Interview With Me and Jim Lange

Jennifer:  All right. So today I'm here with Jim Lange and I will have him start by introducing himself and what he would like to talk with me about.  Thank you for having me, Jennifer.

Jim: My name is Jim Lange. I'm a CPA and an attorney, and I've been doing this for over 35 years. And I'm also the father of a child with a disability. And when it became clear that our daughter, Erica, who has dysautonomia, which will make it very difficult for her to ever work or to support herself, the challenge for me and my wife was, well, how do we support  her not only during our lifetime, but if she can never work? How can we support her for the rest of her life, which could easily be 40, 50 years after we are gone. 

And then I came up with a solution, based on my background, of financial planning strategies, IRA.  Secure act, et cetera. And then after I came up with my solution, I wanted to tell and share with the world my solution to help other parents with a child with a disability. So we wrote a book.  Which I humbly believe is the best book there is for at least for the financial side for parents of a child with a disability. And then we're also having a summit, a 3 day summit where we're gathering a group of experts. I'm not only the 3 authors, but we also have a celebrity speaker and other experts in a variety of subcategories. For parents with a child with a disability. So that's the, the short, the short answer. And if you wanted to lead with some questions, that would be fine. If you want me to just. go on. Yeah, I'll leave.  I'll do it. I'll do it.

Jennifer:  However you like. Okay. Thank you. I was curious about your daughter, Erica. I don't think I've heard of this auditorium. Is that what you said? Dysautonomia. Dysautonomia. I don't think I've heard of that before.

Jim:  Yeah. Dysautonomia: is somebody who typically has problems with the autonomic nervous system and things that we think of as routine that we don't pay any attention to, nor do we even really think about much, things like blood pressure, heartbeat, other things that happen automatically. And in her case, they do not, and that brings up a variety of symptoms in a variety of ways. It's often combined with some form of depression because people are not physically able to do what others can. And it's a very challenging condition and at least in our daughter's case, unless there's a major reversal, it is not likely that she will be able to work and support herself. 

You know, you could, if you met her and you could have a conversation with her for a half hour and you might not, and if this topic didn't come up, you might think that she's fine. And you'd think, oh, she's a very bright young lady. But then after that half hour, she would be exhausted. She would have to crash. She, and she might not be up for that half hour. It might just depend on the day and, and what else is going on. So it's a very serious condition. It's actually more common, or variations of it are more common than we might think. But while we do everything we can to help her physically, frankly, that's not my area of expertise.

My area of expertise is how to help other parents with children either like her or with advanced, I'm sorry , invisible learning, challenge or other disabilities, how they can best provide. For their child, and say one of the side benefits of this is not only do you feel better just like my wife and I did after we came up with a plan, but depending on the child's cognitive functions. They will feel better. Our daughter is just so happy because she was, you know, really worried. Well, what's going to happen when mom and dad die?  You know, my going to be, is there going to be a roof over my head? Is there going to be food on the table? If  it is, and even better, you know, if there's some alternative therapy or if there is something that I need, am I going to be able to afford that?

Jennifer: Yeah, that, that definitely makes sense to me. I was also curious, did you know your daughter had a disability when she was born or did it come about later? 

Jim: No, it, it developed. So during the first maybe 10 to 12 years, she, you know, it wasn't perfect, but we thought that she was going to be fine. And then.  And frankly it was misdiagnosed. It was diagnosed early as just depression without a physical problem. And then it, it, you know, we took her to a lot of specialists all over the country, which I think is not all that unusual when you have a difficult to diagnose problem, and you're a concerned parent, but, you know.

Jennifer: Of course.

Jim: We, traveled to a lot of different clinics, in a variety of states , seeing a variety of different specialists, including some alternative people that didn't really help, and we've kind of made peace with well, okay, she does have this problem. How can we best support her physically? And then again, not my area of expertise. I'm not an M. D. I have no specialized medical knowledge. But I do have specialized medical, financial knowledge in terms of qualifying for government benefits, in terms of estate planning, and in terms of strategies like ROTH IRA conversions.  

Jennifer: Yeah. So,  it sounds like  while you were helping your daughter with,  with growing up with her learning, with her, disability or as I like to call it, learning challenge, that,  sound like that's what inspired you to write your book?  Jim: Yeah, it did. Because after, after, after we came up with what I'll call the solution that we can get into, you know, it just made such a difference in our lifestyle. The relief of not worrying about our daughter, not that we're not going to worry because of course we're parents, we're always going to worry. But at least now we can worry about some of the non-financial issues instead of worrying about her not having it. So, you know, we're number crunchers as CPAs and that's. And frankly, we're financial strategists and the difference between all with investments being the same, taxes being the same, everything else being the same,  the difference between somebody using our strategies. That we came up with and somebody not in my daughter's case would be the difference between her running out of money and her having 1. 9 million. Now to be fair, my wife and I probably have more than maybe the average person, but even somebody with a 500, 000 IRA. The difference between using our strategies and not in today's dollars is two hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars.

Jennifer:  Wow. 

Jim:  So  if it's not costing you money  and you have the possibility of even having five hundred thousand dollars of having your kid be better off by two hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars, that's in today's dollars, not future dollars. Future dollars would probably be a million or something like that. This is a major, major difference in the quality of life for you not having to worry about it and for your child who will have that additional money and resources. So it just became very natural since I've written 10 books in any boat way to write a book just for this.  And I took, in effect, the best of the 10 books I had, and then I got two co-authors who filled in some of my substantial knowledge gaps. And so we've kind of put together this one great resource , that I would like to make available without charge to your audience. We didn't talk about that, but I'm not here to sell books. I'm here to frankly give away books, if anything, and give away information. In the hopes that it can have an impact for somebody. 

Jennifer: Yes. Thank you. I think you're, I think Sandy mentioned to me that you were willing to give away a digital copy. I appreciate that. 

Jim:  Yes. No, I'd be happy to do that. 

Jennifer: Yeah. So why don't you,, start telling me about your book then and what, what it does. 

Okay, well, um,  again, it's called "Retire Secure for Parents of a Child with a Disability" and maybe and I think it covers  three areas that are critical to the solution  and  I'd like to go over the three areas and then I'd like to talk about some of the specialty areas  were people with invisible learning challenge. Of course we spoke, we spoke for a few minutes before we went live. I learned a little bit what, which is what things I already suspected. And I actually  did a little bit of research, but you confirmed. So, I'm going to give you 1st, the general information that would apply to anybody with a child with a disability.

And then after we do that, then we'll talk about it. Specifically, people with invisible learning,  challenge. Okay? Mm hmm. Okay. All right, so the 1st thing is  whether your child can qualify for government benefits and while  I'm going to concentrate on what I call or actually what Debbie McFadden calls the golden ticket. Debbie McFadden was the commissioner of disabilities under the H. W. Bush administration. She had 400 attorneys working for her, which sounds like a total nightmare to me.  Anybody put attorneys in 400?  But anyway, she has developed a deep expertise in helping people qualify for government benefits. 

So,  you know, depending on the degree of disability, and also I hate to say it, but depending on the knowledge and the skill of the person applying for government benefits,  there can be a huge benefit to qualifying your child for SSI or SSDI. First, there's a cash benefit that  I should know. It's something like 900 a month with SSDI, a little bit higher. But it also opens the door for medical benefits and Medicare and health insurance. And education benefits. And,   equipment benefits, if appropriate, and major estate planning benefits, which would have a long term implication after the parents are gone. So, to me, that is the 1st  issue. Now if you have, let's say,  a minor problem, and maybe you have a child that doesn't function quite as well, or does, or not as quickly, or needs special attention, but ultimately, and maybe they're not going to be a rocket scientist, but maybe they would have an okay job,  and the degree of their disability is not that great,  they're probably not going to be able to qualify. 

No, we have some strategies for folks like that.  But that would not be nearly enough, we can't make a 1. 9 million differences for a child like that.  All right, we can if the child would qualify for these government benefits.  So that's the 1st thing that you should know. And, you know, Debbie likes to say, hey, somebody says, hey, my child lost a finger. You know, what can you do?  You know, she can't do anything because that child would be able to get a job and have a relatively normal life.  But if the child. You know, the degree of disability is sufficient that that child, for example, would not likely be able to work or would need a lot of special help in school, et cetera, then that child very well might qualify for benefits.

And the other area that I don't have an expertise on that Debbie does is something called vocational rehabilitation. Which is a different type of government benefit, but that would be more in the area of tuition and college and, and things for a child that might have a disability that might not qualify for SSI or SSDI. So the first thing to do, and here's the other thing. A lot of times you find a parent who is kind of proud and they. They want to tell you about what their child can do. Oh, you know, he needed an extra half hour on the test, but he got an A. Or, or,  well,  and it's just natural for us, for us as parents to want to celebrate what our children can do. And I think that we should be thinking like that. But not if you're trying to get government benefits. If you're trying to get government benefits, it's what your child can't do. So Debbie McFadden uses the example of her two daughters who both qualified for disability.  One was basically a one legged rock climber, champion, Olympic champion.

Now, certainly a woman like that can get up a flight of steps.  Well, she didn't say, Oh, she can get up a flight of steps. She said she can't get up a flight of steps in the normal way.  There, you're going against your parental instincts. And you're arguing what your child can't do,  which makes it much more likely that they will qualify for a benefit. 

Jennifer: That makes sense.

Jim: So that's, that's number one. And, and, and I don't know anybody in the world who knows more about it, than Debbie. Debbie wrote a fabulous section in the book that was included, and she does have a service. That she helps people. I don't get a nickel for referring to that service, but I want to give you your audience. And the other thing is, she's very straightforward. If it's going to be, no, she won't waste your time and money. She has her. Her record is so good. That I didn't want to put it out there because I said somebody's going to challenge it and you're going to have to defend this incredibly high percentage of success. 

But anyway,  that's the first thing. The second thing is you really need to get your estate planning right. If your child does qualify for a government benefit,  you will likely need something called a special needs trust. And the idea of that trust  Is that you want to preserve your child's government benefit, both while you're alive and after you're gone. But, if you just left that money to your child outright,  for example, SSI, it's a poverty program. Your child can't have more than, say, 2, 000 worth of money. So, if you leave the money to a child,  Without a trust there, that's going to blow their government benefits. And if they've already received some government benefits, the government might go into that pot and say, Hey, we want to be reimbursed. Let's just say that you have a regular trust. You know, maybe you've got the will done before you knew your child had a disability. So you have a typical minor's trust. Well, you know, one half at.  25, one half at 30, we terminate the trust at 35, or you even have a spendthrift trust, which might be tempting for parents to do, which is to say, well, we're never going to leave the child the money outright, but we're going to empower the trustee to use the money for the health maintenance and support of the child.

Well, that kind of trust will also blow the government benefits.  So we don't want that kind. We want a special needs trust. And I'll talk about some of the specialty areas, for people with a, say, a learning challenge.  And the third thing, and this is really my area of expertise, is we want to get the financial strategies right. If the child does have a disability,  there are certain financial strategies. Many of which are familiar to many people, but not familiar to the parent with a child with a disability. Folks, and interestingly enough, it's ROTH IRA conversions,  and I could go into the details of why a ROTH IRA conversion is so important for a child with a disability with the risk of sounding too technical. It is because. That child will be able to stretch or defer the inherited, tax free ROTH IRA  over their lifetime. Compared to a child that doesn't have a disability,  they would have to take it out in 10 years.  Right. Even then, we're still doing it for a lot of people. You know, I mean, frankly, that's what I've been doing for the last since 1998. That's my specialty area is helping people with ROTH IRA conversions. And we very frequently do them for people who have children that don't have any disability.  But we can't make a 1. 9 million differences for a lot of those folks. But we can for a child with a disability.  So those are the three, really critical areas  to get right.  Okay. 

Jennifer: And,  you are touching on this a little bit, but maybe you can go into it more, the impact that. If the parents follow the steps, you recommend the impact that it will have for their child or children. 

Jim: Well, the difference could be running out of money versus being broke.  So, you know,  and again, the psychological benefit. For both the parent and the child.  What I'd like to do now is focus on what might be specific to your specific audience. Which is the parents of a child with invisible learning, challenge, if that's okay. Yeah, of course. Is that the next relevant thing? Yeah. Okay. So, when we were talking before, you said that there are children. It's not just either you have it or you don't. It's maybe a little bit like autism where there might be more of a spectrum. Jennifer: Mm hmm.  And the other thing that you said is it's not necessarily easy to predict.  

Jim: The degree of function that a child will have, let's say, in adulthood, and that that might change one way or the other.

That is maybe a child who is not able to support themselves,  maybe gets the appropriate training, et cetera, and then does much better.  Or maybe there's a trauma in that child's life, and they actually do worse.  So now,  what do you do as a parent? And let me tell you what one of the,  one of the issues that I, and I'm going to, let's say, attack is my own solution that I just offered.

I talked about a special needs trust, which is a wonderful and necessary type of trust. If your child's getting a government benefit and you want to preserve that government benefit.  Well, what if.  Your child  doesn't qualify for that government benefit. Maybe you thought they did, or maybe your child qualifies for it now, but does better, which is our hope,  and doesn't qualify for it later in their lifetime, because they're doing better.

Right. And now you have this special needs trust, which is very, very restrictive. You know, remember the child can't really have their own money for SSI.  So you have the child that has this very restrictive trust,  and there's no particular need for those restrictions because you don't have the government benefit. 

And that case you and let's say that you still want to have a trust because let's say the child still has some problems and you don't want to just leave the money outright to the child to do something inappropriate.  And in that case, you would want, let's call it a standard creditors trust, to protect the child from creditors and frankly, to protect the child from themselves.

And also, to protect the child from a future ex spouse,  we even call it that I don't want my no good daughter in law to inherit one red cent of my money.  So, and, they're all some variation of a creditor protection trust. So now we have two types of trusts that we can be thinking about.

One is this creditor protection trust, and two is a special needs trust. They have different purposes. And they have significant differences for the child once you're gone. And by the way, these are  what I'm referring to are called testamentary trusts, meaning these trusts are typically not funded or they're just a piece of paper in a safety deposit box. 

Okay, so the question now is, well, gee, I'm, gee, Jim, I'm not sure. Maybe right now my child does qualify for SSI or maybe right now they don't, but they might in the future or go the other way. Yes, they qualify now, but we're hoping that the child will do better and will not need the SSI. Um, these government benefits, and we'll be able to be a functioning member of society that will be able to have a job, et cetera. 

So how do you pick which 1?  And if you pick 1, and then the child's situation changes, then you have to go back and change your will. And then what happens if the child. Situation changes after you're gone, right? And the child ends up with the wrong type of trust.  So, there is a trust, or a variation of a trust called a toggle. 

So let's say that you want a regular creditor's protection trust. The trustee has the power to toggle to use that type of trust.  Then let's say there's a downturn and the child does qualify for government benefits, in which case you want the special needs trust.  Then you  earn the toggle  and now it's a special needs trust  and the trustee is going to have, and it's, you know, you give the power to the trustee who,  you know, I'm kind of a cheapskate.

So, I tend to not prefer corporate organizations, although I think there are some good corporate organizations for children with disabilities. But whether it's, you know, one of those groups, or a traditional bank or trust company, or, you know, a caring relative, by the way, for whatever it's worth, as an estate attorney, we've,  let's even just say outside the disability world, we typically will use siblings.

 Unless there's a problem with that. There's usually some, but usually that's the.  Usually the sibling is going to know what's going on in the life of the child much better than anybody else, of course, and it's going to really care about the child. But anyway, forgetting about the choice of trustee, giving the trustee the ability to toggle back and forth. 

That, that is really, that is really the key to effective estate planning, and I hate to say this, and I, by the way, do not have an estate planning firm anymore. I can refer people to one, but, so I'm, I'm not out here trying to sell wills and sell, sell these trusts.  I'm just trying to in effect provide great information, at least in this area,  it's a specialty area. 

I even have a friend who has a child with a disability and I was explaining this toggle trust because his child is, let's call it on the border. And he said, well, that's a great idea. I'm going to go back to the attorney that I had to do my will because I liked him and I thought he was competent.  And I said, no,  you really want to go to a specialist in this area. 

Now that might sound like I'm taking away and maybe, maybe the estate attorney that you go to,  maybe he could figure it out. Maybe he could learn it. But even when I, even when I did have an estate planning firm and we did sit, we did. 3, 000 wills.  If a parent with a child with a disability came to us, I would say we can't, we don't have the expertise to do an estate plan for that child.

We want to see you go to a specialist.  All right now, 1 of the co authors of the book, I didn't even write the section on state planning in the book. 1 of the co authors. She is a specialist and that's what she does. Now. She's only licensed in Pennsylvania.  And both of us have some connections, both in Pennsylvania and in other states, and the estate attorney must be licensed in the state where the parent is the. I am a resident, but she just had so much expertise and she's done so many of them.  It's like many areas of. The law and even the sub specialty of estate planning to me, I either want to go to somebody who's done 100 of them or,  you know,  and as an estate attorney,  we, we chose well, we don't have 100 people to.

To do this, this is before I got into the relationship with a child with a disability. So we just said, we're not going to try to be experts at everything. We're just going to refer that out.  So that might not be as helpful to people as they want. But I'll just say that it would be risky going to an estate attorney that doesn't have that area of expertise.

Also, you know, you have the, you have other issues that are much tougher. The guardianship issue is much tougher for a child with a disability.  Things like,  for example, Julie Steinbacher, her office.  They actually have social workers on staff because a lot of the problems aren't really legal. It's.

Dealing with the government and administration and getting these benefits, etc. Etc. So that is a specialty area.  That makes sense to me because it sounds like if you didn't go to somebody who was a specialist, they might not get it.  All the different details are correct necessarily. And I hate to say it and I'm not going to say that every specialist is going to get it right either.

Jennifer: Mm hmm. 

Jim: You know, we have a service. That's a comp, that's a, that's basically what we call a financial master plan.  And even though we don't practice law, I can't help myself. I have to look at somebody's will and trust and I'm, I'm rarely happy with them  even for a child that doesn't have a disability.

So it's really important to use the right person  and choosing the right person is that that's a, that is another challenge.  Yeah, that does sound like that would be Jennifer:  I can understand where you were coming from with your friend who said that their child was kind of on the border of  needing it or not needing it because  usually somebody with an invisible learning challenge, whether it's autism or ADHD or maybe, dyslexia. Or,  maybe it's, you know, for me, it's, nonverbal learning disability.   It's very hard to tell that it's obvious that they have a learning disability or a challenge.  So that's where I think qualifying for,  SS or SSI or SSDI.

Jim: Yeah, where that might be more challenging.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Jim:  Yeah, it certainly is. I mean, for our daughter, we, we didn't, we didn't meet Debbie until after we successfully, we lost our first you know,  application and then when we, which most people do, and then we appealed and we, the attorney figured like relatively before soon before the trial that we were going to lose and then they fired us  and my wife spent, my wife probably put a thousand hours into developing the medical case that if she had known what she was doing, it would have been a lot less.

But she, she just meticulously, and, and she was, we, we qualified for SSDI, which is more difficult than SSI, and I don't want to get into the distinction, but I'll just say,  going to the right person, and this is an area where I think you don't want to pack your own parachute, you know, you're better off paying, because the stakes are so high. 

You know, that 1. 9 million  that we save for our daughter, it would be way, way less if we, if she didn't qualify for government benefits.  Yeah, that makes sense. You, you want to get that part, you want to get that part, right. And you want to get the estate planning right.  And even if somebody is pretty good, I would say most of the state planners who even work in the area of special needs children do special needs trust. 

Very few of them know about the toggle.  And to me, it's kind of an obvious solution.  Yeah, that, I don't think I even heard about that solution before you told me about it. But no, no, no, no, most, most people won't. And one of the challenges is a lot of people I can picture. Okay, Jim, I researched, I found that I found this guy, he's supposed to be the top guy in the city on doing special needs trust.

And I told him, I heard this program with Jim Lange. Maybe they got the book. Can you do a toggle trust? And he says, what's a toggle trust?  So this isn't, this, this is not an easy road for parents.  You know, if you have a child with a special need, whether it's a special learning need or a physical need, as in my daughter's case, I mean, my daughter, you know, you could give her an advanced calculus problem and she'd be fine with it. 

But, you know, you say, hey, you want to go for a walk? That's  what would be a major challenge. So, anyway, I, so, one of the things that I like to tell parents is this isn't a time to be proud. This is a time to get every single government benefit that you're entitled to and take advantage of every single area in the tax law that you can.

And that, by the way, we haven't really even talked much about that. That happens to be my area of specialty and what I've been doing for the last literally 30 plus years.  Yeah, so you can go into that a little bit if you want with the different benefits they can get. 

Jennifer: Okay. 

Jim: And maybe we'll repeat this at the end, but can I tell people where they can get the book? And can I also mention the summit that we're doing? 

Jennifer: Yeah, of course.

Jim: Okay. I'm pretty sure that this is right. I'm going to  email my office right now to confirm.  In case, in case I'm getting the wrong address. Address.  If they, if they were to go first. So, so the book, and by the way, the book, I mean, it's a monster. It's like 450 pages. But the key to the book is you don't have to read the whole thing. And the table of contents is 20 pages by itself. So, it's very easy to, to  look for the exact thing, like, so let's say that, that one of your viewers is good with everything, they've done everything that I've, I've talked about, but they never heard of the Toggle Trust.

I can go to the table of contents and look for toggle trust and there it is. And it's a description or anything. So  I'm a big believer in over providing information, but then making it accessible. So again, and  I'm pretty sure that I should have had this, but it is, this www. disabled child planning. com  June. Okay.  All right. Cause in June, we are having a summit  and that's going to consist of a, it's right now we're planning for it for three days. And I'm going to be one of the speakers, Debbie McFadden, who I refer to as the SSI and SSDI. She's going to be one of the speakers, Julie Steinbacher, who is the estate attorney, who has this area of expertise.

And by the way, all three of us, this will be the second summit for us. And we just got glowing reviews on the first one. And we're also going to be inviting other speakers. So, for example, Oh, let's see.  Here we go.  Shoot. No, it's not. I'm sorry.  So we're going, we're going, we're, we're actually still looking because, you know, it's not until, what did I say? June 16th to 18th. We're still looking for other speakers. We do know that Tatiana McFadden is speaking. Tatiana is a world champion. Paralympic athlete with 20. Olympic medals, and she won multiple world championships, and she won. Multiple local marathons, she is a wheelchair racer, a true champion.

She's going to be one of our speakers. And then we're hoping to get other speakers also. So the idea is to provide just a tremendous resource at no cost,  for parents with a child with a disability. And I'm going to double check this address. But anyway, you can get the book.

And you can sign up for  information because we don't even have all the speakers yet. And our goal, by the way, is to get the best speakers in areas that, you know, that  don't overlap  very frankly. Maybe we'll talk about Jennifer after the call, because you might know somebody that would have a great area of knowledge that other people wouldn't. And so for example, I know, you know, a lot of times I, I don't get as involved in the particular disability for a child. So in other words, for my work, whether the child has autism or whether the child doesn't have the use of their legs, right. My work is.

Pretty much the same on the other hand, if we had a specialist who could, for example, you know, a specialist, and maybe the invisible learning  challenges even  in such a broad area. But anyway, if they go to disabled child planning dot com slash June.  Then we're doing this 3 day event, and I think the information that we're going to provide is I genuinely believe it is life changing  and we have changed lives.

And people have said that because if you, if you're constantly worried about your own finances, you're And then what's going to happen to your child after you're gone? And then all of a sudden, and I'm not, you know, this isn't magic. We're not going to make money. You know, this isn't some scheme or anything else.

It's just good, solid planning, and it makes a big difference. And like I said, we're number crunchers and you can quantify, well, here's if you do nothing, you know, and here's the trajectory. And here's if you do it right. And here's the trajectory. And it's easy to quantify and even to do it yourself  if you're willing to grind it out, you'll be, your family will be a lot better off.

I caution you to do it yourselfers,, because the cost of botching it is so high.  But anyway, that, anyway, that's why I wanted to come on this program, as well as others and just tell people, Hey, there's some great resources out there. And, this book is the starting point.  And again, I'm happy to do the digital version for free. 

Jennifer: Thank you , so I was wanting to ask you, um, that I think a lot of my listeners have heard about the importance of.  getting your child qualified for SSI or SSDI. and maybe they haven't.  Do you want to concentrate a little bit on the third element of getting their strategic financial planning right?

Jim: Okay. Sure. So  interesting. So  at the risk of being a little bit technical and, and the strategy that I'm going to talk about will usually be much more relevant. So let's assume that they have the, they, their child is qualified for SSI and SSDI.  Let's assume,  although it's a little bit independent, but let's assume that they got the estate planning right.

And even if it isn't perfect, at least it's reasonable. Maybe there is a, let's assume there is a special needs trust.,  and then the third element is, okay, what are the financial strategies? How, you know, what is the major factor after, after getting the first two issues taken care of, which is qualifying for SSI and getting the, or SSDI and then getting  the estate planning right.

What is by far the one strategy that is relatively well known in the general world, but not well known in the parent with a child disability world  is getting your ROTH IRA conversion strategies right.  No, I would maintain it as somebody who has been doing this. Since 1990,   I've written dedicated books on ROTH IRA conversions, and our office is known for  crunching the numbers, and it's, and the other thing about ROTH IRA conversions, and this is going to sound a little arrogant, and I'll apologize for that in advance. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of math.  You can argue. Okay. Well, we don't know exactly what the future tax laws are going to be. And we don't know exactly what the future tax rates are going to be.  But what I like to do for people who are skeptical is say, well, what assumptions would you like us to make? 

That taxes are going to stay the same that they're going to go up. They're going to go down.  Or, or we just don't know. So just use the existing tax structure or the tax laws are going to change. It's so  there are challenges with what assumptions you're going to use. And what interest rates are you going to use 2%? But once you get over those assumptions, and one of the things that we like to do in practice is, we kind of have our own, which tend to be on the conservative side, which is even though we think taxes in the long run will go up, because historically we're actually at a low, it doesn't seem like it, but we're actually at a low tax rate, , but we'll be conservative.

But let's just say taxes Stay the same, or don't go up. What if the interest rate isn't 6, 8, 10%, what if it's 4%? You know, again, conservative strategies. All right, and let's run the numbers for both the life of the parent and the life of the child.  And here's where you are with, let's say,  no ROTH conversions.

And here's where you are with the optimal ROTH conversions. And here's where you are if you do some, but you don't optimize it.  And we can run those numbers and that's what we do  and that is very often life changing  for the parent. And so why not to me as parents of a child with a disability, we have such challenges. 

As it is, you know, our daughter,  while she's doing okay financially, she has lots of other challenges that take up, particularly my wife's time.   and we're trying to reproduce some of those services for after she's gone,  but that's challenging enough.  Let's just, let's get the financial part right, and that way your child will be in a position where either they or the trustee can pay for services.

Okay.  So even little things like,  you know, my daughter for when it came time to eat, she would n't have enough energy to cook and, you know, she'd eat a bag of chips or something like that. And that's pretty crappy. Yeah. But now she has some money. So she uses DoorDash, you know, which, not that that's, you know, high quality culinary, the most nutritious food in the world, but, you know, she gets a salad and some protein and, and  gets reasonable meals.

So you, you want to provide for the child financially. And. One of the ways to do it, and I'm not going to say, Oh, I have this wonderful magic investment and our money managers are going to beat the index S and P by 3%. And after paying a fee of 1%, you're going to be 2%. Nah, nah, nah, that that's high in the sky.

But these are quantifiable strategies, and there's about 200 pages of them in this book. But if there was, if you said, Jim, what is the one strategy,  there's a very good chance that our listeners are not taking advantage of, and what is that strategy, it is optimizing what is typically not one year, but typically a series of years of ROTH IRA conversions. 

And, this is important for young parents. And it's important for old parents. Sometimes people are in the middle. Who are in their highest earning years, they might not be great short term candidates for Roth conversions. But even then, they should have a plan  for optimizing it, and then there's some other really interesting advanced strategies that are perhaps beyond the scope of this interview, but,  one of our strategies is dying with, a 401k plan or a 403b plan and having the child make a ROTH conversion after you're gone at the child's tax rate instead of yours. 

So, Jennifer, I know people in the nonprofit make a lot of money, right? So you're making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars doing what you're doing, and you're in such a high tax bracket that maybe doing a ROTH conversion now wouldn't be appropriate. And then, let's say, after you're gone, your child will be in a low bracket.

It would be much more advantageous for the child to make a ROTH conversion after you're gone. But you can't do that with an IRA, but you can do it with a, with a, if you have died with a 401k or a 4 0 3 B, which goes against what most advisors say, which, you know, they're so anxious to manage the money.

They say, oh, take your 401k and roll it into an IRA. Well, a lot of times that just hurt the child instead of helped. And that's an, that's an example where probably nine out of 10 advisors don't know this.  I was talking to a 401k to no  403b expert. This guy was a CFP and he worked in that area. smart guy, good guy, and he had me on the podcast and I'm telling him this and he was blown away.

And then he researched it and said, Hey, yeah, Lange's right. It has to be the right type of plan. And that's, that's another question for another day.  Even if you don't have that, there's a good chance we can get you into one of those. So I'll just say it makes a huge, huge difference.  And it's not, it's not, Oh, you like Barbara Streisand. I like Whitney Houston. It's really a matter of opinion. Who's the greater singer? No, it's math. 

Jennifer: That makes sense.  I guess what my other Some of my other questions would be, 

Jim: Oh,  by the way, I just, I just bought confirmation. Disabled child planning. com slash June. 

Jennifer: Okay. Thank you. 

Jim: And I, in which case you get this for free. And you can, and then you can register for the three day summit again, which is also  okay. Great. Yeah, I'll put that link in the description of the podcast episode so they can click on it easily. 

Jennifer: Okay.  And then I was going to ask,  it sounds like your book and the summit are great resources for people or for parents with children who have special needs. What were the other summits like that you did? Cause I know you said you did more than, done more than one.  

Jim: Well, I mean, I've been doing, I've been doing webinars and, I'm not summits, but I've been doing them for, and before the pandemic, I used to do these workshops in person.  So, I continue to do those. I don't think that they would be of,  they, they wouldn't be of,  of great specific  knowledge for your audience.  But, you know, I had a radio show for five years, I interviewed the top, the top guys. I interviewed Jack Bogle and Burton Malkiel and all the IRA experts.  And, and then now I'm presenting, you know, with, for parents of a child with a disability.

And I love doing that. It's very satisfying. And what's really satisfying is that   and I haven't really had this much in the child with a disability market, but we have, we have a wonderful retainage rate of something like 97%, and it's wonderful. Or parents to, or for people to when I run into them socially, or they write me a note and say something like, oh, yeah, 20 years ago, you told me to do X, Y, Z, and we did now, you know, we're retired and we're happy and that that kind of thing is is terrific.

So I genuinely get a charge out of providing great information and very frankly, for every, I don't know, 1000 people that I provide great information for. Or I might.  Get one or two clients. It's not like most people are going to come to use me  partly because of class and partly because I'm not going to take somebody unless I can save them a lot more money than I'm charging.

But I genuinely love the idea and particularly for a child with a disability.  If, if I'm going to be honest, I've spent the last, say, close to 30 years helping middle aid, middle income and higher people do even better  and pass even more money to their children and cut their taxes. And not that that's a bad thing,  you know, and I feel good about what I've done. 

But if you're talking about a child with a disability, the difference in the quality of life,  you know, for example, you know, you mentioned that you have a child with  a learning challenge,  I don't, but I am the child actually, it's okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the difference between  getting it right for a child that does have a disability and not getting it right is such a huge difference in the quality of life for both you and the child  that I feel that I can be making much more of a difference.

Then I could, which isn't to say I'm abandoning all my traditional clients that I've built up over, over the years. Of course, I'm continuing to serve them, but I'll just say that if I have a choice and let's say, and the truth is, planning with a, for a child with a disability is tougher  and, you know, the CPAs who are the number crunchers, they're, they're always telling me charge more for the, that type of work.

Because it's just more work and there's more variables, et cetera, et cetera. But, that's also very satisfying to me. And that's one of the reasons why,  you know, now  trying to appear on podcasts, doing these summits, et cetera, et cetera. My business advisor told me when I went into this whole area, particularly the amount of time and effort it took to do this, he said, you're never going to get your money back  in terms of,  but that's something I really want to do. 

Jennifer: Well, I'm glad you're, you're doing it. And it sounds like it's more  for you. It's more for the benefit of helping the parents and the children than the money. 

Jim: Yeah. And to be fair, I think that that's what the whole  field tends to be.  I mean, Jennifer, you're not doing what you're doing for the money. I know you're not, I don't know you, and I don't know your financial situation. And you know what, I,  you know, I'm in touch with executive directors of different organizations and, and there may be some, some smart marketers that can command a higher salary, but this is not generally.  You don't do this kind of work, you know, or people that work in friendship circles or in so many areas, people didn't do this for the money and I'm just one more.

And what we would argue is the satisfaction that we get. Is even more important than the money. So, you know, you could be a selfish SOB  and still go into this field to just get that feeling of satisfaction.  Right? 

Jennifer: Yeah.  Is there anything else you would like to mention before we go off air? Yeah. The only other thing that I would say is. 

Jim: This isn't an easy area  and  a lot of times, let's say you get this book and you go, oh, my God, it's 500 pages. I can't. I have too many things to do right now. You know, my child's.  You know, I'm having this fight in school or whatever it might be.  Get this taken care of. Get this taken care of. Get the estate planning done right. Get your, well, the first thing is, get your child qualified for SSI or SSDI or determine if the child doesn't qualify. And we didn't really talk a lot about what happens if they don't, but there's, there's steps to do. If that's the case, first try to get the child qualified, then get the estate planning, right?

And then get the strategies, right? And don't put this off,  you know, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't do something that will happen to you tomorrow. And even if it doesn't. The typical recommendation that I use for strategy is not, Oh, I want you to do a 500, 000 Roth conversion tomorrow. No, it might be something like 30, 000 a year for the next 10 years or whatever it might be.

So don't put this off. You know,  you have a problem, you're going to feel a lot better when this is done and and just do it and, and  it's going to sound self-serving, but  take advantage of getting this book, you know, I'm offering it again for free. And take advantage of the speakers in the summit.  

Jennifer: Yes,  I don't think there's anything else unless it was for you.

Jim: Okay. Well, I could go. Yeah, I'm an attorney. I could go on all day, but I think we covered the major points.  But again, this book, disabled child planning. com  June, and we'll send you the book and we'll send you the invitation to the summit. And hopefully that'll be what could really be a transformation for you and your family. 

Jennifer: And the summit's online, right?

Jim: Yeah, the summit is all, yeah, it's a virtual summit, so you can do it from the convenience of your living room.  Okay, great.  So, and, and, and that's also true of the speakers, like each speaker.  You know, I guess there'll be, I guess I might be the only speaker that will be in Pittsburgh. And then Debbie's going to be in Maryland. Julie's going to be  in the eastern part of Pennsylvania. I don't know where Tatiana is going to be.  She's going to be involved in the Paralympics. In Paris in, I believe, September 2024. So she'll be somewhere training for that.  But for your audience, it's the comfort of their own living room or bedroom or wherever they have their computer.

Jennifer: Yeah. Great.  Okay. Yeah. Thank you for letting me ask you some questions, Jim. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.  Thank you.