Financial Wellness: A guide for individuals with disabilities, their families and caregivers

A newly published guide for people with disabilities and their families helps to shine a light on the unique, and oftentimes fluctuating, financial needs of the underserved disability and special needs community. This comprehensive guide, developed by Voya Financial’s Voya Cares® program and the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS) includes information and resources to help individuals with disabilities and their families make more informed financial decisions, so they can better prepare for financial independence and a secure financial future.

This resource aims to provide people with disabilities and special needs, their families, caregivers and professionals with important financial guidance on personal assets and both employee and government benefits and how they interact with each other.

The disability community has unique long-term planning needs that are not addressed by traditional financial wellness guidance. For example, a misstep in the planning process could result in ineligibility for valuable government benefits that could jeopardize financial independence and a secure financial future.

Most importantly, this financial wellness guide addresses the important role that government benefits play in the long-term planning process for people with disabilities and special needs — information that is missing in traditional financial wellness guidance. Beneficiary planning that is not properly executed may jeopardize the eligibility of individuals with disabilities to collect valuable government benefits like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid.

The guide — Financial Wellness: A guide for individuals with disabilities, their families and caregivers (download PDF) — is now available to read.