WID is Wonderful for the Wacky

WID (World Institute on Disability) www.wid.org  is a wonderful resource for the mentally disabled. If a person is disabled by a psychiatric condition WID is a place to know about for assistance in help maintaining and building assets. Their acting director stated in his presentation on the topic of wealth building to the NAMI National Convention in San Francisco in July of 2009 that a full 50% of all mentally disabled persons are living without savings or checking accounts. This sad situation leaves them at the mercy of check cashing agencies, who take $40 dollars out of every disability check or part-time employment check a mentally disabled person gets. This is a deplorable situation and does not have to exist.  The mentally disabled wheather with or without checking and savings accounts can build wealth on their meager disability payments and any part-time earnings they receive.  Mr. Thomas Foley went on to show how this seemingly miraculously situation could be accomplished.

First of all the mentally disabled must dare to have higher expectations. They must dare to live on their own and have their own income. They need not be beaten down, and only be care receivers. With income and independence they are empowered.  A great stepping stone to this is asset building, which increases integration into the community, allows employment, benefit, and financial planning. None of this of course works alone. It is an investment in the long term, which is underpinned by three building blocks or goals: 1 education, 2 home ownership, 3 starting a business. Any one of these achievements is sufficient to empower a mentally ill person with the self-esteem necessary for full integration into the community. But one essential thing is required – Earnings above and beyond the disability benefit are necessary to put this plan into action.  In other words if you are totally disabled; can’t lift a finger to help yourself your sunk.

How many are that way? Not that many. Even if you can do some work, just a little, for a few hours a week, according to Tom Foley you can build wealth. Many people with disabilities worry that if they work at all, they will lose their benefits. According to WID this is not true. There are strategies that can prevent this. The first being the EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT, which I gather assists folks with disabilities maintain their benefits while they make extra income on the side within limits. You should check this out with WID.

Then there is this thing called an IDA (Individual Development Account), which is a matched savings account set up for certain kinds of low income folks so they can do one of the three big goals: go to school; buy a house; or start a business. Different states have different IDA at different matching rates some match 1 to 1, some 2 to 1, some match higher. I tried to figure this out on the  WID site for the state of California and found most of the IDA where pretty limited in terms of who they served. Perhaps if you were a Pacific Asian with Mental Illness you could qualify for an IDA, in Southern California, but I didn’t see anything for a generic mentally ill person available. (This was under the publications portion of the site – Individual Development Account Questions and Answers- Question 7 which directed you to www.idanetwork.org )  As a quick comment on WID’s website, it has an overwhelming amount of information available, and like most such sites you need a lot of patience to dig out the information.

Using these two basic financial tools and several other items like a PAS (personal assistance support), which I won’t go into,  Mr. Foley was able to show how a person on disability with some earned income could build a nest egg for his/herself of over a quarter of a million dollars in under 30 years. This was impressive. I strongly suggest anyone interested in asset building that has a mental illness and is living on disability check the website www.wid.org