Event ID: 1999745 Event Started: 10/17/2012 7:00:00 PM ---------- >>> [Please standby for realtime captions]. >>> This is to confirm that it is working ing and we ing -- working and we are here. Hold tight for about 5 more minutes. Thank you. >> [Event starting shortly]. >>> Good afternoon. We're going to get started at the top of the hour since we have a lot to cover today. My name is Elizabeth Jennings. We're so thrilled to have you join us today for social security disability insurance, the impact of work on benefits. Today's presenators are going to be myself, my colleagues and two guest speakers sharing their personal stories. Next slide, please. Today's agenda will be some housekeeping tips to make sure you understand how to ask questions, an over view of the financial wellness survey to determine what topics we should provide, the impact of work on disability benefits, two special gusts who will provide their perspective and then some suggested next steps. I'm going to hand it over to MACIA seasonaled -- and she's going to give you housekeeping tips. . >> The audio is being broadcast through your computers. Please make sure your speakers are turned on. You can control the audio broadcast by the panel, which you see an example of right here. It's a free floating panel so it's easy to accidentally close it. If you do, you can reopen it from the top menu by going to communicate and then join audio broadcast. As you can see on the screen, if you do not have sound or if you prefer to listen by phone, you can dial the number with the meeting code listed here. You do not need to enter an attendance ID. In the lower right hand corner of your screen we have closed captions available for participants that are deaf, hard of hearing. You can shut down the media viewer if it's taking up too much space or make it bigger by closing some of the other sections, like panelists, speakers, chat, Q and A. If you experience any technical difficultties use the webinar -- difficulties you can use the chat pod or e-mail us. At the end of the webinar we're going to save time for questions and answers. We'll be sure to get to all the questions we can. If you are listening by phone and not logged into the webinar, you may also ask questions by e-mailing Elizabeth directly . Please note that this webinar is being recorded and that the materials will be placed on the website within 24 hours. >> Thank you. Before we get started we would like to give a special thank you to our sponsor accord therapeutics who gave funding for this webinar series. Today we're going to talk about financial wellness and the relative strategies that you might apply, social security disability benefit basics. We're going to give you some information about support, should you decide that you would like to look at or return to work. We're going to provide two special guest speakers who give their perspective and some suggested next steps. At the end of the webinar we're going to allow you to ask questions in the ways provided. If you have questions after the webinar, you can feel free to e-mail me, Elizabeth Jennings. What is financial wellness? We define financial wellness as the state of a person's finances with the intent of working towards financial behaviors that limits stress and the impact of stress on one's daily life. You talk a lot about wellness, physical wellness, emotional wellness. Financial wellness can be just as important as the stress of your financial situation can also cause there to be issues of stress in other areas of your life. Taking a look at your finances and making some efforts towards improving them can also limit your stress and even maybe improve your over all health. When we talk about financial wellness we're looking at several different things specific to our work and what we think the needs of individuals who have disabilities may be. One is being financially litter rat, accessing affordable financial services, utilizing favorable tax provisions, budgeting, understanding public benefit rules, building and maintaining assesses, understanding the work on long term disability. If you have the time to participate in all the webinar we will touch upon all these things. If you happen to miss one of the webinars you can view them on our website. I will provide you with more information on that at the end to have webinar. The reason why we talk about financial wellness is because individuals with disabilities live in poverty of higher rates than those without. In the 2010 census we learned that individuals ages 18 to 64 for those without disabilities lived below the poverty level at a rate of about 12.8%. For individuals with disabilities they lived below the poverty level at rates more than two times that, 27.3%. You can see that as individuals have or incur disabilities the chances that they will live below poverty increases. No group in America is more deserving of economic recovery. For millions of working age adults with disabilities a dependence on public benefits becoming the track that requires limited income to remain eligible. Some of you may already started the see this. You can see that there are income restrictions, asset restrictions and him -- limitations on how much you can earn. Today we're going to touch on that and help you understand how although those rules may appear as though you can only earn so much there are circumstances that allow you to earn over that amount while having it count as less than. It's kind of like tax deductions work. We want to make sure that you're equipped with information because you don't want to be held to public benefit rules when there are other opportunities within those rules to allow you to earn more and save more. Why is financial wellness important? As I touched upon, it impacts your physical and mental health. It can impact your self-conscious, make you feel as though you're not doing as well as previously, it can change your status in the community and it directly impacts your quality of life. There becomes new costs associated with doing some of your previously easy to do daily activities and so it's important to be considering those finances and looking to programs or services that can help you with those costs. We did a study of individuals with MS along with our partners at MSAA so that we could better understand where individuals with MS were in relation to their finances and what kind of information would be helpful to them in a webinar series. I'm going to give you about 6 points that we found that we thought were relevant. One is that 55% of households herbed less than $35,000 annually. When asked about the ability to pay all of their bills in a typical month 32% of people said they were having a very difficult time paying their bills. Almost 50% reported that they were having a somewhat difficult time. 43% reported that their financial status had effected their ability to access medical care at some point. 71.1% or almost 2/3 responded they don't have enough savings to cover 3 month expenses. Experts are saying we should try to keep 6 months of expenses in the bank. You can imagine the numbers if we put 6 months. 67% reported that their finances were worse since their MS diagnosis. Almost 2/3 or 73% reported that they were not aware of or they have not used financial stability programs that we're discussing through this webinar series, including ENTC, IDA, SSS and PASS. We are going to talk about these in subsequent webinars. If you have a chance I hope you'll tune into them. A lot of financial wellness strategies exist. We have named some of them. Just to go over them one more time, their financial literacy, budgeting, credit repair. Most of you on the line are probably banked. The rates unbanked are quite high. The use of work incentives, tax incentives, income tax assistance and the earned income tax credit, state Medicaid programs, which we're going to talk about today. Different programs allow you to save money without impacting your public benefits, like individual developments. Other programs like system technology loan funds, student loans and retirement accounts. Things will help you earn more post secondary education, employment, self-employment, micro enterprise and home ownership. This bottom level is opportunities for assistance. Protection programs, taxpayer advocates, credit counseling services, volunteer income tax assistance and benefits planning. We're going to talk about benefits planning today. So let's start with our discussion of social security disability benefits. If you had a chance to join us during last year's webinar series we talked about social security disability insurance and social security income on the same webinar. We felt that it was probably too much information so today we're going to talk about just social security disability insurance. In a few weeks from now we're going to talk about supplemental social security income. The social security administration provides both of those programs to support individuals with disabilities who prove that they have an inability to work at a substantial level. Many individuals once they are on these programs want or need to return to work but they have a lot of misinformation about what will happen to their benefits and afraid if they work they will lose the benefits. The social security administration provides within their policy opportunities called work incentives that make it possible for you to work and to work at certain levels and continue to receive some or all of your benefits. We're going to talk about work incentives today. If you are applying for social security disability insurance or SSI it's very important for you to understand that you have to prove two things. You have to prove that you have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death and that you meet social security's definition of disability. That is that you have, as I mentioned, a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death and because of that disability you're not able to work and earn a substantial amount of money. The only individuals who do not have to prove these two things are individuals who are blind. They do not have to prove that they're unable to work. They only have to prove that they meet social security's level of blindness. So we mentioned that you're proving that you're unable to work at a substantial level. Social security calls that substantial gainful activity or SGA. SGA is the performance of significant duties for pay. It's determined to be gross earnings of an amount of money that's set every year. Next year these dollar amounts will change. To meet this test a person has to be not working or if working earning less than the SGA amount. By that I mean in order for you to prove that you meet social security's definition of disability, which you may recall is you're proving that you have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death, and because of that disability you're not able to work and earn at a substantial level, that substantial level is SGA, and the dollar amount for 2012 is $1,010 per month for nonblind individuals and $1,690 per month for blind individuals. There's some other things you have to prove to be eligible for SSDI. You have to meet that definition of disability that you have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death and because of that disability you're not able to work and earn at a substantial level, which is $1,010 per month in 2012. You also have to have the required work credits. You have to meet somebody who work and paid into the social security system. It's possible that you didn't pay in enough but you're a disabled adult child, meaning that you incurred your disability before age 22, you're not legally married to a non-filed person, that's a little bit of social security gin. and you aren't still tied to your parent's record. Let me just go over that one more time. So you either need to have paid enough into the system to draw back out or you need to still be connected to your parents records and have incurred your disability before the age 22. The parent has to be deceased, disabled or retired. SSDI comes with health insurance. It's called medicare. An individual will wait 24 months for their medicare to start. Once it does start you will get part A for free and then part B and part D you will be charged a premium for. There's a 5 month waiting period before individuals on SSDI start to receive their cash benefit. You're going to want to keep in mind that SGA amount of $1,010 per month because it is going to be important through out. It's also important to know that there's no him for SSDI. This is the kind of program that you can apply to and you don't need to worry about all of this different assets that you have. There's no issue about your having 401K or IRA or money in an account. It's a no consequence under SSDI. What they really want to know is do you meet the definition of disability? Do you have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer and result in death and because of that disability are you not able to work and earn $1,010 per month in 2012 and you have the required work credits or qualify as a disabled adult child. Once you're on to the social security rolls, social security is going to periodically check to make sure that you have continued to meet their definition of disability. They call these continuing disability reviews. When you come on to the rolls your file is marked for how frequently you're going to receive these reviews. Some people receive them yearly, some every 3 year, some every 5 years, some every 7 years. It depends on the type of disability you had and the decision that social security made when you came on to the role as to how questionly they -- how frequently they were going to review you. You will get the reviews in the mail. Keep in mind that social security is making sure that you meet their definition of disability, that you continue to have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer or result in death and because of that disability you're not able to work and earn at a substantial level. One of the things that happens when individuals are applying for social security or when they're doing their continuing disability reviews is they take a lot of time to provide information on what they aren't able to do. These documents aren't timed for that. I know it probably would feel more deceiving, however, it's important to let social security know where your disability is creating barriers for you. You do this by demonstrating to them that you are having challenges performing activities of daily living. So even simple things like a question about whether or not you can clean your home. Although you may say I can clean my home, if cleaning your home wipes you out for the rest of the day it's very important to note that. You're trying to demonstrate to social security how your disability is impacting your life. If there's no impact on your activities of daily living y and your ability -- living and your ability to work you don't belong on social security disability. Keep that in mind when with filling out the forms and doing the reviews. Just a couple of important points and then I want to talk about what happens should you decide to return to work. The first point is that SSDI, I like to say they're obsessed with SGA. They're very, very focused on this. This is their measure of whether or not your disability is impacting your ability to work. If individuals work and earn they want to know if you're earning over SGA, which in 2012 is 1010 per month for non-blind individuals and $1,690 for blind individuals. As you work and earn over this amount you are showing a pattern of being able to work and earn at a substantial level, which means that you are proving to social security that you do not meet their definition of disability. The other important point to remember is there's not an asset limit. Sometimes in the community this gets confused because the other social security program, SSI, supplemental social security income has a $2,000 asset limit as do moat state Medicaid programs. SSDI and medicare do not. I just want to make sure you're aware of that. Okay. So I want to talk about work incentives. I'm giving you a little comparison chart. It lets you see side by side that social security disability insurance has several work incentives and the other program that we're not talking about today supplemental security income also has work incentives. I wanted you to be able to see side by side that the work incentives are not the same. There are some that belong under both programs but not all. It's really important when you are talking to friends, neighbors, family members, program providers that you are thoughtful that sometimes people give out information about SSI but you only want information about SSDI unless you're one of those folks that actually receives those benefits which does happen. Today we're only going to talk about social security disability insurance work incentives. Okay. So when an individual on SSDI decides to return to work, the first time period they're in is called the trial work period. Each individual is entitled to a 9 month trial work period that gives you a chance to test your work skills while maintaining your full cash benefit. So during this time period you are allowed to work and earn as much money as you want and you're still entitled to your full cash benefit. Under the SSDI program you get your full SSDI check our none of your SSDI check when you're working. This period allows you to earn as much money as you can and you'll still be entitled to your full check. You get 9 months and you use up one of your 9 months if you earn $720 or more. This is different than the SGA amount, I know. This is called their trial work period amount. If you return to work next month and you worked part time just starting out and you earned under $720, let's say you earned $600, that doesn't count for anything. If you earned, say, $1,200 you would have used up one of your trial work period months but you would still be entitled to your full cash benefits. This period ends when you have used up 9 months over a 5 year period. You don't have to use the 9 months up all in a row. You get 5 years. The reason why social security is set up this way is because they recognize that when you're making the return to work you may get a job and it's just not the right job. It might be a bad job match. It might not be a good match based upon what your physical and mental, emotional needs are. It could be a lot of factors. They expect that people will try a job and possibly it not work out so they'll move onto a different job. You may try to work and find you just weren't ready. It make take a while before you decide to go back again. Whatever the reason, this time period is really beneficial to you because it gives you 9 months to test your work skills. This is a chance not to go back and stay just under SGA but a chance to see if it's possible for you to work at a level where you could come off of the SSDI. That's what you really want to know in this time period. If you're not going to do that, that's okay. That's the real power of the trial period. The real power is that it gives you a chance to go out and test your work skills and see if there is a job that would allow you to earn enough that you would be over the SGA amount and be able to come off of the SSDI role. I'm sure some solve you may be -- some of you may be thinking why would I come off and others are saying that's what I want to do. That's the power of the trial work period. You get 9 months in 5 years and you use up a month when you earn $720 or more during that month. When you use up your 9 trial work periods months you go on to the next time period, the extended period of eligibility. This time period is 36 months all in a row. You do not have the option of spreading those 36 months out. It's 36 months in a row. Once this time period starts, there is no way to stop the clock. The 36 month period begins the month after the last trial work period month. During this time period social security wants to know are you over SGA or under SGA. Remember SGA in 2012 is $1,010 per month for non-blind individuals, $1,690 per month for blind individuals. If you are over SGA you are not entitled to your cash benefit. If you're under SGA you are entitled. So during this time period that's the real thing social security wants to know. Are you over, meaning you're not entitled to your cash benefits or are you under SGA, meaning you are entitled. This can be a time period when people get stuck on I have to stay under that $1,010 per month dollar amount or SGA. That's understandable. We're going to talk in a minute about some stuff you can use to help with that. I want to say at the end of the 36 months if you are working and earning over SGA you're going to come off of the rolls. You're not going to be entitled to your SSDI cash benefit anymore but your medicare is going to stay in place for 8 and a half years. During that time you're able to purchase your medicare. If you're under SGA at the end of the extended period of eligibility you can continue to work and earn under SGA. If you go over SGA you are at risk of coming off. So there's a few work incentives that allow you to work and earn over SGA. It demonstrates that even though you're able to earn over in a dollar amount it's only because of serve expenses that are incurring that should be then deducted. Let's go through this work incentive first. The first one is called impairment related work expenses. These are expenses that you pay for yourself to go to work because of your disability. So, for example, if you're someone who is taking medication in order to manage your disability and without those medications you would not be able to go to work, you can deduct the cost that you pay of those medications. Let's say I pay $300 per month in medications and I earned $1,200, I could adjust the $300 cost I paid for those prescriptions. Even though I worked and earned $1,200 social security would count it as $900. My taxable earnings are below the SGA amount of $1,010 so I would still be eligible. Different Individuals are going to have different levels of expenses. This can include any kind of durable medical equipment, if you're somebody who is using a personal care attender to help you get up and get ready in the morning, that cost of that could be deducted. The medicines you use, the cost of going to see the doctor to get the medicine. If you are someone who is using a modified vehicle you can charge mileage back and forth. What else. If you happen to be someone who is blind and you're using a service animal or you have other expenses related to that disability, you could deduct those costs. This really allows you to look at any cost that you pay for yourself to go to work because of your disability. If it's something you're paying for that everyone else pays for, such as a uniform, that would not count. It's a cost you incur because of your disability to go to work. That's a cost that is, as long as it's reasonable and paid for by you in the month that you worked, should be deductible by social security. There's a few people writing in. All good examples of things you may pay for yourself to go to work because of your disability. This could be a very powerful option for individuals who may want to return to work but are very concerned or not ready to work over that $1,010 amount, which is understandable. You may actually be able to work and earn over $1,010 but because of all of these costs you're earnings will count as less than that amount. I wanted to give you a little bit of information about how you report these to social security. First, I want to tell you there's no time limit in using this. You can use them every month if it's applicable to you. If it's a big expense it doesn't have to be done monthly. You could divide the expense up over several months. Let's say you are somebody who is going to need a mobility device. Let's say a wheelchair or scooter or something of that nature. You could talk with your social security claims rep about designing your cost, not the insurance cost, over several months so that you can get kind of a bigger bang for that to not shift. When you report the first month you use one, I would recommend you make an appointment with your local social security office and you plan to go in there with the receipts for the cost that you had, the reasons for the cost and your pay stubs. You want to meet not with the front office. Let's think about your local social security office. Many of you have been in there. There's a desk where you can talk to someone through a glass. That's not who you talk to. You want to call the 800 number. Could you put that number out to everyone so they can view it. 800-772-1213. You want the to -- to a ask to make aappointment with a social security claims representative and you want to get behind that glass window is you can meet with someone who is a specialist on returning to work. You want to talk to them about the money that you earned, what you would like to claim and ask them with what frequency would they like you to report this back to them. I'd like to advocate to you that you continue to keep receipts for the costs that you have. Make sure that you have that in the event that social security should ever ask you for proof of those costs. Another work incentive that I'd like to talk to you about is called subsidies. There's actually two in here. It's subsidies and special conditions. We're going to talk about them separately. Well, actually, a subsidy allows you to deduct the value of a service provided by an employer. A special condition allows you to deduct the value of a service provided to you by an organization. For example, your employer may provide some accommodation on the side. Perhaps they give you assisted technology attached to your computer or provided other accommodations for you, you can deduct the value of that from your gross earnings. If they provide other things, like extra super vision, maybe they have carved up a job for you that has potentially low productivity or less workload than similar positions or maybe they do something as simple as they give you extra time off so you can manage your doctors appointments or energy levels. Whatever your employer provided based upon your disability you want to think about a dollar value that could be attached to that. If you have a good employer who will discuss this with you, that is ideal. Whatever value the employer tells social security, social security will accept that as the word. If you don't want to disclose to your employer that you have a disability but you've still managed to be provided with some disability specific services, you just haven't disclosed, then you want to negotiate with the local social security office. I'm going to talk that you about that on the next slide. When you get services by an organization at the end of the webinar we're going to talk about some supports that you can go to. The services that those organizations provide can also be deducted. They can be assigned a dollar value and be deducted from your earnings. A subsidy, just so you can think about what this means, social security wants to know what's your personal ability to work in relation to your disability. Think about a bridge. If a bridge can hold 1,000 pounds but with extra supports underneath it can hold $1,200 12 -- hold 1200 pound show social security what you can do without extra support. If the extra supports your employer provided, the support an organization provided, if they bolster you up to earn over the SGA am you -- amount you want to make sure social security understands. If you took it all away, if you -- the support the organization provided away, took the accommodations away, took my medications away I would not be able to work under SGA. That's really the essence of these work incentives. They want to know, what can you do, how much can you perform just baseline. So these work incentives give you a chance to identify the social security. I know it looks like I can work and earn over SGA. If you remove all of these supports I'm not able to. I still meet your definition of disability. So back to subsidies. Subsidies can be applied two times. They can be applied during the initial eligibility process. If any of you on the line are thinking about applying for social security disability insurance and you're currently working or you've been thinking about working, there is a message out there that you can't be working and apply for SSDI. That's not really true. You can't be working and earning over SGA. If you are working and earning over that $1,010 SGA amount but you do recognize that you have subsidy in play, you're only able to do that level of work because of services being provided by your employer or by an organization, you want to make sure that you're documenting that within your initial disability application. It also can be applied for any of you that are working. Once you return to work, once you have actually earned a paycheck, you want to report to social security that there is a special condition in place so that they can review that, document it and determine with you or with your employer what the value of that subsidy will be. So here's a little bit of evidence on receiving a subsidy. If you get extra support on the job, if you have lower productivity or if you have different job functioning than your coworkers, those are all indications of subsidies. How you report this to social security is much like I suggested. You want to call the 800 number, 800-772-1213. You want to schedule an appointment to meet with a claims representative at your local social security office. When you sit down to talk to them, you want to bring your pay stubs with you and you want to bring anything that you can that you feel documents the fact that you have a subsidy at play. If you're employer is open to working with you on this social security will send a form to your employer to complete. If not, you want to let social security know, I have not disclosed to my employer, I do not want to send them a request for information about subsidies related to my disability and you want to work with the claims rep to determine the value. Just like last time, you wanted to ask the claims prep is frequency in which they want you to continue to verify that. Again, continue to document that support in the event that you get a different claims rep or for whatever reason social security later on decides that they want proof of the subsidy. I'm holding questions until the end. One question that was asked is relative to this moment in time. That's the question of what comes first, working or notifying social security of your intention to work. Just so you can understand the social security office a little bit, mainly their main priority is getting people on the social security roll. If you're someone that goes into your social security office or call the 800 number about returning to work they're probably not likely to be very enthusiast I can about your questions or to often provide really good information. The individuals that can do business for you are the people as I mentioned behind the glass who are back in the cubicles of the social security office and those claims representatives. I know they're a personnel member. Those are the folks that understand return to work. Everybody else's priority is getting people on the roll. If you're on and want to return to work you're not really the priority. It's a little confusing for some in the social security office because in order to get on the rolls you proved that you couldn't work. Some people they get a little bit confused. Why would you be talking about returning to work when you already proved your couldn't work. That's just a little bit of social security culture. Notify social security that you intend to work is not necessarily. Understand you are -- is not necessary. understand that you have to report the work and have the chance to meat with a claims rep so you can understand how they want it reported, how you will snow for sure that they a -- applied to your record. In the end you don't want to end up where you're over paid. For individuals who go through this process they use their 9 months of trial work, move into the extended period of eligible. They find that they are working an earning over the SGA amount and eventually comes out of the social security roll or they medical improve and come off of the social security role because of that. There are a few options when that happens. I wanted to tell you about them. One is section 301. If you come off of the social security rolls, you lose your SSDI entitlement then section 301 can be applied to you if you're participating in a return to work program. You want to be able to prove that you're participating in a vocational return to work program. If you can prove that you're going to be able to maintain your eligible for SSDI until your plan within that program ends. This is also applicable -- this is also applicable to students ages 18 to 21 who medically are covered but still participating in their school districts education program and have an individual education plan. So this is another situation where you want to advise social security that you're participate anything such a program and you want to work with the vocational rehabilitation program, to get social security to prove, that's all you need. Another thing that you can do is if you come off of the roll, this time if you come out because you are working and earning at the SGA level it's to use expedited reinstatement. That allows individuals who lose eligible because of work to request to come back on the rolls within 60 months of leaving, so within 5 years. You can do this if you become unable to work and earn over SGA because of the same or similar medical conditions. What they mean by this is if you come off of the rolls you'd had -- you'd have 5 years to call back and say I'm not earning the same and I'd like to come back onto SSDI. Social security will give you up to 6 months of provisional benefits. Your cash benefit and your health care, Ben if you are -- just in case, while your case is being reviewed it's during that period time that they determine if you are not still disabled, you are not cutting back on the roll, you do not get back the 6 months of provisional benefits you received. This was designed to be a safety net for individuals. Social security recommended -- recognized if you have a disability and prove you meet their definition and return to work, that's a leap of faith. It's a scary process to make that personal decision to decide I'm ready. I'm going to try to work at a level of where I am no longer EBL JIBL for the SSDI cash benefit. So they wanted to make sure that they provided an opportunity for people who then DR -- for people unable to continue to work at that level and come back on the roles. That's why they gave you the option to call and say this didn't work, I was able to work and earn over SGA, I'm in the anymore and I'd like to come back. Individuals also always have a second option. You always have the option of reapplying for benefits. That means that you essentially will be going through the same additional application for features when you first came on to the roll. Before I move onto take a tour, I want to go through SSDI again in a nutshell. I know that it was a lot of information. It's not every bit of information that you can have about social security disability insurance. It gives you a good idea of the basics. It's important to remember that in order to receive SSDI you are proving that you have a documented medical disability that will last 12 months or longer and result in death. Because of that disability you're not able to work and earn at a substantial level or SGA. For 2012 that's $1,010 per month for non-blind individuals, $1,690 per month for blind individuals. If they paid enough into the system or disabled adult children, meaning they incurred their ability -- their disability and they're connected to their parents. Individuals who get SSDI get medicare after a 24 month waiting period. They get their cash benefit after 5 months. There is no asset him for SSDI. When you decide to return to work, the first time period that you have is called the child work hard. The child work period gives you an opportunity to test your work skills. It is 9 months over a roaring 60 month period. Any month that you earned $1,720 or more you messed up one of your months. Regardless of how much money you earned you maintain your cash benefits. When you've YUDZ -- used 9 months you move on to the next time period. During this time period, which is 36 months, social security want to know are you working and earning over the SGA ams -- amounts? If you're over you're not entitled to your cash benefit. If you're under you are entitled to your cash benefits. Individuals who are working and earning over SGA can consider work incentives, meaning ERI or subsidies. ERI's are items that you pay for yourself to go to work because of your disability. You can deduct the cost of those supports from your gross endings. Subsidies are the values of support provided by your employer or by an organization which I call opinions. Work incentives allow social security to recognize that even though it looks like you're able to work and earn over the SGA amount if you removed those supports you would not be able to do so. To me, work incentives are very important, not only because they could mean the difference between resaving your benefit or not. They constantly paint a picture for social security about how your disability is impacting your ability to work, this is important. At the end of the extended period of eligible and if you are working and earning over SGA or have deaf straited -- democrat stated a pattern, you are -- demonstrated, you are coming off the roll FCHL -- roll. If you want to come back on you can look at expedited reend statement to let social security know that you're not able to work an earn over SGS because of your disability. You will get 6 months of benefits. Your other option is to reapply for benefits. I realize that that is a very condensed version and certainly doesn't give you, you know, the full level of detail. That gives you a good how of hod SSDI works and where -- of how SSDI works and what you might start to consider when you return to work. Many of you may have heard about the ticket to work program or received information in the mail about this program. I personally thought that ticket to work was a great opportunity for individuals, but there is always some misinformation and misunderstanding about how the program works. I wanted to give you information on that. The first thing you should note that ticket to work is a voluntary program for people on SSDI. You do not have to participate. It's for individuals who want to return to work. If you're thinking this is great information but I don't think I'm ready, don't worry. If you're thinking I am ready, I want to start to look at this more, you may want to consider exploring your options under ticket to work. You get a choice and who you're going return to for your return to work services. The people you can turn are are called employment networks. If you're using your ticket then you have a suspension of your continues disability review. If you remember from earlier today, earlier in this hour, a continuing disability review is social security checking up that will you have a documented medical disability that prevents you from working at a substantial level. Individuals get those reviews every year, 3 every 3 years, every 5 years or every 7 years. If you have conditions during a moment in time when you're doing well, maybe dug the time in time when you're in a period of remission, then you might really want to consider using your ticket to work. It would suspend that continuing disability review, which means that you wouldn't have less in the ticket to work program. Not just while your ticket is assigned to someone but while you're actively participating. It's something really to consider when you have something you may want to consider. The national program manager for the ticket to work program is max must. I've given their phone numbers there. It's 866-968-7842. To me, I would start out by looking at the website choose work TTW.net. This is the website that they've created for beneficiaries. For people like you're who aren't understanding it's different for you. They have benefit training, they have success stories, all kind of information up there. They have opportunities for you to ask questions. If you're THIing -- thinking about returning to work I think this is a great place to start if you want to use your ticket. For the individual that is have signed up to participate in the ticket to work program are called EM called -- called employment network. Anyone but the entity who signed up to provide services under ticket tour. The way they receive money is when you you achieve level levels of work. These organizations are committed to helping you and work at higher levels so they can continue to receive their funding from the social security administration. One warning is that because they want you to continue to work at higher levels, ultimate goal is for you to work at a level where you no longer receive a cash den bit. That's the ULT ultimate goal. You may want to think about that. You may want to think about whether or not you want to be someone who sets out and works at higher levels until the paint that you're no longer eligible and you eventually come off of the SSDI roles. You can get more information at choose work, ticket to work. After this webinar you can reach out to me for other questions. Your state vocational rehabilitation offices, I'm going to talk about them in just a minute. Since I have an opportunity I want to make sure you know before we talk about making support to help you make the return to work, our Medicaid buy in program. Medicaid buy in program and ticket to work program and a couple of the enhancements that social security has made to their work incentives all were provided under legislation called the ticket to work. President Clinton passed it before he left office. Maybe it has cost us in 30 some odd states. This allows you to buy into a state Medicaid program. The great thing about these programs is that they have much, much higher income and -- website. State Medicaid buy in programs often require that the person be working. If you are thinking that's great, I really need Medicaid right now your Medicaid buy in program may not allow you to do that. All of them require that you be employed full time or part time in a nominal level of work effort. It was designed to support individuals as they make their return to work. I had intended for us to do our peer perspective. I want to give you more information and then come back to this slide. I want to share with you a few of the supports that are designed to assist you as you think about this return to work. One is benefit planers. Benefit planers vary from state to state. They are individuals who have been trained by social security contractors who have been trained or -- trained. We did start a social security contractor. Some other organizations provide training to community based staff and different organizations to be able to provide benefits planning to individuals with disabilities. They typically provide this assistance free of charge or the charge is is charged to a vocational rehabilitation. They provide typically information always about your health benefit coverage and because they used to be funded by social security up until earlier this year the list of providers on social security's website is really the best place to start. It will define the benefit planner in your area. Social security has funded an array of organizations TRO -- to provide that training at no charge. That ended earlier this year. However, in my mind this list of providers, those who have formally been funded up until just a few months ago will be the best place to find in your local area who is now providing that support. I just want to rephrase that. The list of providers on social security's website may or may not be providing that information, that service right now. They will be the best first point of contact to find out who in your local area is providing benefits planning. I'm sorry again that there's not an easy way to give everyone across the country at one time information on who to turn to for benefits planning in your local area. Unfortunately, that's a link that just doesn't exist. This is the best bet. If you have any challenge at all in finding out who is the benefit planner in your local area, again, I invite you to e-mail me and I'll be happy to do that. Every state until a few months ago had been funded by social security organization support. It was the protection for that state. It was an organization that existed before social security and continues to exist after these grants for social security. Protection is a great resource for you if you find any barrier because of your disability and want some advice or support in over coming that barrier. We gave the list of providers from social security's website. If you have problems finding the right protection for your state, feel free to reach out to me. Let's look at some employment support. There's state agencyncies, the social security work program and some initiatives around the federal hiring of people with disabilities. The state program exists in every state. It's a state federal partnership that is responsible for the employment of people with disabilities. Not only for people to obtain employment but also to maintain employment. Counselors have extensive training and work with their customer to identify employment goals, assess your aptitude skills and other employment supports. If you're on the line and you are currently working but you need some support and accommodations in maintaining your job, vocational rehabilitation can be a good point of contact to understand what they can provide to assist you. If you are thinking of the returning to work, vocational rehabilitation can be a good point of contact to see what services and support they can provide to you in your return to work. Some states have different levels of services they can offer and some states have income and asset eligibility requirements. We provided you with the state agencies and contact by this link. Another entity that's department of labor one step center is available in every community and they're open to anyone, whether you have a disability or not. If you've never visited your one stop center I encourage you to take a trip over there and see what they have to offer. Sometimes they offer services that you may want to use now, even you're ready to return to work, classes that you can take to keep your skills updated, to learn new computer skills. They provide computer banks to you can use them when you're ready to apply for jobs, update resumes. There can be a wealth of information about the supports available to you. There's a great resource as their whole mandate is to get anyone in the community who needs support back to work. The disability employment initiative is part of the department of labor. It's a grant funded initiative. It provides support to 23 states to improve training and employment opportunities for adults are disabilities. In each state it's in different local areas. It provides to that local area is disable resource coordinator or a single individual who is helping individuals with disabilities to utilize the one stop and connect to supports to return to work. If you're interested in going to the one stop but are thinking you'd rather have an idea of what they can provide to me related to my disABLTability, check to see if there's one near you. You can do so by using the link on the slide. Another great resource is independent living resource centers. Independent living resource centers are sometimes called centers for independent living are through organizations. They have information on referral, peer support and independent living skills training. This is another place that you have never gone to this in your local area, I recommend you take a trip over there, find out what kind of services they provide. This can be a great opportunity if your disability the one that may manifest in different ways. You may come to a point where you need different system technology or mobility support or may just need to understand a different way of doing different activities. Your independent living sector can be a great resource for that. It's always the kind of center that would have practical information on where people are turning to have their homes modified, how people are paying for what, what kind of other disability support is available in your local area. To me, it's the go to point for disability information in your area. I also have it later in the slide so that you have all of them on one page. Just hold tight, we're going to get to that in a minute. The ticket to work program, we'll come back to that so let's go to federal hiring of people with disabilities. The federal hiring of people with disabilities is important. We really need the federal government to be the model for that. Many people inside of the federal government agree with that assessment and have done some great work to try to make that more of a reality. The federal government does provide opportunities for individuals with disabilities through a process that they call schedule A hiring. Schedule A is a hiring authority available to different federal agencies to hire individuals with disabilities without them competing for the jobs. So think about that. This is a way into the federal government without having to compete for the job with other non-disabled individuals. We have for you two links there that give you information about federal hiring initiatives and then one that gives you information specifically about schedule A. I know that many of you are probably trying to write down these links as we go through them. We did post in the chat box where you can retrieve these slides. Again, if you miss anything, you can e-mail me, Elizabeth Jennings after the webinar. Here's the slide that I think we're going to stay on as we talk to our guest presenters. This gives you all of the different return to work resources, how you can connect with a VR agency, department of labor one stop center, an independent living resource center, ticket to work program or how you can learn more about the federal hiring of people with disabilities. I'm going to -- I'm very excited to be able to share with you our two presenters. First we're going to talk to rod. I had the pleasure of being a on a call with rod yesterday where he shared a little bit of information about his experience and coming onto that roll. I'd like to take a moment to recognize him and welcome rod. >> THANK -- thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity to tell my story. This is a scary time in your life and requires a huge leap of faith going forward with it. I hope I can provide some clarity and peace of mind. A little over view of my history, I live in Iowa. What I'll be talking about is governed by the state of Iowa. It may be different depending on where you are at. I'm 56. I was 54 when this process started. I was employed as an upper level manager in education and I was diagnosed with MS in 2008. This process happened fast for me. It made it scarier to take this huge leap of faith and try to pursue it but it's worked out well for me. I'm satisfied with that right now. As my disease progressed I had my very first performance review in 14 years. It was a two part process. The second part of that process I told my employer -- first of all I reviewed with an attorney what my options might be so you can cover my basis. I told my employer of my health condition. They were not very receptive of that. They were not real over eager to work with me. My condition progressed further downhill. 2 months later I had a bit with my neurologist and brought in my performance review and let her review that. I gave her a brief history of my rapid downturn in health. After that she agreed that she would put me on full disability. That happened a lot faster than I expected. I wasn't prepared to face that, the process of not going to work every day, but my health was at a point where I wouldn't push it any longer. 3 weeks later I left. My employer had a short term disability program for me. I paid for a long term disability program. I went on my short term disability program. The insurance company -- it required kind of a huge leap of faith on my part that I had nobody to turn to, nobody to ask questions, nobody to help me through the process. It was just kind of like let's just trust the system and hope it works out. Hopefully you guys are gaining some insights today that this process does work. I was on my short term disability program going through a lot of paperwork, you know, with the insurance company to determine what my condition was and whether I would qualify for long term disability. They approved me for long term disability but asked me if I wanted to go back to work. Well, my health was at a point where I fell like I could work and my work was not in an environment that was going to be stable for me to get reduced stress and try to get healthier. I choose to pursue the long term disability approach. By doing that my insurance company required me to file for SSDI. They hired a company and they did the whole process for me. I worked with JENEX over the phone and online and we filled out the first application. We went through a barrage of paperwork and questions. ReLee That process -- that process all went pretty smooth and fluid. They did, first of all, warn me that almost everybody is turned down the first time through so don't get discouraged if you get turned down because almost everybody gets turned down the first time. I did get turned down the first time just as they suspected I would. I focused on that, trying to get healthier. We found an appeal and appealed that decision. That appeal process went -- oh, it took about a month to go through that process. Same forms, paperwork and they reviewed all the doctors stuff. During that time period I've had -- I've been diagnosed with cancer. They used that diagnosis of cancer as being my trigger date for my SSDI. Well, that happened to fall 4 days after the cut off date for the insurance extension. That is something if you're going through this process you might want to investigate and check into. Last June I lost my health insurance coverage and I get medicare next July 2013. I will be getting some insurance then. Currently I'm on a H IP high what program. That covers me medical coverage at this point in time. I'd like to have kept with any other insurance because it was simpler and easier. The process went smoothly for me. I didn't have many bumps. I was approved the second time. 5 months after that I started receiving SSDI checks of which they subtracted that amount from my long term disability. 2 years from that date is when I was eligible for medicare. Like I said, that process went really pretty smooth. I just really didn't have too many issues with that. The insurance, for me, that was critical. I was on medications and knowing that I would be turned down by an insurance company. I paid that health insurance cost out of my pocket for 18 month, which is required to get on the high risk insurance pool. Those are things you want to dive into closer and find out the rules and regulations on that. I was turned by a health insurance company for continued insurance company which made me eligible for the high risk pool. I started that last June and I'll go through that in July of next year so I'll be on medicare at that point in time. Now, that's just kind of a brief over view of my process. It was a huge leap of faith to go down this unknown process without having anybody to talk to, nobody to go back to and ask am I doing the right thing. I just hope that it works out well. It did work out fine and your neurologist will be huge in this process. If they say you're eligible for disability, they're behind you 100%. It's just a matter of keep pushing SSDI until they approve you. I think that's about all I have. Does anybody have any questions? >> Thank you so much. I think it's just wonderful that you're so willing to share your story with everyone and that you are able to kind of dissect how you went through that process. Thank you so much. >> You're very welcome. >> Now, we had another speaker online. I apologize to everyone. I'm so apoll get -- apologetic and hope you can ignore my comments that went to the whole event. We had another speaker. She's having a lot of trouble calling in. Rather than us continuing to try to over come that tech problem I'm just going to share a little bit of her story. We had a chance to meet last year. She was somebody who had been looking for work and who was considering returning to work but was always receiving SSDI. She has since received employment and has been with that employment for, I think, 2 years now. When we talked she said Elizabeth are you sure you want me to talk because I think I'm grumpy because I'm ready for a better change up. I said that's a great position to be in, compared to being at the point that you're not quite sure if you're ready -- or you're not quite sure about to go about it. I think that's a great process for her. She's a really wonderful speaker. I'm sorry she didn't make it to us today. So we have about 8 more minutes. I have a few more slides that I want to share with you and then try to address some of your questions. First is that there are some opportunities to provide you with assistance with accommodations. Accommodations can be important for you if you're on a job now or when you think about returning to work. They might also be helpful as you think about whether or not you're ready to return to work. One of the things that could be taking place for you is you kind of are recognizing some limitations that you have on the job but you may not be sure how you would over come those limitations. These two websites can be helpful to you in that. The first is called JAN. That's a federally funded contract from the department of labor. Their total purpose is to help people understand how to provide job accommodations and how to request job accommodations. If you go to ask JAN.org you can review success stories, ask questions. You don't only have to go up there when you're ready to ask for an accommodation. You can go up there just to think about how would I do that job task if I were asked to. Another is the ADA national network. Every region has an ADA sensor. These sensors are there to help people understand their obligations. They are also there to help the community members better understand what the ADA can do for you and how you can be an active parparticipant. I'd like to share with you suggested next steps. These are activities we suggest you take on so that you can start to think about a return to work. You can make an informed choice about what you would like to do when you're thinking about work and either going onto SSDI or utilizing SSDI in a return to work. The first thing we'd like to suggest you do is registerer at least visit with one of these employment support programs. The department of labor one stop center or the social security ticket to work program. We'd also like to suggest that you seek out and meet with a benefits planner. We realize this might be more challenging in some areas than others. I gave you that link to social security's formerly funded benefit planning programs. Remember this is just a starting point. Unfortunately there's no catch all play -- place to list all the benefit planers. If you're not able to locate them through this resource you can reach out to me and I will do my best to help you locate one. Next we'd like you to set a goal to complete items 1 and 2 over the next 3 months. This information will be archived and available to you at other points in time. We think the next 3 months just to keep your momentum going. We hope you'll share with us your experience. At the ended -- end of our webinar we're going to e-mail everybody who registered to ask you did you participate, what did you learn, did you follow these suggested next steps and how did that go for you. We use this information to help us define what we hope will be a 2013 webinar series and also to help us locate individuals like rod. Rod is someone who responded to our request to share your experience with us. It's how we knew he would be a good participant to share his personal story with you today. This is my contact information. I'm going to leave this up for you so that you can review it. Again, you're welcome to e-mail me if you have questions about today's webinar or if you have questions that come up in the future. In the meanwhile, I'm going to tackle a couple of the questions that came in. We're not going to be able to do all of them because we got a lot of questions. We're going to see if we can handle some of them. One person asked if you work but do not earn enough money monthly to reach the $720 per month that would count towards the trial work period do you continue to receive full benefits indefinitely. The answer is, well, it would depends. Your ability to receive benefits is based upon not only whether or not you're working but whether or not you continue to meet social security's definition of disability. You continue to have a documented medical disability and proof that that limits your ability to work. If you just looked at earnings alone if you were under $710 per month you would not be using up your trial work period and I would remain on benefits indefinitely. There's two things I would add to that. One is that if you are on the line and you previously worked it's possible that you used up your trial work period in the past. You really only get one. There's a few special circles in which you may get more than one trial work period. Typically it's that one trial work period. Before 2000 the trial work period amount was very small. You may have already used up your trial work period and you can find out by, again, making an appointment with a claims representative and working with them to understand what they have on record as your work effort thus far and whether or not you have already used up that trial work period. The other point I'd like to make is that this person actually makes a good point. If you are not ready to really test your work skills then you may want to consider being thoughtful about your trial work period. It's really your one shot to really push about how much you want to work and whether or not you're going to be able to work and earn at a level that would allow you to come off of the social security roll. Another question that came in is how is attending college considered as far as trial work period or substantial gainful activity. The answer is that they're looking at your efforts for pay. So when you go to school it doesn't impact -- it doesn't show that you're earning at a level to use your trial work period or to achieve SGA. The fact you acquired skills during school may be considered at another point in time. In addition to trial work period and whether or not your over our under SGA, college is not a consideration. Another person asked a question that said I do some freelance work. I may make more than the $720 in a month but most times not. When I'm paid I get the full gross amount and a 1099 at the end of the year. That's a special circumstance and you would want to, again, talk with a benefits planner or the social security local office because SSDI considers self-employment differently. They look at hours of work for the trial work period and they look at net earnings beyond that time. If you're on the line and you are participating in or you're thinking about self-employment, it's important that you consider, again, meeting with a benefit planner or the local social security office so that you can better understand how those rules apply to you. Another question we had is does the trial work period apply only to those in the ticket work program or all SSDI recipients. The answer is that the trial work period is not a part of the ticket to work program exclusively. It applies to all individuals. Actually, all of the work incentives we discussed applies to you whether or not you use your ticket to work. So just as a reminder, the ticket to work program only does two things. It gives you access to employment networks, which are organizations that have social security to serve you and it gives you a SUS suspension disability review. The ticket to work program doesn't do anything else. It doesn't add or subtract any of the other work incentives. If you're not ready to assign your ticket to work it's voluntary so that's okay. If you are ready it will give you access to employment networks that are looking to shouldn't you're ticket to work program and it will you've you suspension of your continuing disability review. It's now 4:32. We have some other questions that were asked. I'm going to copy them and send individuals that put them e-mails so that you can have your questions answered. At this time we're going to wrap up our webinar. I want to, again, thank rod for being our special guest presenter and NAKIA for her work on this call. I want to thank you for logging on today. It's a privilege for us to be able to provide this information to you with great thanks to our sponsor. If you have any questions I hope you will reach out to us so that we can support you as you think about either going on to the SSDI roll or if you're already on and you're thinking about making a return to work. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today. Have a wonderful rest of your afternoon. >> [Event concluded]