This is great news, I just shared it with a friend who can use an account like this. Thank you!
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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From the article:
"...it’s thanks in part to a little-known savings account called an ABLE account, which lets people people with disabilities save money beyond the $2,000 asset limit that’s linked to benefits like Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid. Without the account, Safarik could have risked losing government assistance if he had more than $2,000 in assets saved at one time in a given month."
Pretty neat. I've never heard of this.
Huh, I'm a little torn on this. On one hand, it's great that people with disabilities have some more options for saving cash now, which is something that has been notoriously difficult for anybody on any sort of benefits program. The income limits for most benefits programs are disturbingly low. I like that this gives them some more agency in their lives.
But the account limits seem strangely high. Being able to save up to $100k and still get benefits on top of it seems troubling. I'm not trying to suggest that people with disabilities don't deserve to have that amount of money, but somebody who has that much liquid doesn't seem like somebody who also needs financial assistance from the government. That's a very large amount of money for anybody (significantly more than one typically receives from government programs), and I feel like that person still qualifying for benefits, while others who struggle to save even a fraction of that amount may be otherwise disqualified, isn't quite fair. And I worry that this argument could be weaponized by conservatives as a means to dismantle this sort of program entirely, which then ruins it for everybody.
Is there some element to this that I'm missing? Because so far this just seems like a way to allow people with disabilities to also have a seat at the "rich get richer" table. I'm curious to learn more, though.
100k isn't rich. Disabled people face incredible costs as insurance companies and medical care in general gets more and more expensive for less and less, and sometimes out of pocket they have to pay tens of thousands for a vital assistive device. The chances they'll get there are frankly nearly impossible - as usual, the answer is that if one person may exploit the system but hundreds of thousands or more will have a very difficult life eased, the ethical thing is to let it go or at least engage an investigation, not a blanket ban.
if one person may exploit the system but hundreds of thousands or more will have a very difficult life eased, the ethical thing is to let it go or at least engage an investigation, not a blanket ban.
I completely agree. Despite my reservations toward the account limits, I do still think this is an overall net positive. I just worry about the angles the Trump cult might use to attack these sorts of services.
I hate that this is the state of the world now, where I can read an article about something that lifts up a marginalized group of people, and all I can think about is all the ways it'll be used as fodder for some fascist agenda. Sorry for being a downer. :(
$50 per week saved times 52 weeks in a year, over the course of 40 years would be $104,000 (excluding interest). If you could get a consistent 3% interest rate it would only take $25 per week to get to $100k over 40 years
I wouldn't expect a 22 year old disabled person to be bumping up against the max, but if they're able to save consistently until they're 62 they certainly might.
I don't understand why they put limits on these: must have been diagnosed before age 16, must have been diagnosed before age 46. GenX didn't get their issues diagnosed or treated, they were just told to suck it up and get on with it, and I know several who had to drop out of the workforce because of it.