My boyfriend and I are both disabled and on SSDI (and I’m on SSI). Do we have to hide anything over $2000?
Posted: August 13th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Travel For Disabled | Tags: $2000, anything, both, boyfriend, disabled, hide, over, ssdi, SSI. | 10 Comments »I’m trying to save up for next year’s trip to Orlando for the National Federation of the Blind’s national convention and for a stay at Disney. I’m not using the SSDI or SSI for the trip, so please don’t rant about tax dollars going to people’s vacations. My ex-husband sends me $300 a month as spousal support (we are not divorced yet), and I save $200 of that each month when I can. My boyfriend is doing the same from his SSDI (which he earned from his many years of working). The trip is going to cost about $3,000 plus food, transportation, and souvenirs.
Here’s the thing. I need to save all the money in my savings account until the package is booked in January or February. By January, I expect to have $2,000 minimum between myself and my boyfriend (who is putting his in my savings account, as he does not have one of his own). If we have more than $2,000 in savings, do I need to put the rest in a safe or something so Social Security doesn’t use it as a reason to lower my SSDI and SSI (I currently only get $690 combined). I am living very frugally in order to save for this trip, so I think it is well deserved, especially for the national convention of the NFB.
If the >$2000 is going to be there only for a short time, do I still have to hide it in order for Social Security to not use it against me, or do they only check your bank account when you provide the information at re-cert time?
Advice, please? And please don’t say that I shouldn’t go on this trip or that if I can save up the $3,000 for this trip that I can afford for my SSDI and SSI to go down. I am living extremely miimally in order to save for this trip, and we’ve been planning it since May and it’s going to take all the time until April when the payments are due, almost a year, just to save up the money for this. We will really need that vacation, and the convention is an important thing to go to. We’re foregoing a lot of things to save for this, including furniture for the apartment, favourite foods, lesser trips, and even traveling around our area save by bus, which we can get a $15 pass for a month, which we need for school anyway, so we might as well use it to get around.
You suppose to have a booklet from the S.S office that tell you what your amount to can work for, its will tell you how much you can make for the whole year, before they start taking out of your monthly check, for example- if you work and made 2100.00 for the whole year and the book said you can only make 2000.00 they will start taking out the difference in your monthly check from them the next year, but if you made less then 2000.00 they will not take anything out. do you understand what I am telling you? good luck on your trip!!
I am also on SSI and I don’t like that. I am autistic. But trust me I hate SSI. I am a full time student in college, and I don’t work. Thank God I go once a week to my favorite restaurant and I mostly eat cheese pizza. If I want to spend my money on something, I want to spend it at my favorite restaurant even if I don’t have enough for other things. As a note of clarification, I like cheeseburgers but not the ones that are made at McDonald’s. I like the cheeseburgers that are made at regular restaurants. Not the ones that are made at McDonald’s. Make sense? I even prefer the food they serve at Central Booking than cheeseburgers made at McDonald’s. So what I do is that I save money from other things so I can eat cheese pizza at my favorite restaurant. But we still live in poverty. My evil dad always denied my disability and he does not give me any money.
So if you really want something just try not to do something else that is not necessary, and instead spend your money on that thing. To do just one thing that makes you happy is a lot different than doing nothing that makes you happy.
It’s probably not a good idea to ask for advice on line about how to defraud Social Security. Your boyfriend needs to open his own account. You will be ineligible for SSI in any month in which your resources exceed the resource limit. By co-mingling the money, your account will go above the limit and you will likely be charged with an overpayment for those months.
Have your boyfriend open an account or just merge the money into his checking account. It is perfectly legal for a SSDI recipient to have large sums of money in his accounts as long as he did not earn the money. Thus for example it is completely acceptable for him to keep lottery winnings as long as he can prove that he won them and did not work for them.
Jewel, I am going to blunt with you on this one….
Never expose your problems with SS stuff and your income stuff.
TAKE IT OFF!
This is not very bright idea to ask people this question about your personal private.
turn in everything you silly girl. you can always pay for your air ticket, and hotel room in advance, because they will have to refund your money if they can’t fulfill the room and air flight, if you do it correct. buy some Vanilla Gifts for your food expense. then you won’t have any problem.
there is no reason you shouldn’t use SSI money for something like this..
a fancy extended vacation, no–it would seem in you could go on a fancy vacation you don’t need SSI, but a minimal vacation is fine..especially for a specific purpose
easiest thing to do is to keep some in cash in the house, get very creative hiding it though
in the fall see if you can pay a few months rent/mortgage with the saved money to knock your accunt down…and then book your trip as soon as you get the disability money..
say if you get a total of $1500 in disability..knock your account down to $1500 with extra payments, and as soon as you get the next disability payments-pay for the trip….if you pay your bills a month or too ahead….you won’t need the disability money for the bills..
a lot also depends on if you are considered ‘married’ if he is considered a roommate, he should be able to keep the money in his account–once he opens one- with no problem.
many people avoid getting officially married just for this purpose..so the other persons income/assets don’t count against them
even when they do check your resources–they will look back–and if 6 months ago, you were over, you will have to repay/be docked future payments.
i am having this issue now. i am in the process of applying for SSDI, in the mean time, I had to apply for food stamps and welfare. i can’t have over $2000. I managed to get a credit card loan for $2600. I began paying bills as soon as in cleared, but there would have been over $2000 in the account at least for a day….i can’t get straight answers from social services…been waiting 2 weeks just for them to schedule an appointment..but don’t even have an appointment date yet, i hope I will not be penalized….
its not ‘skirting the law’ with ssdi
and there are special accounts that let you have more to save for something specific, but i don’t know if this counts
If he is on SSDI, the benefit is based on his disability and not on his income and he can have any amount of money he wants, so you might put it all into his account. His SSDI check is not based on household income but your SSI is. Just make sure you dont keep it in your bank account.
Back when I was on it, I had to keep my money in my room in a small bank because my parents told me if I put it in a bank, SSI will nail me and cut my check. I found out in 2009 they do not check your bank account. In fact if they find out you have over 2,000 dollars in there, you may have to pay them back all the money they had been sending you since you have gotten over that much in your bank account. I had to find this out on my own when I told them how much I had in there and boy you should have seen the look on the woman’s face. She kept repeating the answer I told her and then said “You’re not supposed to have that much” and I said “I thought you guys already knew, my parents said you guys check bank accounts” and she said “We don’t do that.” I said “I was wondering why you guys kept sending me money.” I had to pay them over $1700 dollars but luckily I was able to pay it all back at once thanks to saving over the last two years so I wasn’t in debt. But the good news is you can appeal it by giving them a reason why you can’t pay them back such as you won’t be able to pay your bills or buy food, or it wasn’t your fault they sent you money making that mistake, etc.
I would just keep the extra money in a safe spot. SSI won’t know about it. Just don’t tell them how much cash you have when they ask.
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