship to what roxanne mentioned last week in her presentation for those of you that were there that we don't want you to be confused by the fact that this enrollment page has a stable account logo and name some people can be confused and ask well i was just on wv able's website and i come to this one and it has a different logo and a different name the reason for that is because we here in ohio stable account is our branded name just like wv able is for west virginia of our program and west virginia along with 10 other states have partnered with us to utilize this program together at significant cost savings to the state and so because of that it's just branded as our account but uh any individual nationally actually but also within any one of these 11 partner states utilizes the same system so you click on the enroll now option on the screen and that's going to take you to a screen that i'm not going to show you here but the very first screen you would come to just goes over eligibility requirements you know some of the information we already shared about things to have on hand that would be that would help in the enrollment process just a variety of information uh to share with you prior to than actually entering into the enrollment system once you click next or go past that opening screen the first place that you're going to come to is to be able to set up your username very similar to a lot of other systems you would enter your email address twice you'll need to enter that and then confirm it the important thing here is that the email address that you would enter at this point is going to be the primary one you want all correspondence from the account to go to so you know if you're a parent as an example maybe managing an account for a child you would want to put in your personal email address or whatever address that you would want to have all of the correspondent information come to to make sure you're not missing any messages from our program manager next you would fill in your username that username needs to be contain only letters and numbers needs to be 6 to 25 characters long and is not case sensitive so whether you use uppercase or lowercase it doesn't matter because when you put it in that you know the case of the letters does not affect whether it's going to be acceptable or not also the one thing i wanted to point out here is that you'll see on various occasions throughout our screen and i'll highlight it here on our presentation there's going to be little asterisks anytime you see an asterisk next to a category name that is a required field it must actually have something in it to be able to progress to the next screen so here we have some terms and conditions for the website agreement that you have to click on the box or check the box in order to be able to then move to the next screen if you want to see what those terms and conditions and agreements are you can click on that i think it's about a four page document not to too horrendous of reading and read that if you're comfortable with it and go ahead and move to the next screen after you've entered your username of course we're going to want to enter a password our system conforms to the complex password requirements which is that your password must be at least 8 to 15 characters and include at least three of the following which is an uppercase letter a lowercase letter a number or a special character if you use all four that's great makes your password even more complex and secure but you're only required to do three of the four this is becoming more common in the industry nowadays so hopefully this won't be anything new or different from what you might be used to in other types of systems and of course we'll do that twice in retyping the password just to make sure that we've confirmed the one that we want to use after your password is set we come to security questions again very common in our industry nowadays this is primarily used in case you ever want to do a personal reset of your password so that you don't have to call a customer service number if you forget you can click on the links it will ask you your security questions and allow you to be able to reset your password i've just populated in here a couple more common ones obviously there's a drop down menu that will have more options than this you can select from the option which one you want you know what is your mother's name is is a very common one what is your favorite sports team you know maybe a very common one uh but you'll need to fill in two security answers uh into the system so that they can have it on file for you to use after the security questions you've basically gotten past the initial i've established my login credentials part now we're getting into the enrollment part of the account the very first question you're going to be asked and this will determine what screens you see as we go along is are you the beneficiary opening the account for your elf or are you the author authorized legal representative opening the account for somebody else what i'm going to do on this presentation today is show you as if you marked that i am the authorized legal representative opening it for somebody else so if you do that then the very next screen that you'll see is one that asks for the authorized legal representatives information so if it was somebody signing up for themselves they would not see this screen because they wouldn't need it it would just go straight to the beneficiary screen asking them to fill in their personal information again i just point out here that any of the categories with an asterisk are required so in order to complete the screen and go to the next each of those will have to have something in the field obviously the social security number and the birth date are going to be uh key and important fields and then you have your addressing information telephone number you'll also notice at the very bottom there is a box that you can check if you wanted to enter any an alternate mailing address that might be different from your permanent address that is an option available to you and the other final reminder that i'll just mention to you is uh there is a a ruling around the date of birth that if that date is put in such that it's less than 18 years old it will automatically reject so that's a kind of a fail-safe so that you know individuals less than 18 year old 18 years old can't open an account for themselves but i thought i would just point that out in case uh you know you get a red screen saying not acceptable and you're you're trying to figure out why um that's part of the rules that you need to be at least over the age of 18 to be able to establish an account the very next screen after this that you'll go to looks almost identical so i'm not going to show it to you here on this presentation it's going to be the beneficiary information but all the information here that you see for the authorized legal representative is going to be on the beneficiary screen their name social birth date address and so forth the only difference which i'll mention is that at the very bottom of the screen on on the beneficiary page there will be one additional drop down that will ask you for state of residency so in that case you'll want to appropriately mark what state you are a resident of that is important because in our relationship as a total plan you know ohio and west virginia and the other states for those that are part of this group of states they get lower investment management fees by being a part of the team so we want to make sure that we mark that state residency appropriately and that can always be changed if you end up moving out of state but also understand that because our platform is a national platform no matter where you live you can still own the same account so if you move out of state doesn't mean you have to get a plan in the state that you're moving to you can keep the same account because it is accepted nationally so after you finish the beneficiary information the next question you will be asked is what delivery options that you want so this is your plan documents and your tax forms there's only two options either you receive them all on an e-delivery or basically they're online electronically in your account or do you want them sent to you through the mail if you choose the mail option they will actually be available in both circumstances you will be available have them available online along with receiving a copy in the mail but do understand that if you have choose the option to have them mailed to you there is a 10 annual print and mail charge that our program manager has to cover the cost of mailing those out to you so our suggestion is you know do the e-delivery route it is an online program all of the all of the documentation the plan documents forms quarterly statements will all be available online but if you'd like the mail mail that's your choice just understand there will be a 10 annual charge so once you've clicked on the tr accepting of the terms and conditions of the delivery options we go to our next screen now this is a pretty busy one with the way that i've i've set it up for those seeing the presentation so there are four main questions on eligibility that will need to be answered on this next screen question number one is what is your authority to sign up for this account so you would select i'm the parent i'm the legal guardian i have a power of attorney or i'm the beneficiary myself i'm the eligible individual so again thinking back to that first question we asked as we started the the presentation today these are the ones currently defined as authorized to open the account with the possibility going forward of having some expansion to that next one is what is the basis of eligibility if you were on the presentation last week with roxanne she went over these eligibility requirements i won't talk a lot about them there but you have a drop down to select which one things like i'm entitled to or receiving supplemental security income or ssi i'm entitled to or receiving ssdi or social security disability insurance i have a condition that's on the ssa compassionate allowance list or i'm self-certifying a disability that has been been diagnosed by a licensed physician i will tell you on these options again this is a screen that i'm not going to show you in the presentation today but if you select the option that you're self-certifying with a doctor's diagnosis there will be an additional pop-up screen after this one that will ask you for information around that diagnosis like what what was the date who was the doctor stuff like that i'm not going to show you that screen but if you choose that just understand there will be some information around that certifying occurrence that you'll need to input into the system as well finally uh out of these three main selections here you'll need to put in or if you're asked to put in what the disability type is these are just very generic sort of industry codes you know we would ask you to select one it is a required field frankly this just helps us as a program to help us understand you know what types of disabilities individuals with these accounts have in general categories so that we can you know better understand how to do outreach and how to support all of those various groups the other final one that i'll put that sometimes kind of sneaks by people because it's sort of down here at the bottom and that is this this section down here where you're gonna check if the beneficiary's disability is considered permanent and there's a little check box here if if you do check the box saying yes then it will ask you it'll bring up a a typable box that will ask you to describe more that box is relatively irrelevant i mean if you just want to write something like you know born with a disability or you know something like that it's fine we're not going to scrutinize it heavily but the important thing about whether you check the box or not is is this if the disability is considered permanent then each year you will not be asked to recertify the disability if the disability is not considered permanent then there is an annual recertification process so every january first or you know right around there you'll get a message from a program manager saying can you log into your account and re-certify that this account holder this beneficiary still has this disability so if you want to avoid that recertification uh process every year because you know the beneficiary does indeed have a permanent disability then you can go ahead and check this box and and that will forego having to do that every year um yes next after that after you've finished the eligibility requirements then we can go to the investment options this to be honest with you is one of the uh it's not a tricky screen from the standpoint that it's difficult but over the program's history we've we've noticed that this becomes a more difficult screen for a lot of participants because they may be less familiar with it and they might not know what to do here so did want to explain a couple different options about the investment options so there's some text up there that we'll talk to you about how your total needs to equal 100 some other things to think about but the important part here is at this stage you have two options so you can either you know choose your investment options now or you can choose our default investment option which will put you 100 percent into the bank safe and then you can you know deal with other possible investment options later so let me describe a couple key important things item number one i wanted to let everybody know that that myself the west virginia's treasurer's office anybody on our customer service team none of us by by law can legally give you investment advice so if you want to come to us and ask us to advise you on what to choose unfortunately we can't that is part of the law if you happen to be associated with or know a financial planner or registered investment advisor or you know a trusted friend or somebody that you want to ask you know that would be okay but unfortunately nobody involved with this program can give you such advice but one of the things that we did with this default investment option choice number two which i'm kind of showing here is maybe help take some of the guesswork out of it so the bank safe as described last week on the presentation is our fdic insured savings account so it's an account in which you're not going to earn as much interest but it's not going to lose any money either right so it's a very safe very stable account so what a lot of people do just as as a suggestion is they might start with a bank safe that when they get the account finalized and funded then they have the opportunity once they feel comfortable with everything to look at changing that down the road and current federal rules are that you have two opportunities in a calendar year to move your money to different investment options so maybe you start out in the bank safe you start adding a little bit more money once it gets up to a significant balance or you feel more comfortable with understanding what these investment options are you can always go back into the system and move that money around to different options or you could just choose your options now just know that if you choose the options and fill in percentages in these boxes that they just need a you know equal 100 here at the bottom uh in order for you to continue to the next screen so once you see a hundred percent with like the green outline box then you're good to go and it will allow you to move to the next screen so after your investment options we go to our contribution options so within contribution options there's there's primarily two main options here you can either contribute electronically and that is we call it ach that's just a term for electronic transfer or you can do it by check and the minimum initial hint hint question that we had at the beginning of the presentation here is fifty dollars we do like this to emphasize that that fifty dollars is not a fee that's just to create a balance in the account that is all your money but it just creates a balance in the account and gets things started if you choose to do it by check at the end of the enrollment when you get your success screen it will have instructions on that screen as to where to send the check and as long as as it's for 50 or more then that will go in fund the account and you're good to go if you want to do it electronically we just need to make sure to get through the process of getting that account set up and verify the bank account either checking or savings and then you can process a transfer that can go back you know back and forth but in this case from your account into the stable account here you also have the option on the screen to set up recurring contributions if you would like to for sort of an automatic you know savings that's going to be of course if you set up a bank account and maybe you say just to have a a regular routine i want to transfer a certain amount of money from that account into my stable account every month on a certain date that is an option you can set up and then also rollover contribution so here's another interesting one by law each individual in an able plan can only ever have one account so if you happen to have opened an account with another plan and you've thinking to yourself oh i live in west virginia now or i mistakenly opened it into a different plan but i really want to be in west virginia's plan for some of the great benefits like the tax deduction and the fact that there's no um you know with exceptions that was covered last week but some of the the medicaid recovery laws are different for west virginia residents in their plan so you can roll over or transfer from that other plan into the west virginia plan or into a stable account and you can use that as the option to fund the account so you need to open the account first and then once the paperwork is done and and the money's moved from the other account into this new account then that can be used as your funding vehicle also you can roll over amounts from college 529 savings accounts that was another law that came in a few years ago you could also also potentially use that as your funding source as well just understand that with the college savings that is subject to the annual contribution limits a maximum currently of fifteen thousand dollars per year so you know if you have a pretty large college saving account that you wanna to bring into the plan unfortunately you may not be able to do it all in one at one time you may need to spread that over some years because there is a limit on how much you can transfer in per year but these are all ways in which you can fund the account as mentioned last week on the presentation from roxanne one of the preferable ways is by check and she can even provide you some resources there some envelopes that have already been pre-addressed and some other things if you get a hold of her to help facilitate that and once you've selected your contribution options then from there it's it's uh finishing out the rest of the enrollment um i'm not going to show you some of the rest of the screens most of them are just confirming the information that you have the very final screen before you're finished is a a certification screen so i'll use this one to describe one of the answers to one of the questions at the very beginning so what what we do with our program is we do everything on a on a self certification or self attestation basis and the very final screen you'll come to will have a variety of questions that you'll then certify uh you know under penalty of perjury and in those legal terms that that you know the information that you've entered is correct and true that you are indeed authorized for the account and so forth and then you select that and that is for us good enough to enroll and open and use the account so we do not require actual documentation from our account owners as far as what their disability is no documentation like if you are an authorized legal representative with the power of attorney we don't require you to send us a copy of that power of attorney if you're a guardian or a conservator we don't require you to send in any paperwork proving that you are in that position but what we do ask you to do is to keep all of that documentation on hand for yourself in case it's ever asked for again the irs currently is the governing body at the federal level they could come back at some future time and you know we all hate the word audit but audit or ask for further information and that could be possibly something that they ask for is for you to show evidence that you know that you qualify for the account or that you have the capacity to be managing the account because you have a power of attorney or whatever other circumstance so we don't require it keep it on hand and have it there as evidence in case it's ever asked for next after you finish that enrollment you get that success screen and we're all cheering and for you and happy uh what are some of the next steps what o we do after that enrollment is finalized and i want to go over three things that i think are very critical because these can trip up people once the account is opened from potentially getting the account finalized and usable so number one is funding the account as we mentioned so if you selected to send in a check then you know make sure that you send the check in you know that you print out the page that shows the mailing instructions you put the check in send it in to our program manager they're actually in jacksonville florida gets processed you're all good to go if you set up the electronic banking instructions which goes into the second point that i'm going to mention here then you want to make sure that that gets uh finished and one of the things often trips up people there is that we currently use a micro deposit process in order to verify the bank account so what that means is that once you've given our program manager the the routing number and account number for your bank within a couple business days they will make two very small that's the word micro very small deposits these are going to be pennies you know two cents five cents something very small there will be two of them you will then need to go into your bank get those numbers go back into your stable account and at the appropriate screen put those numbers in uh once that happens then that verifies that the system knows that this account is yours and good and that it's not a stolen account or some other kind of thing like that and it will finish the verification your account will be good to go and then you can move the money one of the big problems we see sometimes is people will put in their banking information the micro deposits go out and then they forget to check or they don't know that the micro deposits are there and if it goes longer than 15 days then those micro deposits no longer become they're no longer usable they go kind of what we call stale meaning that you'd have to re-initiate the whole process again and have new microdeposits deposited if you haven't finished and completed the process within 15 days so that's an important one to do if you go that route make sure to get those micro deposit amounts come back in the account put them into the systems that you can verify the bank account and then you'll be good to go the other one that can trip people up at times is identity verification so as you might suppose uh this is a program in which we want to make sure that individuals that are signing up are doing it appropriately and they are who who they say they are so we do have an identity verification process believe it or not this is actually going on in the background as the enrollment is taking place and it will go out and search public records and look for things such as matching up your name with your social security number um you know your name with with address information and so forth we do realize that because of the nature of individuals with disabilities there may be especially the beneficiaries may not have a lot of public information available they may not have lived out on their own thus not having you know utility bills or or you know rental costs or they might live in in a group home or some other setting in which a lot of that is covered through the living arrangement and so they don't have a lot of things to their name so because of that it's not uncommon at times that more information to help identify them is asked for if so that will come in an email with an attached form that will outline various types of and pieces of information that they would like for you to respond to in order for us to make sure that this is this individual is good to go all of that can be uploaded uh in a secure safe manner from your account so if they're asking for like you know copy of the social security card or um you know something that shows an address on it uh you don't have to send those through the mail or anything you can just go into the account upload those to their secure server they look at them you're good to go and so forth but again that's another one where if you don't respond then eventually after 90 days we're gonna close the account um i use the word close we sometimes in in the background amongst ourselves we call it an account going dormant but our program is being charged by our program administrator for for that and if we can't collect uh a fee on the account then it's costing us and so after 90 days if that account is not funded or completed then we just uh make it dormant or close it for the time being if your account is ever closed it's not closed for good all you would ever need to do is using your user id and password log back in answer a couple certification questions and it is reactivated then all you have to do is either finish the identity verification or fund the account and you're good to go so we encourage people you know don't get too discouraged if you have any questions about that or having difficulty getting through some of those we have a a very good competent customer service group an 800 number that you can call you know i know roxanne there in the treasures office is is more than happy to help at times sometimes i even feel personal calls if necessary to get involved i have direct link to the manager of our customer service team that are at our program manager so if i need to get involved i can to help work through these situations we don't want this to be a a difficult painful process sometimes unfortunately it can be if things don't always go as smooth but we're here to help in any way we can to make sure that that that you get enrolled you get the account up and running and it becomes usable for you next we'll turn our attention to how do you use the account what are some of the spending methods that you can use with it there are primarily primarily three spending methods i'm going to talk to you about them with an emphasis on the stable card but i will talk to you about them in order of my recommendation of how good i think they are related to documentation so first of all do understand that any of these methods are are free as far as a withdrawal there's no cost to withdrawal there's no limit on how many times you can make a withdrawal so the first one is is a transfer between a checking and savings account so if you have set that up on the front end of the account to be able to move money between a checking and savings to the stable account then you could move money back into that account now to me this is can be a convenient one but from a documentation standpoint is probably um the least favorable because of the fact that this if this account that you're moving the money to already has personal money in it then you're going to have to kind of keep extra strict records on which you know what amount of money in the account is personal what amount is related to the stable account and then when you spend you have to keep track of all of those receipts and other documents to make sure that was the expenditure qualified and how much did i spend do know that one money is sent back to a checking or savings account from the stable account it is still deemed as protected so that money will still not or should not be counted as a resource but you would need to have it have it looked at as being segregated understand how much of it is there and in some cases you know having a plan for how you're going to spend that money um because there is some special rules around you know money that's going to be spent on housing or rent or so forth so a a convenient way of moving money to be able to spend it but from a record-keeping stand for point probably the least desirable second is a third party check these were covered last week again in the presentation but third party check is we call it like bill pay so you can have our system uh write a check and send it to whoever you want to anywhere in the united states via the us postal service so you can we we see this used a lot for individuals that need to pay rent so they'll go in and then they'll they'll write out a you know the information to be able to have a check cut from their account and sent directly to the landlord there is a memo section where you can put in information uh that will be on the check as well to further identify it and then of course our system on the back end keeps track of you know how much the check was when it was sent you know who it was sent to so some amount of documentation there definitely much better than than having to do it all yourself with a checking or savings account the final one i wanted to highlight and we'll highlight even more on our conversation today is the stable car so this is a stable visa prepaid card and that particular card here's a an image of it um along with a young man and i apologize i should have done this beforehand i know i was going to talk to roxanne about this what his name is but he is a west virginia wv able account holder who pictured here is coming out of the store after using his stable visa prepaid card to purchase some things on his own so uh great story you can see the smile on his face um one of the things that we do find especially if you get a card for those individuals um you know they may not have ever had one before and it's just it's kind of like a really neat thing for them to have this card with their name on it that they can go and use you know to buy things that they want so but here's a couple things i really wanted to emphasize to you number one the stable card needs to be ordered separately so it does not automatically send to you once you finish enrollment of the base account currently the vendor for the card is different than our manager of the account so it has to be enrolled in separately an easy way to do that is if you go to wbable.com and go to the link at the top for resources then at the bottom of that resources page you'll find a section called stable card information and that information has two links one to where you go to request the card and the second is where you go to log in if you already have the card and the account is up and running when you click on the request a card it comes to a page which allows you to enroll in the card and you have the opportunity to um to primarily either enroll as the authorized legal representative and get a card that way or if you are the individual with a disability you can apply for your own card i will say under the authorized legal representative version that primary card will come to the authorized legal representative typically in their name with with a secondary line for the benefit of whatever the name of the beneficiary is of the account so let's say let's take another example of again a parent and child so it would come to the parent and then it would have the child's name also on the cards that we know who the beneficiary of that account is but you also have the ability to set up a secondary card sometimes we call it the companion card for that beneficiary and one great tool that's here that we that we've received lots of feedback on is kind of like a you know helpful financial tool to help teach um you know that child or that individual responsibility right so you can you can get them their own card you have your own card that that are both attached to the same account but those cards can be loaded separately so again these are prepaid so funds have to be loaded onto the card before they can be used but each card can be loaded separately and funds can be transferred between cards in real time so one of the things that that i've often mentioned to individuals that is a great tool to use is um if the parent wants to in the example i'm using they could fund money onto the card that they have as the authorized legal representative and then as needed can transfer money from that card over to the child's card whenever that child needs money let's say they have an allowance or you want to give them a certain budget then you can just move money from your card onto theirs in whatever dollar amounts that you want as long as of course you have that much on the card and that's a great way to manage the card and give them only access to as much as you want um but then also keep some on the card in case you yourself need to go out and do anything in their behalf in addition once you've gotten those cards i wanted to point out a couple things that i think are really cool on the website that you go into and why i think from a from a tracking standpoint this is such a powerful tool so here is what the the account looks like when you log into it to be able to see information you start on a transaction screen and we have one transaction here that is showing that i'm using as an example and the great thing about the transactions is similar to any other kind of credit or debit card they're real time as soon as the money is spent at the location probably within you know 60 seconds the transaction shows up in the account and you can already see it uh secondly you can click on the transaction to open up further details and so you'll you'll see down here kind of this further detailed section and uh number one right here you can attach receipts i think this is so great um you know one example would be with a cell phone uh logging into this this site which is mobile friendly taking a picture of the receipt and then immediately attaching it to the transaction that just happened you know that probably takes care of most of the documentation that you would probably ever need to have but number two you can also add notes on this one i just made a very simple one and just said food but it's also date time stamped and who was who made the note you can always go in and edit the notes later but if it happens to be a mixed receipt you know maybe you put you know spent you know this much on this item or that item and so forth and then finally you can mark right here whether you feel this is a qualified disability expense or not and it's just a dialogue button a quick yes or no and the other great thing about these is that once all this information is filled in i don't have the the time to to show you right now but we have this report section as another tab within the account and the most detailed report that you can run on the section will run you a report in which all of these pieces will be included in the report so it will not only show you the vendor and the amount and the date and time and how much was spent but it will have your receipts will will be on the report any notes your designation of qualified disability expense all of those will be on the report and it's just you know how great would that be to be going into um you know an annual review and be able to just print out this report and say you know here's here's how we've been using this character this is the documentation around how we've been spending and so forth if that should ever be asked also some really great things i was telling roxanne we should probably do a separate seminar just on this one only but spending monitors is another great option that you have you know you can set up alerts to know when the balance on the card is getting low when when things are being spent you can either receive text or email messages just some really great tools so if you have a card i'd recommend you going out to the site and just really looking through a lot of the great features that you have there after that that's pretty much the bulk of what i wanted to talk about here we will go over our pre-seminar answers and then we have three additional questions and then we'll open it up for some questions and answers here for the last few minutes so going back through the pre-seminar uh questions we ask which of the following is not eligible to open an account that was answer d which is your best friend now possibly down the road uh could that be open who knows if it's a possibility uh or you know i will also specify too of course if their best friend has the power of attorney or is the guardian you know they would fill those categories but just just being designated best friend does not qualify you to open the account when an eligible individual this is kind of a trick question when an eligible individual enrolls in an account they must pr vide documented evidence of eligibility and that is false meaning that for us as a program you need to send in or show any kind of uh you know documentation to us keep it on hand for yourself but as far as our program is concerned you don't have to give us any of those documents and then the final one what is the minimum initial deposit when opening an account and that was c fifty dollars so here's our final few questions as we get close on time and look at wrapping this up go ahead and answer these in the chat we'll go through these relatively quick but you should have seen the answers to these as we've gone through so hopefully those of you that were paying really close attention will easily know these answers question one you automatically receive a stable card after you enroll is that true or false all right we see cheryl already mentioned false so did russ and tammy and a few others so yes that indeed that is false you need to separately enroll in the card it will not automatically come to you excellent question number two what is the annual charge if you elect to receive mailed uh statements or tax documents is that a zero dollars b ten dollars c twenty dollars or d thirty dollars so if you elect to have them mailed what is the annual fee that will be charged to your account uh seeing a lot of b ten dollars and so that is correct so the answer is b that is ten dollars but you can avoid that if you just sign up for electronic versions of the statements final question before we go to question and answers which of the following is not a spending method from the account is that transfer to checking our savings the stable card a third party check or a cash withdrawal this one should be relatively easy and i'm seeing a lot of the answers there a lot of d's i did see one c third party check is is an eligible way it's it's cash withdrawal and and i will also tell you to in in concerning cash withdrawal the stable card does not allow for cash withdrawal so you can't use it like an atm or anything like that to get cash out again another way in which you pull out cash how are you going to reasonably be able to track and monitor your spending and stuff with that so and with that we'll go to whatever time we have left we would love to feel it as many questions as possible turn it back over to roxanne okay john that was great information a lot of information um we do have about a minute um for questions but for anyone that's able to stay on a couple extra minutes we welcome you to do that because we would like to get to the couple questions that we have and also mention a few additional items so we did have a question from um from bill and he has asked if you have a hundred percent in bank safe how much do you have to have to offset the yearly fees given the current interest rates well uh i think it was bill right that that is an excellent question so um there's a lot a number of dynamics there right now bank safe is averaging about between one and one and a quarter percent return a year so again not not a lot your current uh cost just from a an account fee every month is three dollars and fifty cents so you know even if you had the initial deposit of fifty dollars in your account um you know for for a whole entire year you're at least going to be covered on your your monthly fees there now of course the question is i think what you're alluding to is how much would you have so that if you're getting the one percent on a bank safe that just the interest off the account could cover that annual fee uh that i'd have to go back frankly and calculate to see what where that might turn out as you can imagine it it might have to be a reasonably substantial balance but definitely um i can calculate that after the call and get that back to roxanne and we can and we can send that to you so she has a way to contact you we can definitely get you an exact number there also understand too that we we're constantly working and hope to should be able to share some good news with everybody here shortly about um working to reduce that monthly maintenance fee as well so we're looking to always try to bring that down so that it's even costing everybody less to use the next question um james qualls as it relates to w v able and stable in other states that have similar programs can the individual be penalized um for deposit getting the money etc i think what you might be asking is if there's fees for making withdrawals and if there's any any other fees involved yeah that's an excellent question so each program in each state has the ability to set whatever those parameters are for their state i do know some states for example that do charge fees for like let's say rolling your account from one state to another i know a number of states that have a debit cards or or loadable cards like ours that charge a monthly fee to have the card we do not um you know i think that ten dollar print and mail fee is pretty common among programs but you just have to look into the the programs specific um plan disclosure document to see what all the fees that they charge but it does definitely vary uh frankly there are a couple states that don't even charge an account maintenance fee i mean to be to be honest they have enough where their state is able to to cover the cost for all that but that's pretty rare okay next question um if an individual is currently on ssi and ssdi which one do you select as the disability you know either one is fine um it doesn't really play into any anything that has to do with the account it just lets us know that you're eligible and helps us in kind of tracking the sort you know the sources of eligibility for most people so i'd say just select whichever one you would like yeah the important thing is just for us to know that indeed you're eligible for the account so so tom if i recall correctly that very first response option is if you're entitled to receive ssi or ssdi due to the disability or blindness sounds like maybe that would be a response that she could select sure absolutely yes but the ssd i one could be fine as well okay under both circumstances they're eligible so okay that's the important part okay gotcha um this is my first session of the series after discussion i feel i missed some important information from the first session will the powerpoint slides be shared so so reach out to me via email we will be sharing the recorded video once that is available um and then i can also share the powerpoint um so just be sure that you send me an email to request that and then like i mentioned the video will be available um at some point in the near future and then bill is saying i'm thinking that if i open an account for my son and put his christmas slash birthday money there the yearly fees might eat up his small gifts how much money do we need to start with in order to overcome the yearly fees given whatever interest it currently pays i guess this is in the thousands but really don't know i look forward to the to the oh to the email this calculation okay so he's this is bill following up on his initial question um yeah for sure and it's totally understandable um you know we wish we could make these accounts free uh basically the charge the monthly charge in the account is a pass-through it's what our program manager charges us to be able to manage those accounts and do all of the accounting and back-end work that they do again we are looking at reducing that here hopefully soon and continue to try to drive that cost down as much as possible but yeah we'll def definitely bill we'll get that calculation done for you and and send out okay so i think that is all the questions that were presented in the q a and in the chat box i wanted to mention real quick too that um the slide that tom shared of the young man that was walking out of um the dollar general store holding a bag that was um a testimonial that was provided by um by the mother catherine vigil from the eastern panhandle and the individual's name is jackson brubacher and he is um also a member of the um people first of the eastern panhandle so it's just great to see those testimonials we always welcome those and it just goes to show how a stable card can do many things including the ease of making frequent withdrawals but then also be used to help increase the independence for individuals that are learning to manage monies and and and to gain financial independence and so tom this was a great presentation today you um talked about the different options for making contributions i loved how you gave um information about making reoccurring contributions that was a great tip and then you provided some additional steps on ensuring that if we if the individual that enrolls experiences some hiccups along the way after enrollment you you kind of took a deeper dive into those extra steps to make sure that the process is completed so that individuals can start using their accounts and of course we love the stable card um that is something that we know is kind of underutilized i think about average 35 percent of wva able enrollees actually have a stable card so again for folks that are wanting to make more frequent transactions if they have um a teenage child that they're wanting to teach money management skills you know that table or the stable card is an excellent tool i love how you showed us the screenshots within the stable account as well that gave us a view for what you see when you're in the account but then also the extra tips on how to keep record and and and and upload documents receipts things like that so this was great and thank you so much and anyone that would like another presentation just on the staple card send me an email and you know that's something that that tom and i have talked about and we're considering that for the for some time in the near future um so stay in touch with us and i do have a few um last minute reminders especially those that are requesting social work continuing in and be sure that you have included your name again in the chat box this is for the social work board and their record keeping purposes um roy has provided the survey link so be sure in in the chat box be sure that you have clicked on that link and that you do complete that survey at this time and if you have any further questions that you weren't able to ask today you can send an email to wv at wbsto.com after after each session each individual that has attended will receive a w val information packet so if you're intending all of the series the sessions you're only going to receive one mailing but please allow a couple weeks to get that package it's going to include some w be able brochures um and then that in some promotional items that includes the contact information for not just wva able but stable account that way once you've enrolled in the account and you need some customer service support you have the 1 800 number right at your fingertips for example here's a pen that we provide in the the mailing also in the packet is some information for disability rights of west virginia as well as they are the co-sponsors for this series so we do hope to see you next tuesday at noon for our third session in the series wb able your tool for savings and staying on a budget that will be presented by josh duckett of bb t now truest living with a disability is expensive and financial planning is important to maintaining and achieving financial independence this session will educate participants on how to create a financial plan based on their financial goals to pay for current and future expenses such as medical education transportation housing and other living expenses participants will learn how to incorporate wva bull as a saving and budgeting tool in reaching their financial goals and increasing financial independence so again tom thanks for all the information that you've shared today we hope that whether you're an individual that advocates for individuals with disability if you are working with them directly or if you are a parent a family member or if you are the individual with a disability that the information provided today will certainly help to shed some additional light on the enrollment process and the stable card and that you can share that with others as well so it's been a pleasure to have you all with us today and thanks for joining us stay safe and have a great rest of your day you