Brynne Conroy

If you’re a business owner, and the IRS hit you with a big tax bill this year, you might want to lower your future tax burden. Electing S Corp tax status as an LLC probably came up in your research. But carefully consider this decision if you have a disabled child, as it could affect their Social Security benefits.

In the working world, disabled job seekers come up against many systemic barriers. It's not a surprise, then, that many disabled people see entrepreneurship as a solution. Almost 17% of disabled people who participate in the labor market are self-employed, compared to only 11% of the non-disabled workforce.1 In the Deaf community in particular, 11.6% of people own their own business. In the hearing population, business ownership is lower, at 9.8%.2
Rosa Lee Timm, president of Communication Se...

Elder financial abuse happens when someone takes advantage of a senior for their money.
It can happen if you’re planning to pass down an estate of millions, or if the only money you have is your monthly Social Security check.
While financial abuse can look like a scam or someone attempting to alter your will, it can also be a nursing home or other medical institution inappropriately increasing your payments. It can be your caretaker doling you an “allowance” from your own bank account, refusi...

Best CRM for Real Estate

Starting a business in North Carolina is a relatively intuitive process. While there are nuances depending on your business entity type, you can expect the steps to look something like this:

A new year means new changes to your Medicare coverage.
On the one hand, in 2024, you can expect to see higher premiums and deductibles on Part B plans and fixed copays for Part D Extra Help enrollees. On the other hand, Extra Help enrollees won’t have to pay partial premiums anymore, and everyone will enjoy caps on their out-of-pocket costs for Part D prescriptions. There are also a few areas of expanded coverage, like chronic pain, mental healthcare, and compression treatment.
Let’s get int...

Middle-income households are less likely to have access to resources like Medicaid and food stamps.
That's one factor making it harder for families with kids with autism to meet their medical needs.
Public health insurance and professionals who help families navigate available assistance could help.

ABLE accounts have been around since 2014, but in late 2022 they got a facelift via the ABLE Age Adjustment Act, which passed as a part of SECURE 2.0. This new law ups the maximum age of onset of disability from 26 to 46, nearly doubling the eligible user base.
Let’s take a look at what that means for you as you save for your disabled child’s college education.

Sheletta Brudidge has secured more than $200,000 in free grant money over the course of her autistic children’s lives. With the biggest calendar year bringing in $80,000, this grant funding has paid for therapies that weren’t covered by insurance, a fence to address her children’s elopement concerns and a trampoline, as well as other sensory items.
Parents of disabled children often incur enormous costs just to provide a healthy life for their child. This is especially true in states that don...

When I told Tony Brooks, activist and advocate at ADAPT Philadelphia, that I was writing a story about free and cheap activities for seniors, he let out a laugh.
“You mean like adult day care?”
ADAPT is a disability advocacy group that explicitly includes seniors among the disabled. Brooks was acknowledging the fact that American culture tends to separate seniors (and disabled people at large) from their own communities.
“I usually love having conversations with elderly people,” Brooks contin...

How hard it is to get a business loan depends on how lenders judge your business’s ability to repay the loan. While the overall economic environment and industry you operate in are important, there are six main factors about your business that you can control to influence your likelihood of approval.
Business loan approval factors
Lenders consider the factors below when determining whether to approve an application and in determining what interest rate they’ll offer.
1. Cash flow
Minimum reve...

Medical billing errors can happen to anyone. But according to recent findings from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you may be more likely to experience these errors if you’re age 65 and older.
As you get older, the system makes these billing errors more difficult to correct, which means they may hold more potential to hurt your credit score — no matter how erroneous the charges may be.
Still, despite the greater likelihood of errors as you age, there are ways to fight back. Let’s ta...

Strategic human resource (HR) management treats human capital — or employees — as another financial asset of the company. Just like you’d consider real estate or raw materials as an asset to be optimized, strategic HR does the same for the company’s labor force. The more effective your strategic human resources plan is, the stronger the company will be both financially and culturally.
Considering a strategic approach to HR management is increasingly important in our changing world. Creating a...

Article published in Pittsburgh Parent's print magazine. Financial hurdles and solutions for families of children with autism.

One of the newest financial products around, ABLE accounts are a 529 account with all kinds of bells and whistles built specifically to serve disabled Americans.
After years of grassroots advocacy efforts from the disability community, ABLE accounts were birthed into legislation in December 2014.
Why Open an ABLE account?
The 529 accounts are traditionally state-sponsored and used to save for your child’s college education. Though you can’t deduct your contribution, the money grows without be...