BPQ-whY? It's crucial to obtain and review your Benefits Planning Query.
My family and I are currently enjoying The Inbestigators (indicating the best investigators) as our evening escapism. The Australian TV...
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Are We There Yet?
Last week, my family and I took a trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. We drove. (This, by the way, accounts for the missed blog last...
Navigate Special Needs Planning Obstacles with a Good Coach
This past Sunday, my eleven-year-old son competed in his first ever parkour competition. For those of you who don’t know—like me a year...
Giving should not be taxing!
For seven years, I ran a small, faith-based social-service agency in the near-west suburbs of Chicago. It is first and foremost a...
Opportunity cost = the price of the choice you did not make
We give our eleven-year-old son an allowance so that he can learn the value of money, mainly by coming up against the cold, hard, adult...
Please Mind the Gap!
For my first professional career, I worked as a stock market analyst in Hong Kong and, later, Shanghai. For those of you who have never...
Get Smart About Annuities in Special Needs Planning
Among Saturday Night Live’s (SNL’s) parody ads is one for “Alexa Silver”. You can watch the whole thing here. (Note: language and humor...
No Magic Number!
I was math-phobic in primary school. Perhaps that is an embarrassing admission for someone, who now makes her living running numbers. ...
"B" is for "Basic Budget."
Sesame Street, the longtime children’s educational show, turns 50 this year. Count Von Count introduced a recent radio segment, which...
Employing People With Disabilities: a Critical Mission
I’m a big fan of Star Trek. One of the things I find most attractive about the fictional futuristic setting of all the series is how...
Putting Disability in Perspective
In one FoxTrot cartoon sequence, Jason (the annoyingly and excessively nerdy little brother) hands his older sister Paige a coded message....
Not So Special Needs
It’s not new, but I really like this video: in which young adults with Down syndrome question whether or not they really have “special”...
Jean Vanier truly appreciated friends with disabilities
Rather than discuss an aspect of special needs planning, my blog this week will pay homage to a man named Jean Vanier (1928-2019), who...
Set up siblings for success!
If you have siblings, or if you are a parent to more than one child, you know that pretty much all siblings have a love-hate relationship....
"Thunk! I could have had a tax break!"
These days, we’d probably say that even the low-sodium variety had too much salt but in the good ol’ days, there was a vegetable drink...
The Reality of Risk
I had an excellent time at the Chicago Autism Connection’s Spring Fling resource fair, this past Saturday. There was an excellent panel...
Stress less with these tax tips:
My son, who introduces these blogs a lot, is a big fan of Subway® restaurant. Since it caters to meat-lovers and vegetarians, can be...
Tax Filing Might Find Cash!
A cartoon fairy god-person, holding a clipboard, hovers over a man holding a briefcase and says: “After Federal, State and Local taxes,...
What does this Social Security thing do?
My son’s latest mission is to collect car parts. This might be because he has an almost-eleven-year-old’s confidence that if he collects...
Have Your Money and Use It, Too
In a cartoon, there was a rather large gentleman, wearing a hodgepodge of household gadgets connected by wires stands happily in front of...