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ROUGHLY EDITED COPYICILet’s Talk about the Money: Planning for College – (Adobe)Rebecca LazoApril 6, 2017CART/CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY:ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLCPO BOX 278LOMBARD, IL 60148"This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings." >> Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to thank you for attending today's webinar. It's called Let's Talk about the Money: Planning for College. If anyone would like to make a note in the questions and comments box about where you're coming from, we'd be happy to see that representation. Joining us today for this webinar are one of our partner organizations, the Pacer Center, Barb Ziemke will be saying a few words in just a moment. We're grateful for our partnership with the Pacer Center. John and Alex are here, Certified Financial Planners with Shepherd Financial Partners. I met John and his business partner about ten years ago when I was working for Brooks Publishing and the company published their book, the Specialty Planning Guide. Cindy was originally scheduled to present with Alex today, but had another engagement to attend where John and Cindy and Alex's families are all involved with Art of Massachusetts and other disability groups there and throughout the country, I believe. We're pleased that John was able to be here in place of Cindy. We're happy to hear from John and Alex shortly. A few housekeeping notes. Slides and a handout are available for download in the little box at the bottom of your screen. I will be monitoring the chat box throughout the webinar. If you have any technical issues or questions, please just let me know and...I'll do my best to help out. The presenters are also happy to field questions throughout the presentation. As long as you know, it's not in the middle of them presenting a certain topic or point. Please feel free to put questions in whenever you can. Thanks for joining us today, now I'll introduce you to Barb Ziemke.>> Hello, everyone. I'm so happy to be part of this webinar today. My name is Barb. I'm from the Pacer Center, we're located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. How many of you are familiar with Pacer's Center? It's helpful to know if you already have a knowledge of who we are. We were founded in 1978, not too long after the Special Ed Law came into being nationally and at that time, it was to help parents understand their rights, now that they were going to be partners at the table. Started out as one particular project and, which is now, our core function of the states. Parent training and information center, which receives funding through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. To help parents navigate special education, understand their rights, train parents to be the best advocate they can be for their child and we were founded on this parents helping parents philosophy which continues for us as a center. All of our special education advocates, including myself are also parents of a child with a disability who have navigated the process from that perspective to have that understanding, although we come from a variety of different backgrounds, because...we really believe that parents are the experts and that family engagement and parent involvement is the key to children and youth with disabilities, future success. Current success. So...I came to the center because I'm a parent and when my child was entering grade school, I didn't know who gets to make the decision about whether or not he could attend his neighborhood school. Our son has an intellectual and developmental disability. After receiving help, I wanted to help other parents. I have a lot of passion around what I and do what Pacer can help families with. Just want to let you know a few things about Pacer. We ?whoops, did my ?I'm sorry, I'm trying to ?did you, I'm sorry, Rebecca, were you forwarding the slide? >> No, but I can if you want me to.>> No, that's already, I did something whacky here, I'm sorry about that. So...that's one of our core functions, but over the years, we really heard from families about what their needs are and we wanted to provide materials and information in ways families could understand. So, we have expanded to 30 different projects, which I'm not going to take time to describe today and I just really encourage you to go online, and explore what we have to offer. I will say that some of the ways we've expanded are through some other projects you might be aware of. Our National Bullying Prevention Center. October, National Bullying Prevention Month. That's been a powerful thing for what we do. We partner with the Center on Technology and Disability for helping families and youth and individuals get the help they need with assistive technologies. So...that's kind of some of the overarching pieces of Pacer. I want to tell you a little bit more specifically how we got to the National Parent Center on Transition and Employment as one of the new features at Pacer's parent center. In 2014, we really realized there was a lot of good information out there about secondary transition. But that a lot of it was not directed specifically to the families, but more to perhaps professionals working in the field. We really wanted to take this parents helping parents concept a little further and...it was a great fit for me to move into this role as my son is now a 28yearold with this intellectual developmental disability. And so, I have passion around what Think College is doing and we are so fortunate to partner with Think College. I use Think College and their resources to raise my expectations about what my son could do post high school and he did, and it is, due to Think College's resources, he was able to participate in a program and it has been life changing for him. He now lives and works in an inclusive community setting as a result. So, we're just thrilled to be partnering with Think College and getting this information out to families. About high expectations and...really, that is one of the, the primary goals of our, our center on transition and employment is to involve families in transition in meaningful ways and help professionals to really engage and support these families. And promote these expectations by inspiring possibilities. I hope you'll be able to visit our website. How many of you are familiar with the center? There are videos, handout materials, all sorts of resources, but what I love are the success stories that inspire the possibilities. For all youth with disabilities. And Pacer's Center deals with all youth with disabilities. That's one of our distinctions. We have resources to reach diverse families. We have multicultural advocates and really have high expectations for all, all youth and young adults with disabilities. And try to give parents the help and the hope they need and we try to speak families, so they're able to utilize those resources in really meaningful ways. We do that through information resources, referral, we try to make linkages to other organizations. We work in collaboration with all kinds of disability organizations and these national partnerships, like the ones we, the one we have with Think College and we, on our website, have an email address. You see it there, transition@. If you have a question, email us, we'll give you a real response. If there's information you want after today's presentation, feel free to email me directly. I do want to say that I'm especially interested in today's topic. And I'm so happy that Pacer is supporting Think College in presenting this webinar. As a parent of a young adult with a disability, I know how challenging it can be to find clear and reliable information, specific to the concerns of individuals with disabilities, about finances. And...at Pacer Center with our work with families, I also know that the financial factor is huge for families. It's really major. And all too often, that factor can be a barrier to those high expectations for Postsecondary Education. So...I, like the rest of the audience today, am really looking forward to learning along with you, so that we can really raise the bar for all youth and young adults with disabilities. Thanks so much for allowing us to participate.>> Sure, thank you, Barb. That was a really helpful presentation about how the National Parent Center fits in with Think College. It's a great intro to John and Alex's presentation. They're here to talk about financial planning and getting ready for college, so...welcome John and Alex. Thanks for being here.>> Hi, thanks, folks. This is John Nadworny. I'm happy to be here with Alex. I'll be brief on this part, but I can say that, Alex, when we, Alex went through college, I did all the planning for her. Going through this with two children in college. I'll be brief, I'll turn it to Alex.>> This is great, really honored to be part of this presentation. Some grace resources. So today, we'll be focusing on planning for college for our child that has a special need. So...Think College has done a great job providing information on this. We'll focus on the money side of things. How to financially plan and pay for education for secondary post education. We'll go through our special needs planning timeline. That will break down the different planning pressure points and we'll discuss cash flow, obviously, a big part of planning for college and we'll be going through special needs planning timeline. We'll talk about the cost of an education. This can range, whether it's a twoyear program to fouryear program, state school, private school, obviously there's very big ranges, but we'll talk about that. And then we'll be going through the personal resources, how a family can pay for this out of their own pocket. And then, I'll also discuss public resources that may be available out there. And then we'll talk about the different state initiatives. Each state has different initiatives that they're working on. We'll touch on a few of them. We'll provide different resources where you'll be able to see if your state has that in your state.>> I'm hope right now, listening to the webinar. [Indiscernible] and I took the dog outside >> Hello, could you please mute your phone? Sorry, I could hear someone speaking.>> Go ahead, Alex.>> Okay, can everybody hear me? We'll allow some time for questions and answers. If you have questions throughout the presentation, we'll be able to try to get to those before the end. And it'll be helpful to get a sense of how old your family members are that you're planning for. If everybody could post in the comments section how old your family member is that you're planning for, so we can focus on those different, that different point in the planning timeline. Perfect, thank you. It looks like we have people from all over the country on the line. We'll be focusing more on those different benefits and different federal and personal resources. So, I'll hand this over to [indiscernible] who will be going through the timeline.>> Rebecca was writing the book ten years ago. This shows the planning considerations that people with disabilities have. I'll skip to the transition planning point. It seems like most of the audience is in that time period at post, you know, 14 through early 20s. So...right now, many of you are experiencing transition, for someone, transition will be the goal of high school versus transitioning out of the district at age 22. However, there may be some folks on the line who also may be thinking creatively how they may get their school district the pay for some of their child continuing education. The one thing I'll note on that, in past experiences, is that, it'll be important in some cases where you may work a situation with the district to have a, a collaborative arrangement where they will pay for your child for education post their school years, as long as in some states, as long as they do not get their high school diploma. So...what we did here though, the purpose of this timeline was to show all the different areas that families have to think about while planning for their child with special needs versus the traditional family. What's interesting, so, at age 14, you begin the transition process into adult services. At age 18, a real big point. Some of you still have 15 to 18. At age 18, where your child will become eligible for their federal government benefits. That would include SSI, that would also include section 8, which we don't talk about in detail here. But as part of your planning, it'd be important for you to consider applying for section 8 voucher when your child turns 18 and the other important piece here, I have to say, our book was published in 2007. Since then, things have come a long way. You'll notice here on the chart, it says traditional planning, weekend classified training. (?) Rebecca's work began in 2008, I'm happy to say that in the second edition of the book, we're going to put college as part of special needs planning also. Then, at age 22, is another expression point where your child leaves the protection of the education system and rolls over to the states where they'll be caring for individuals with disabilities. In many cases, some family members will ?may not get to the point where they have, get services post 22 for their child. It all depends upon where your child is. I'm happy to say, we're working with a family who's son will be graduating this year. Alex, three years old, they were told he's never going to be able to speak at the time. The mother was such a strong advocate, he basically, what it was in this particular case, he really got his way through high school and football. Football team really took him under their wings and they were fortunate enough to have a football coach who got to know the college, it was a state school, state college, the college coach and he moved into the college through the advocacy of his teammates. He's graduating this year from college. And...the, part of the process is too, he'll be receiving some SSI benefits and the family's objective here, is to make sure that when he's through, they will not take, take the loans he got and be forgiven. Their goal is to have their child gainfully employed. I think that'll happen. The timeline may be stretched for some folks, but our planning would be post age 22 and the other part would be where the parent retire at age 65, that's when your son or daughter will become eligible for SSDI benefits. I think the planning for individuals who will go to college and may have some work experience, SSDI could be an important part of their benefits and the last point would be state distribution. Why I'm showing this chart, I think it's important, when planning for families, every family situation is different. However...the process that you follow in planning for your family member and for yourself is the same, regardless of the financial situation. So...I'd encourage you, if you get a copy of the slides, to, on this timeline, to overlay your own financial situation would be, for instance, if your child, if you're child age 17, 16 now. You want to put how old you are when your child is age 16 on the timeline. Kind of map out where you will be at the point where your child's in school and you can then transfer some of your, some of your, where some of your loans may expire, where some of your cash flow may change. We found in many cases, some families plan for college paying out of cash flow. I think in the ?so, it's part of the whole timeline process and I'd encourage you to think about overlaying your own case on this.>> And also, when looking at the planning timeline, using your school to really help identify different interests that your child may have. So, using that transition planning to figure, okay, what is the difference ?if your child does want to go to college, where would they like to go to school? Would they like to be somewhere close to home? Looking at those different, you know, negotiables, nonnegotiables, would they want to live on campus, would they be more comfortable taking public transportation to school. Thinking about all those different variables would be helpful to start thinking of that and practicing some of those life skills they may need to live in a college campus and transition plans they have with their school system, through their IEP. To get some of those different life skill goals inside of that plan. So then, moving on to, okay, now that we went through the planning timeline, really figuring out where your family falls on that timeline. Let's have a quick conversation about the different costs of a college education. A lot of times, like my dad mentioned, ten years ago when writing the book, families came in, it can be difficult to think of, how much does it cost to provide for your child with special needs? We'd often compare it, it's simple to figure out how much to pay for a college education. Going for two years, four years, you can think in advance to how you can financially fund that education, again, whether it's through cash flow, personal savings, public resources or a combination of all of them. First, identify what the costs of the education will be to then figure out where the different resources will be coming from. You can see here, you know, today, in the cost, the impact of inflation on these different expenses, today, you know, college education would be about 136,000, in comparison to 18 years from now, about 300. Seems like many of us are closer to the age of education right now. So...the good thing is that it has slowed down a little bit. The increase has slowed down slightly. Now going onto the next slide and talking, okay, what personal savings could a family use? How could a family pay for college education out of their pocket? What are the different types of savings that they may be able to utilize, different tax savings strategies as well as you know, options that may be flexible. In case your child decides to go to college, not decide to go to college, really want to make sure that you have different vehicles that you may be able to utilize. Just trying to change to the next slide. Okay...so, looking at the traditional education savings vehicle. So...has everybody heard of a 529 plan? Out there? Anybody...529? What a 529 plan is, a traditional college savings vehicle. That a parent would own and that they can contribute to for a beneficiary. So...you could have your child, you know, any of your children named as a beneficiary, the 529 plan, well, maintaining control of that asset. Some folks say it doesn't make sense to have a 529 for a child with disabilities. That may potentially disqualify them. There are options you're able to switch around, the beneficiary, make changes to this and the assets do grow tax deferred and can come out cashfree if they're used for college education. The biggest thing here, you can put $14,000. The annual gifting amount. Into this type of 529 plan. As long as the school your child goes to would accept Financial Aid, you can use the funds in the 529 tax free. That's one option you can use to save for college. That's typically in advance. Saving in advance for college. Then...so, back in, a couple years ago, the ABLE Account. My father was helping get those implemented. He'll talk about the 529a ABLE accounts.>> I'm sure you've heard about them and there are still questions, but they're different from the 529 plan where the account is actually owned by the individual with disabilities. And these accounts, they're, the, the ownership, the only assets, they will not disqualify themselves for various entitlement government benefits. So...in these accounts, maybe, used in conjunction with the 529 or savings plan, I think the, one of the key things with the ABLE account is that it gives a lot of flexibility and some of distributions. They're relatively new, but thinking about how someone's planning, if you have money in the ABLE Account, although you really don't, college tuition is not identified as an eligible distribution. There are clearly more expenses than tuition alone that would be used to pay, required for, for funding a child's needs while they're in school. So...a 529a ABLE Account could be a solid option. It gives you tax deferral, actually taxfree growth and some of the rules with the ABLE Account. You can only have one per person, unlike the 529 plan. The 529 plan, grandparents, friends, neighbors, relatives, they could all fund the 529 plan. And the 529a ABLE Account, you can only have one 529a ABLE Account. The distinction, the other big distinction too, would be the money in the 529 plan can only come out for the benefit, for the individual from these qualified expenses. If there are two children that have disabilities, it can change beneficiary, as long as the other beneficiary meets the definition of being disabled in the account. We noticed in some states, some of these plans do provide flexibility, I would think that if you're planning for college, the intent would really be to have money, you have children, 16, 17 years old, the investment selection you'd have would probably be the safety and principle for some plans provide like very similar to a debit card on the account. 529a would be a reasonable choice. In some cases, although the goal may be for child to attend college, in the event they do not attend college, at least you won't be penalized for taking the money out. There'll be money other ways of getting the funds out of the account. So, we'll turn over to Alex on the more traditional education savings vehicles.>> John there, were a couple questions in the box, if you don't mind.>> Oh, sorry.>> One person asked if the 529 plan funds can be used for any college that takes Financial Aid? >> Yes.>> Or can it be used for a student that's not earning a degree? >> I would ask the individual 529 plan, so depending on the state. It's very specific. I typically call each institution, each financial institution, just to get verification on every single distribution that comes out of the 529 plan, but typically, the rule is that, that the school will accept funds from a 529 plan and it would be a qualified distribution from a 529 plan. If that institution accepts Financial Aid. That's kind of the big umbrella under the distribution of the 529 plan, but again, everything is very specific, so I would just get further verification on the different distributions and...yes...anyone can put funds into a 529a account for >> Yes, the individual can put money in, or parents, friends, yes.>> However, there is that annual maximum contribution amount. It's not $14,000 per person like the 529 plan, the 529a has a total contribution of the 14,000.>> Thank you.>> The traditional education. Another one, it's not nearly as common as the 529 plan. Is the [indiscernible] education savings account. One of the reasons it's popular, it has that maximum annual contribution amount of 2,000. And...also, there are income restrictions. Another thing, you can, the, an upside to these types of accounts, if you're planning for someone for you know, K12 education planning, you may use these for, for not postsecondary education. You can use this for K12. But typically, our family members will receive education through the state that's paid for, so don't need to worry about the K12, but more, you know, after age 22 or if you're going to college. So, again, this is something that's not quite as common. Another option may be that, UTMA account. Uniform Trust for Miners Act. A lot of times, these types of accounts are not recommended for family members that have children with special needs because that would disqualify them for benefits once they reach the age of 18. The account will be transferred into their own name. Once they reach the age of 18 to 21. If they are receiving Social Security income or you expect them to be receiving that in the future, or any type of Medicaid program, wouldn't suggest using a UTMA because it would disqualify them for benefits in the future. There's another one, the 529 wouldn't count as an asset, the parents are the owners and the children of the beneficiaries. That wouldn't be an accountable asset for the child. They're able to change the beneficiaries if they wanted to. Other types of traditional education savings vehicles are series EE and I bonds. Some of you might have received these from your grandparents. That was more common when interest rates were higher. You could get tax deferral and taxfree distributions when paying for qualified education. You can get that information on . They have information on the different types of bonds out there. If you're closer to, you know, to that point of education, maybe looking at putting something that would be conservative investment, treasury bond, but again, those rates are very low. May not be worthwhile. Next, parent savings vehicles, we have them listed here, but I'd like to add a couple more in a minute. The traditional taxdeferred, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, there's really no tax deferral. The maximum annual contribution. You can put as much as you want into a mutual fund or a stock and you also have control, I think what's more important to understand, seeing ages of the individuals that are, of the people on call here, I think if you have a child 17 and 18 years old and 19 years old, my humble opinion is that looking at investments, may not be important. The old saying is, if you have a goal that's a short way away, it's really, in many cases, return of the money instead of return on the money. Basically meaning that safety and principle is really important. So, as a planning practice, I want to encourage you, when you're thinking about the future, cash flow, you want to anticipate being a child's college expenses in the near future. Basically create an Excel spreadsheet. The key is to have cash. So...if you, on the heading of each column, list out what you anticipate the annual tuition being, you would then see with the four or sixyear obligation would be and your job would be to make sure you have this exact cash available at that time. I can only attest to doing that, that's what I do with my children when they were going to school. I had a massive spreadsheet laid out, anticipating cash flow. The last item that's not listed on here is consideration for folks to use, would be funding a Roth IRA. The criteria would be though, would be, when you do the ?remember, we had this timeline laid out, the very beginning. And, in planning, you think about planning for not only the child, you plan for yourself. And you can use some of the traditional savings vehicles to plan for your child. So the example being, is that if you anticipate being over age 59.5 or over, when your child is in college, undoubtedly one of the great tools to use would be funding a Roth IRA. If you qualify with the income levels. The reason why you would do that is you would have complete control. There's no rules on disc beauticians, there's no penalties if you don't use the money to pay for college. If you put money in a 529 plan and the child doesn't go to school and you don't have any other children who were considered beneficiaries, you'd be penalized if you take money out of that account. If you put money in an ABLE Account. An ABLE Account, there's really, the definition of qualified distribution doesn't include tuition. In ABLE Accounts there's a Medicaid pay back. I really firmly feel they're funding a Roth IRA in many cases is a superb option. You have to be over age 59.5 when the distribution comes out. Plan how old you are and how old your child is. Number two, money goes in tax free. If there's a change in circumstances and your child doesn't go to school or you may come into a situation where you do receive inheritances or you get significant bonuses for your pay and you don't need to use this money for the college, this money is available to you and on top of that, it's available to, to them. Because remember, even you can be working fulltime. I get excited thinking about the concepts of having control. And taxfree income if you meet the criteria.>> Your question about using ABLE Account funds to pay for college tuition. A lot of states do not have the 529a accounts, however, they have made a change to the regulations, allowing families to open up the 529a account, even if it's outofstate. You can open up a 529a account, for example, Ohio has a plan there, are several different states that have plans that outofstate participants are able to use. And all of the states, hopefully, eventually will have options, but you can access them today. The, going back to one of the questions about using college tuition, so...in the rules right now, it doesn't specify anything about using those funds for college tuition. It's really for basic living expenses.>> Yeah, however, when you leave a qualified disability expense, some of them are assistive technologyrelated services. It says education, so...basically, it doesn't say college, but it does say education. I have to say, I was very closely involved in the whole process. We're implementing a plan very soon in our state. I can attest that there's a lot of enthusiasm. There was a lot of enthusiasm moving the ABLE Account, forward on, in D.C. Record pace to move this thing along. I feel that there's a lot of flexibility on what the appropriate, what will be determined as qualified disability expenses.>> It's the IRS and Social Security working together to figure out how these different accounts will work with the distribution. So, taking a little time. But making progress. Did anybody open a 529 account that's here? There's neat different, there's, in Ohio, you can actually have a debit card attached to the ABLE Account, which can be very helpful to teach money management skills. You can decide how much funds you put onto that card.>> The last point on the ABLE would be, there are so many other expenses that come into play in raising it, that aren't directly educationrelated. Seeing the list of different qualified disability expenses out of an ABLE Account, clearly, you'd be able to identify one of them. It ranges from transportation, actually housing, assistive technology, talent prevention and wellness. The point being, it may not be directly college tuition expense, but there are plenty other ways to spend money, appropriate ways to use the funds.>> Now we'll be going through different borrowing options. We talked about how families can save or pay for college out of their cash flow, thinking in advance, now, okay, a lot of us are at that point where college is going to be, you know, approaching our doors soon. So, what are the different options you have today? To come up with the different resources, first, you can borrow from others. So, you know, why would somebody borrow? Sometimes it doesn't make financial sense for parents to go into debt to pay for college. You know, both for typical children, for children with special needs. Really something personally we want to think about before you start taking out different types of loans. So...some of them are these different Stafford or Perkins loans. It is important that you look at, so there are a lot of different resources as well, on Think College, and using the Higher Education Act of 2008, have made changes to the federal rules, the federal Financial Aid to help cover the costs of attending colleges. Of attending college if your child does have an intellectual disability. Even if they are not, even if they do not have a high school diploma, they may be able to still take out some different Financial Aid. They still, obviously would have to meet the financial need to be able to get some of these different financial aids. Some of these are different ones you'll be able to take out from a bank, for example, there are multiple different types of private college loans that you'll be able to take out, different loans as well. And then, you know, borrowing from yourself, there's another option that some folks do when going into college, one being taking out a home equity loan, taking out, this is something we'd really be careful about doing, watch out. Borrowing from your property because you know, a lot of times, these home equity loans have variable interest rates and interest rates, as we all know, are rising. Something to be aware of.>> I'd like to emphasize, going through this part, I think some principles you always have to follow when thinking of planning, you really want to match the, what we'll call the maturity of the obligation to the notes. So...for instance, you take a home equity loan, a home equity line and issue a home equity line, the interest rates increase, the cost of the money is going to increase also. So...the whole goal here would be, if you think you can't pay the money off in a relatively soon way, with the home equity line, it's really not the option to go with. On some cases, if you're really pressed, figuring out all your total cash flow, in some cases, people may refinance, again, I think the underlying theme that we always have in planning is that we have to take on planning for the parents first, if you come into a financial difficulty yourself, it's really making it difficult to raise a family. So the last piece, some retirement accounts. I think the other piece there, sometimes people borrow out of their 401K captains. I think that could really be a, could be extremely problematic. One of the main reasons being is that in the event you do get terminated, there's a lot of layoffs at different points in time. If you're terminated from an employer and you have a loan against your 401K plan, you're required to pay that loan off. If you don't pay the loan off, they take the assets out of the plan and you get penalties. They treat that as income. It'll be really extremely expensive in terms of taxes, if you borrow money, 401K, get laid off, can't pay it back. It will undoubtedly be an issue.>> So, students with intellectual disabilities are eligible for some student loans. However...they're very specific on the different types of student loans they'd be eligible for. They, they have to, they do not need to have a standard high school education, but they do need to meet the financial need. But they ?so they're eligible for more federal grants, for federal ?okay...so, then, going onto the different types of loan forgiveness programs. So, if your child did receive a federal loan, so if they graduated like this example my father gave in the beginning, working with a family that did get a high school diploma, does have a disability and has, did take out some student loans, when he was in school, and now, is graduating with some student loans, and will be eligible for SSI, which would then make it possible for him to actually discharge himself on some of these different loans, some of these federal loans. We listed some of them here, however, they, they're deciding not to use this TPD benefit on paying them back, but this is definitely something to be aware of if your child has graduated from college and is going to be attending ?from high school and is going to be attending a college that they may be able to discharge some of their loans once they graduate. So, these are the different public resources that are available. The ones we just mentioned before were different loans that you would have to repay. These different public resources are different resources that are out there that are public resources that you will not need to pay back. So, things that you may be able to apply for and there may be different eligibility requirements for each one of these. The first one is the FAFSA, which most of us have heard about before. Which is the federal aid application. So, the free application for Financial Aid. We always suggest applying as early as possible. There's a chance you'll get some of those funds. Once the funds are gone, they're gone. Applying as early as possible. And...the students are expected to contribute about 35% of their assets and 50% of their income. So...if your children do have any assets in their name, being aware of that, of course and parents are expected to also contribute. So...everybody, no matter what your income is, you should definitely consider applying. You never know, especially if you have other children in college at the same time. So the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. That's where Think College has really come about. And there are a lot of different state initiatives which we'll talk briefly about. I know, you know, this is definitely for the families that we worked with and our family members and education, college education is really all about the experience. We all, we all deserve to have an education, you know, experience as being on a college campus. I actually was involved with some shops and a close friend I bumped into the other day, her brother is what's called the ICE program in Massachusetts. They were worried about him going on campus by himself. Recently he was stuck in an elevator. He was able to figure out how to get out of the elevator all by himself. For the family, knowing he was able to do that, is so reassuring now. Those independent skills is worth every penny of tuition they paid for for this young man. The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 is a great mission and Think College is doing a great job. This has improved the access to Postsecondary Education for students with disabilities and allowed for some different types of Financial Aid and programs state by state. So, some of those different federal grants and work studies. So...you know, your child may be able to have a federal grant or workstudy that they're at in the school which could help pay and offset some of those different fees and costs for school. They will need to meet the student aid eligibility requirement, but again, they're not required to have a high school diploma or pursuing a degree or certificate. This is very different in the past, you always had to pursuing a degree or certificate to get any type of student aid at all. So...there's a lot of different types of federal and statespecific programs. So, in every single state, everybody should be reaching out to their lead agency that supports people with disabilities as well as your school system. To see if your school is able to help with Higher Education costs. I know, for like, again, going back, we have a lot of different schools, a lot of different community colleges here that are in this ICE program that have very specific programs like culinary, landscaping, a lot of very different trainings for individuals and the school system actually pays for that program. So...during that age between 18 and 22, able to go to school, the town will pay for that education, and you know, a lot of other schools, a lot of other states across the country are doing that as well. So, the resource mapping, resource aligning, so that, again is going back to working with your school system and your lead agency and really helping to see what agencies are out there that can help pay for, maybe, you know, some of the different transportation that they may need to go to the school. There's a whole actual sheet of paying for college that Think College has on their website that goes into great detail on each one of these different programs.>> I think also, one other point here, which is not listed, with Social Security, if you can just simply Google Bene Plan [phonetic]. (?) If your child is thinking about school, clearly there are some, they may be employed, they may be making some money. One of the issues that always comes up, how do you deal with Social Security, SSI in the Bene?Plan. Our son James, he has some side jobs where we're trying to think about creating a small business for him. Pretty much, this, they will sit down with you and go through your child's certain, particular situation and help them identify the different, the different benefits, they may still be able to be receiving while getting SSI and not reduce the SSI payment plan. I would encourage, it's called Bene Plan. You can Google it. Each state has someone who will meet with you on a onetoone basis to go over your Social Security and how it may impact you. Someone put up on the screen and actually did it, . Which is a wonderful resource.>> Definitely lots of different things. So, using Social Security, if your child is living away from your home, may be able to get a larger Social Security benefit. So, going back to what my dad mentioned, really outlining what the cash flow looks like. And what the different expenses are.>> Section 8 vouchers. There's two pieces to this. One is tuition, the other apiece, where does the person live? When the child turns age 18, it'd be a wise thing to do to apply for section 8 voucher and with the voucher, you actually, as a parent, you can, you can buy a condo, buy an apartment and rent to your son or daughter. There is an exception under section 8 rules where you can rent to your family member if they have a disability. The section 8 program did grant that exception. So, again, when we had the timelines at the beginning of the meeting, we identified these pressure points, at age 18, a major point where your child has different entitlement benefits and again, section 8 is a great, great resource for families. I think that's about it.>> I'm looking at different scholarships. So there are thousands and thousands of different scholarships out there, ranging from a couple hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. And around your community, your school may have different scholarships that families in the community have put together for individuals ?you could write a paragraph on an experience that your child has. I met with somebody last night. This young man does motivational speaking. He did it at the State House. He was getting scholarships for doing things like that. It just goes on and on. One different way you can find them is that . These different scholarships can help to offset the cost of different books, to help to offset a lot of those different, you know, the, again, transportation or all of those different types of fees that you might have in addition to just tuition. And also, there is specifically a lot of scholarships for students that have Down Syndrome. If you go to the Rubies Rainbows, that's another resource to find scholarships that might be available. And...then, the next thing, the last thing, is looking at different types of tax credits. So...when you are paying, when you're in those years of paying for college education, you may be able to get some tax credits. However, it's ?there are very specific AGI limitations, so you really want to make sure that you talk to your CPA and you could get up to $2500 off of your taxes. So that's actually a credit. Which means it takes it off the top, which is much better than a deduction, for example. So...making sure that you are aware of these different types of fees, in addition to these. If your child does need assistance with medical expenses, for example, to have them able to attend school, then that may be able to, they may be able to reduce your taxes by that as well, for the medical expenses. And then, let's see...so, again, going back, I mentioned briefly the different state initiatives, these are states, specifically that have you know, like Massachusetts, like I mentioned, they have a line item in their budget for new programs. That we're continuing trying to you know, work on across the state and that has provided a lot of opportunities for students in Massachusetts to use the, their town budget to allow for college education. And you know, Tennessee, California, Kentucky, South Carolina, if any of you folks lived there, definitely want to look into the different programs that are available there. If you're not there, definitely looking to advocate and starting some programs you know, definitely connecting with your local ARC to see if they're doing anything with the American opportunity, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. To see if you're able to start programs in your state. There's a lot of different programs going on and trying to get that started in your school system. We have a couple minutes left. I think we have about one or two more slides. I want to see if anybody has any questions? I know people have been asking them >> A couple questions in the box about, there was another website you mentioned besides the . I don't know what it was though. And someone else was asking about any specific information for Florida.>> I'm not sure if there's anything specific in Florida. Maybe we could get back to you, Sloan? I'm going to post this slide in here.>> You posted it? >> Yep.>> There's a lot of different scholarships in there that you may look at. And then there, are just so many different resources out there that you may consider looking at, including, of course, Think College, saving for college, we have a lot of information on our website too. .>> That's it, I think. I think we just wrapped up. Hopefully you folks got something out of our discussion. There's a lot more information. We try to condense things into 45 minutes or so, but hopefully we did a good job.>> I think you did a great job, thank you, Alex and John and also Barb for your information at the beginning. I'm going to transition to our last slide here that announces when our next webinar is. And I'm also going to put a link in this box. We'd like everyone to take just, I think it's literally less than a minute to take our evaluation for today's webinar. So...if you click on that link, I just put in the questions box, when you're done listening, I'll leave this open for a few minutes. But we'd really appreciate your feedback. Barb just pointed out, there are other resources available at transitionwebsite. We have publications on the Think College website. Financial needs financial planning information. If you downloaded these slides, you'll have everyone's contact information. John and Alex and Barb and contact us. There's certainly a lot of things to navigate here regarding financial planning and paying for college and so, hopefully you found today's webinar to be very useful and filled with lots of good resources. John and Alex, I don't know if you have anything in closing you wanted to mention or refer, you know, to anyone else here.>> The only thing I'd say, sounds like a lot of people did some great things. You're planning for college for your child. Whatever you did, you should feel proud of yourself for being part of this conversation today.>> Thanks Alex and Barb, thank you, continue to follow Think College for more information and publications on this and other topics.>> Great, thank you.>> Thanks, everyone.>> Thank you.>> All right, byebye. [Call concluded at 3:59 p.m. ET]. "This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings." ................
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