#39 | What is a ChSNC and what can they do for my family?

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RESOURCES

• ChSNC at the American College of Financial Advisors
• Upstate Special Needs Planning
• Financial Planning for Special Needs Families Book at Amazon
• Simple Guide to Special Needs Estate Planning Book at Amazon

Hello everyone, this is Lynn Davison, your adulting coach. I help autistic young adults and their families systemize adulting together.

Today's topic is, "What is a chartered Special Needs consultant and what can they do for me?"

A ChSNC is the credential designed to prepare financial advisors to help those those families with special needs.

They are accredited by the American College of Financial Services, who accredits all stockbrokers, insurance agents and other financial planners. They are the people that make sure that all of those financial professionals have to go through their courses and get certified in order to get that special designation.

They tell us that 26% of adults in the US have some form of disability and 7% of children have a developmental disability. So that is the population that a Chartered Special Needs Consultant serves.

They are required, before they can even take the course, they're required to have at least five years of professional experience in financial services or in law. Or have four years of relevant financial services experience and an undergraduate degree.

So I suppose I could take this course because I worked at a bank for 13 years, but I'm going to leave this to the professionals because this is a very special area of financial services planning. And I don't have the expertise as much as I wish I just, you know, had it.

So you also in order to keep this designation have to participate in professional recertification every year, so it just doesn't come automatic.

There are specifically three classes that a ChSNC has to take: Introduction to financial planning for special needs, legal and financial issues around special needs planning and financial planning for special needs. So there's all kinds of, as we're aware, special areas of concern when we have someone with a disability.

So the objective of getting this designation is to help parents and caregivers plan for immediate and long term care.  They guide families through the complex financial decisions and benefits systems, including financial planning, tax planning, Social Security income, Social Security Disability Income, Medicaid, disability designations, that things at the state level, like in New York State, the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities, so that you can get self directed care and special needs trust and other kinds of federal and state level benefits.

They also explore life insurance options and estate planning. So that for example, you would maybe fund a special needs trust with a life insurance plan. I really hadn't thought of that before. But you know, I really kind of have a distrust of life insurance in general even after having worked in the financial services industry for a number of years. So I didn't really consider that this was, until the year I worked with a special needs planner, that this was a real option. But now I think I understand the validity of life insurance and financial planning for funding special needs trusts.

They also help prepare for the cost of long term care by managing health care planning and Medicaid complexities because I can't imagine the the amount of information and legal labyrinths that one has to go through and be able to get that kind of help.

They are helping us answer the question, "What will happen to my loved one when I am no longer no longer here?" Either I live out my full lifetime or if something catastrophic occurs. 

Lynn Davison 4:53
What are the legal considerations that I need to take that I need to think about to protect my loved one in our family?

And then how do I maximize available benefits and services so that I can give my, so we can put in place a financial baseline for our autistic young adults in case, which includes health insurance and other benefits that that could make a difference in their ability to live independently?

And then what supplemental income options does my loved one have?

These are all really important questions to ask ourselves.

And I found it incredibly helpful when I hired James Traylor. He's got all the appropriate designations, and his company is called Upstate Special Needs Planning. He's in upstate Rochester New York. He's helped over 450 families in this area.

I tried to navigate it myself online and I found that to be impossible. I didn't know how to present my autistic young adults' information in the way that was appropriate.  James walked me through much of the process.

So what we did was we applied for SSDI. We were declined. This we did with a help from a an employee or I mean I think a contract employee of James who specifically works with SSI and SSDI. She understands how exactly this system works. The SSDI system works.

She knew how to check where our paperwork was, she knew how to help me fill out the  many forms that were required. And even though we were declined in the long run, I believe that going through that process helped me organize and put together all the information that I needed in order to apply for subsequent programs.

He also helped us learn how to enroll in SNAP which is the food stamps program and HEAP  to help us with energy costs.

And he gave us a recommendation for a lovely lawyer who created our disclaimer will with a special needs trust for our children.

Just having those four things done really gave us a huge amount of peace of mind.

Both of our children did qualify for SNAP. You are able to apply for for food stamps If you have a disability. That's the qualification. It's a federal program and the application isn't too bad. So that at this time pays $250 per person per month in food stamps so no big deal. It works really easily through the benefits card you swipe it at the grocery store and put it in and it pays for the food for the kids.

James also advised that we do a Roth IRA conversion as often as we could because most of our inheritable assets are in an IRA and that has its own set of complications because of a law that was enacted under Trump's presidency where if you inherit an IRA, you have to withdraw it over 10 years you can't can no longer as was previously the case, withdraw over your lifetime. Now you have to withdraw within 10 years and pay taxes on it over those 10 years.

That worried me because I didn't want our kids, our autistic young adults, to inherit those funds and over a period of 10 years pay taxes. I was really hoping that that could be their nest egg and that we give them some of that baseline funding. But it turns out that the only way we can do this week is if we convert that to a Roth IRA. Who knows?

So these are the important considerations that we learned with James that have really helped us figure out what were the steps are that we needed to take and then we still have more steps to take based on some of the financial concerns about IRAs. 

Lynn Davison 9:17

We also discuss future housing strategies. Should anything happen, again catastrophic, and this house would need to be sold. What would they do and how would that get funded? How much would we have to rely on their siblings to help them?

And that is a very interesting question to consider now, rather than have it been given to the siblings to have to figure out themselves.

There are some books available when I went to Amazon. Financial freedom for Special Needs Families is only $10 on Kindle. It might give us some of the information that we get a person like as James Traylor, a chartered special needs consultant, would give us.

There's another book here is this Simple Guide to Special Needs Estate Planning. There are several options there. Most of these books are written so that they would appeal to everyone in the United States. What's helpful about contracting with a Chartered Special Needs Consultant in your state is that they understand the state level benefits that are that are available and they can help you walk through the labyrinth of applications and other processes that you have to go through.

So it can't hurt to to read these pieces of information. But my experience was that they didn't give me everything that I needed to know in order to actually implement a plan with my kids.

So this is just a brief overview of what a chartered Special Needs consultants who can offer you in your family and I've shared my own personal experience which was favorable. It was a fee of $5,000 to contract with James but the SNAP benefit has already paid over the first year with to two kids kind of paid for that. So it's a lot of money up front but it really makes sense but for the rest of their life.

Now they have this benefit. They are qualified for disability in New York State. And we're in the process now of doing some extra things just to make sure that they can keep hold on to those SNAP benefits even if they do make a lot of you know money.

Both of my children are pursuing employment. One is employed the other one is getting degrees so that they can get employed. So I'm really hopeful that they will be employed and will be employable.

But we have discovered that full time employment can really be difficult because of the management of their needs and their energy.

So I encourage you to consider finding a chartered Special Needs consultant in your area. All you have to do is Google chartered Special Needs consultant and then you know, Rochester New York or Portland, Oregon or, you know, Austin, Texas, and the people that have that designation in your area will pop up.

Your first consultation I'm sure will be free because they'll explain to you what they can do for you and what their fee is. So it's worth doing the research and then considering whether or not having a Chartered Special Needs Consultant on your team will help you achieve that peace that we all want that our loved ones will be provided for after we are gone.

So please come visit me at LynnCDavison.com. Learn about The Art of Adulting course, coaching and community where we specialize in helping autistic young adults and their families systemize adulting together.

Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai