99. Secure Their Future: Financial Planning for Special Needs Kids

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3 Critical Steps in Financial Planning for Special Needs Kids!

Wondering how your child with a disability will be financially secure? This interview reveals 3 life-changing steps!

This interview dives into the world of financial planning for children with disabilities. Jim, a financial advisor, shares key strategies to secure their future. He emphasizes the importance of government benefits like SSI and SSDI, along with estate planning and Roth IRA conversions.

Throughout the conversation, Jim highlights a crucial mindset shift – it’s all about the child’s well-being, ensuring they have the resources for a fulfilling life. He warns against inaction, emphasizing that there are resources available to navigate this process.

The interview concludes with a discussion about Jim’s book and summit. While their contact information won’t be directly mentioned in the video, listeners who want to learn more can find them through these channels after reviewing the interview.

This video is a valuable resource for parents and caregivers of children with disabilities, offering practical steps and a reminder to prioritize their child’s future financial security.

Get Jim’s book for FREE! https://disabledchildplanning.com/

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Music Used:

“LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

James Lange is a CPA/Attorney and the author of ten financial books that help IRA and retirement plan owners. The Wall Street Journal has endorsed Jim’s tax and estate planning strategies 36 times.

Jim’s daughter, Erica, has a disability. Jim’s Roth IRA conversion and SECURE Act expertise was critical in developing a solution for his daughter, and then extrapolating his solution for the benefit of all parents of a child with a disability. Jim authored a new book, Retire Secure for Parents of a Child with a Disability, with two experts in the disability field. The financial planning solutions Jim developed and is sharing with other parents of a child with a disability in this book came from his own family’s journey to devise a long-term financial security solution for Erica.

Episode #99: Secure Their Future: Financial Planning for Special Needs Kids

Wondering how your child with a disability will be financially secure? This interview reveals 3 life-changing steps!

(Recorded May 22, 2024)

Full Transcript of Interview:

Tonya: Jim, welcome to Water Prairie.

Jim: Well, thank you so much for having me, Tonya.

You and I have talked a little bit via email and through, through some, some of your team about the topic that we’re going to talk about. And I’ve been looking forward to this one. My husband’s been excited about it as well. We’re looking forward to being able to share your information with, with our audience to start out. Let’s, let’s go back a little bit. I’d like to hear kind of what led you to looking for ways to help special needs parents provide for their children’s future.

Well, it’s interesting. You know, a lot of people become involved in situations related to some type of problem with their child. So my background is I’m a CPA and a state attorney. I’ve been doing this for 35 years. I have nine best-selling books. I’ve been in the Wall Street Journal 36 times. And my real area of expertise is I’m planning for people who have IRAs, Roth IRA conversions.

estate planning, the Secure Act, and then more recently, providing for a child with a disability, and when I had to come up with a solution for my own daughter, which my wife and I did, and the difference is The difference between her running out of money and having $1.9 million in today’s dollars. I wanted to just tell the world about it. I wanted to say, hey, hey, community of parents with a child with a disability. There is a way. That can enormously alleviate your worry and your anxiety because you’re not only going to have to provide or hopefully provide for your child during your lifetime, but then after you’re gone, you know, my daughter might survive me by 40 years.

How do we provide for her for 40 years after I’m gone and working longer, spending less and saving more just doesn’t do it. So I have this, what I think is wonderful information. I was able to. Recruit two wonderful coauthors and we wrote a book called Retire Secure for Parents with a Child with a Disability and and then we’re doing a summit on it and right now it’s my life goal to get this information out to as many people as possible.

As could use it as possible. We’re making the book available for free. We’re picking the summit available for free. And if people go to a website, you know, they can again, get this all for free. Uh, this is, this is me and my daughter and. My wife,

just a note, listeners, we’re going to talk more in detail about the book and about the summit, um, near the end. So stay with us to the end of this, but go ahead and look in the show notes in the description and you’ll see the links there as well. So make a note of that and remember to come back and click on those links.

And thank you for doing that, Tonya.

Oh, sure, sure. The, you know, our whole idea is we’re trying to serve as much, as many people as we can by providing as much information as we can.

And the majority of our listeners are parents with children with different disabilities and special needs. So this is valuable information for all of them to listen to. And, um, But I, I kind of want to get into what, so, so we know how you got started. This is a personal passion for you. Um, as it is for a lot of us, as, as you say, can you tell us what steps you followed to ensure that your daughter would be provided for?

Sure. So there’s three basic steps that I think apply to just about everybody who has a child with a disability, who wants to dramatically improve. The prospects for that child, both while you’re alive and after you’re gone. And let me start by saying, if you have a child with a disability and your goal is to provide for them for your lifetime and their lifetime, unless you’re spectacularly rich, You have a long, tough job ahead of you.

So you want to maximize every single thing that you can. You want to squeeze the last dollar out of the tax code. You want to get every government benefit that you can. Um, so just keep that in mind. And the difference, you know, a lot of times when I’m working with, you know, Let’s say a client that doesn’t have, that nobody in the family has a disability, and let’s say with superb planning, maybe we save, uh, an extra $500,000, and if we kind of screw it up, instead of getting an extra $500,000, the family gets nothing, or they even owe money.

And, Is that a terrible thing? Sure it is. Is it tragic if it’s done and two able-bodied adul