Saturday, January 31, 2015

ABLE Act Wonkery

Green 3-D dollar sign
Ann Carrns, New York Times - January 30, 2015

This is an unusually complete explanation of the new ABLE Act. Although it is written entirely from a money / personal finance perspective, itone of the few articles I have seen that gives anything close to equal weight to the idea of disabled individuals opening and using their own accounts for earnings.

Most stories about the ABLE Act focused almost exclusively on families setting aside money to “take care of” disabled loved ones. That’s certainly one of the intended uses of the law, but its one that assumes a more passive role for the disabled person. In fact, the ABLE Act should be very helpful to disabled people who have the opportunity to work and earn.

Of course, it is worth repeating and lamenting that all of this is only available to people disabled before age 26 … a somewhat last-minute restriction cuts out thousands of disabled people who could have benefitted.

Still, if this thing works out well, it could be expanded down the road.


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