Navigating the Financial Steps to Your Child’s Forever Home with John Gallia CFP®, ChSNC®

Episode Description:

In this episode, we dive into the vital first steps every parent should take when thinking about a "forever home" for their child with disabilities. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all the options or unsure where to start, you’re not alone. This conversation will guide you through the initial phase of envisioning your child's future from a financial perspective. 

John J. Gallia, CFP®, ChSNC®, is a seasoned financial advisor and the founder of Gallia Wealth Management Group, LLC, an independent financial planning practice he established in 2015. With both a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree from Lindenwood University, John has built a strong foundation of expertise, having earned his Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) designation in 2010. Motivated by a close family connection to the special needs community, he obtained his Chartered Special Needs Consultant (ChSNC®) designation in 2024. This specialization enables him to provide dedicated guidance to families navigating special needs planning across the U.S.

John has two sons, his eldest son is on the Autism spectrum. 

Highlights:

- John’s story as a special needs dad

- A brief look at trusts, government programs

- How John and your host have given back to the special needs community - Easter bunny event and AAC Camp Alberta (Augmentative and Alternative Communication)

- What to be mindful of when choosing a financial planner – do they have a Chartered Special Needs Consultant designation

- Why starting financial planning early matters more than you might think.

Whether you're just beginning to think about the future or are ready to take action, this episode will give you encouragement, insights, and a reminder that you're not walking this road alone.

ANNOUNCEMENT: 

John will be back to share more in-depth information – watch for his episode at the end of next month!!!

If you found this episode helpful, please subscribe and leave a review! It helps other families like yours find support and guidance. Help us spread the word!

Connect with John Gallia:

https://galliawealthmanagement.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-j-gallia-jr-cfp%C2%AE-chsnc%C2%AE-55263734/

Connect with me:  

hello@hello.coachingwithvalerieanne.com 

Music Acknowledgement: Audio Coffee - Denys Kyshchuk

Editor: Scott Arbeau

Link for book: The S.H.I.N.E. Principle: The special needs mom's path to strength, hope and happiness by Valerie Arbeau

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CW18ZXGX (Canada)

https://a.co/d/03hFdZI4 (United States)

Learn more about your host at:
https://coachingwithvalerieanne.com/

Transcript

​​​​You can never start too early with coming up with a financial plan for your kiddos. There is a lot of unknown. We don't know how much support a seven-year-old or a five- year-old may need in the future, right? When they're 18, when they're 21, when they're 35, when they're 60, we just don't know. But the correct answer is to never procrastinate on that. We really don't want to procrastinate because if we do, we could really unintentionally hurt our children's financial futures.

Hello and welcome to Forever Home for our Kids with Disabilities. I'm Valerie, mom to two with disabilities, one visible, one invisible. I'm a life coach and an author. This space has been created to help you navigate the journey of creating a secure, sustainable forever home for your child. We'll chat with parents on this path, realtors, financial planners and other experts who can make the process easier.

Why am I so passionate about this? Because seeing my eldest thrive living independent of us was a gift I didn't always know I could give. I want you to have the opportunity to explore giving that gift to your child.

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Forever Home for our kids with disabilities. I'm your host Valerie, today I have a guest that you need, I'm going to emphasize that again, that you need to listen to. I have John J. Gallia, who is a seasoned financial advisor and the founder of Gallia Wealth Management Group, LLC, an independent financial planning practice that he established in 2015. With both a master's degree and a bachelor's degree from Linwood University, John has built a strong foundation of expertise, having earned his certified financial planner designation in 2010.

So motivated by a close family connection to the special needs community, he obtained his chartered special needs consultant designation in 2024. And this specialization allows him to provide dedicated guidance to families navigating special needs planning across the US.

And John has two boys, his eldest is on the spectrum, and we'll hear a little bit more about that in a moment. So, John, welcome to the show!

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Valerie.

You're so welcome. All right, John, tell us a little about your special needs dad journey.

Sure. What a journey. My wife and I, we had kids later in life, our first one, not planned for, which is kind of funny because I wasn't sure if I was ready to be a dad, even though I was older in life. And lo and behold, we found out my wife was with child and surprisingly enough, the child was born on my birthday.

Yeah, I mean, we talk about weird situations, I think there's, you know, if you believe in a higher power, there's something saying, ‘Hey, guess what, you're not going to avoid this dad duty. You're going to be a father, you're going to get the most out of this life.’ And you know, we were blessed with a child that is healthy, and born on my birthday. So you know, I always think our relationship, my son, who's on the autism spectrum, and I was meant to be, is just a higher power working. Yeah.

And later in life, we also had another son, we didn't want our child growing up, an only child, nothing wrong with that. But we wanted him to have another sibling. And we had our second child two years later. So my first son, very verbal, very smart, got diagnosed with autism when he was four years old.

We noticed some things socially that were going on. And we went down that avenue and got the diagnosis. And that's when really the journey started for me, how does this look? How does this play out in my family's life from here on out? How does this play out financially? And how does this affect my family and him for the remainder of his life? And I think there's two ways to go about it is as a father.

And there was only one way for me, it's to fully embrace it, and become a supportive father and an advocate for your child. And that's what I chose to do. And it really led me to wanting to find out as much as I possibly could from a financial side, what I needed to know, to help my family in the future and to help him. And what a lot of people don't understand, Valerie, is I have a certified financial planner designation, which is the gold standard of financial planning when it comes to financial advisors. I was not educated in special needs financial planning. When we're talking about correlating government benefits, Medicaid, estate planning, I was about three foot deep when I needed to be three miles deep for my own son. So that prompted me to take a deeper dive into financial planning for special needs. And that's when I decided to get that chartered special needs consultant. And I already had clients that had special needs children. And I just, you know, if I'm going to learn it for myself, I'm going to help as many folks as I can with this situation. And it's confusing, and it's tough. And you know, there's a lot that these families go through the stresses in life. And I was like, you know what, if I can be a resource and a viable resource, I'm going to do my best to help those that that are feeling the same way I am.

Hmm. Love that, John. Love that. And I'm just reading a book now by Melane Mullings. It's called Lemonade, I believe. And she talks about taking your lemon experiences in life, and squeezing them and creating something. And I love that you have taken your designation and been able to build on that and reach the special needs community and help them because yeah, I agree navigating the financial aspect of all of this…it's tough enough being a parent number one, and then being a parent of a child with disabilities number two and then trying to figure out what's their future gonna look like!

Because your children how old now, John?

Seven and almost five.

Seven and almost five. So when I was in that stage, I was, I'm taking care of my kids for forever. I just didn't see a future. Like it did not occur to me to really plan for a future. It wasn't until my oldest was 12. She's now going to be 23 in a couple of weeks, and the youngest will be 20 next month. So for our audience that's listening today, I just want you to really listen into our conversation today, John and I, because it's never too early, in my opinion, to start planning for the future. What would you say, John?

I absolutely agree with that. Now kind of go back to what you were talking about with making lemonade out of lemons. And I think I speak on behalf of a lot of fathers and a lot of people in this community. Yes. There's challenges, you know, with supporting family members with special needs.

I think there's really four or five things that if we strip away everything we value in life, and that's the relationship we have with our loved ones. And that's their health, their mental state. That's very important to us. Our relationship that we have with ourselves, both mentally and physically, you know, our physical health is important, but also, our mental state of mind is very important to us.

Another important factor is our finances. You know, nobody wants to have less money tomorrow than what they had today, right? And there are certain needs, certain therapies, doctors, appointments, and costs that associate with our children, that, you know, can play an impact on that. 

And last, but not least is time. Yeah, we really value our time. And, you know, when you're dealing with a child with special needs, and you're taking them to therapies and trying this and that and going to school meetings and whatnot, and advocating, our time is going to become less and less. So well, our special needs obligations can diminish all four or five of those, those aspects of our lives that are very important to us. And that's where the stress comes in. That's where the challenges come in. That's where the, you know, the sad number is 85% of married couples with a special need child end up in divorce. I mean, that's a staggering statistic, right? And it's because of those four or five reasons that they're dealing with is why it ends. 

So if you take a step back, and I know you've done this same thing, Valerie, and you kind of turn our challenges upside down and see how much we can grow as a person and what more we're getting out of our own lives. It's pretty substantial. We learn patience, resilience, you know, we just become better people, the more involved and the harder we work for our kids and the more we support each other in our community. And so in a way, you know, it's obviously a blessing, even in the tough times, it's a blessing for us to get more out of life. 

Yes.

And I'll also go into the advising part. And I know you talked about that. You can never start too early with coming up with a financial plan for your kiddos. There is a lot of unknown. We don't know how much support a seven-year-old or a five-year-old may need in the future, right? When they're 18, when they're 21, when they're 35, when they're 60, we just don't know. But the correct answer is to never procrastinate on that. Because there are things that we can actually put in place now, through accounts, special needs trust, I believe in Canada, you call it that the Henson Trust. Those can be funded now, they can be funded later, they need to be funded early because if something were to happen to myself and my wife, those assets, we would need to protect at a young age from one of my children, obtaining those assets, having that in his name, and then all of a sudden later in life, if they try to qualify for benefits, they can't because they have these assets. So there's an element of we really don't want to procrastinate because if we do, we could really unintentionally hurt our children's financial futures.

Yeah, love that. The fact that there's no time like the present to start planning, to start thinking about and you mentioned the Henson Trust. Yes, that's what we have in Canada. But I just want to qualify with the Henson Trust. In the province that I live in, which is Alberta, we don't actually have to put anything into the Henson Trust. In the event that Scott and I pass, then whatever assets we may have and we've deemed for our child with a disability, they will go into that trust at that time. But what I didn't realize is that we needed a trustee for that trust. So, that was one of the things that we've just been dealing with actually, just recently over the last few weeks. And then it's that, okay, so who do we ask? Like who has some financial savviness? Who would be willing to take on this responsibility? Because it's huge, right? 

So for us, Melody Anne, our oldest has one of our homes that she lives in, which we call her Forever Home. And so that's hence why we started this whole shift on the podcast to be forever home. And my mission is to encourage other parents to start thinking about what you want your child's future to look like, because you can influence that and you can start that now. And so with this Henson trust, the house, Eden house, we call it will go into the Henson trust at that time on our passing. And so then we need someone to make sure that the bills are paid, that the property taxes are paid, etc, etc. So we've been blessed because it was not an easy feat, to find a couple to step in on our behalf, should anything happen to Scott and I. So again, starting to think about those kind of things, having those conversations early, and then also checking in with people periodically to make sure that they're still okay with it.

Absolutely. And you know, if that would have happened, if something would have happened to you and your husband, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, you would still be in the same boat who is going to take care of these, my children who is going to manage that trust, the special needs trust here in the States works the same way as the Henson trust, it can go unfunded, you can fund it if you're fortunate enough to have assets to have extra money, you can fund it with investments, although there are some things that you might do first before you do that, you can fund it through insurance, so if something happens, the beneficiary of the insurance policy is the trust. And then that flows through the trustee, but you're absolutely right. Unlike having a trustee for a different situation, let's just call it a regular trust if there's a regular trust. That person's obligation is to disperse the assets, how the trust sets. And then their role is over, the trust gets closed, and they're done and they go on about their lives. The special needs trust trustee really has a big burden, a large burden to maintain that trust to delve out these assets as needed in accordance to the laws that mandate what you can use them for, for the remainder of that person's life, however long that may be. So you really have to find that person that is willing to do it because it's not a blessing to give them that task.

But there’s also corporate trustees that you can pay to do that as well. If you don't have somebody that you think is at a place that they can do that, you can hire a corporate trustee to help in those matters. The downside is, it costs a little bit of money. And they don't know your child, right? Like somebody, like somebody else does. But corporate trustees really work well to as a successor trustee, because you're going to have to name somebody. So if something were to happen to that person that you first named to be the trustee for that child or that special needs person whenever they're an adult, then that corporate trustee could take over and, you know, pick up where they left off. But it's very important that you have that conversation with a trustee, if you pick an individual or a couple individuals, that they are aware of what they're getting into.

Absolutely, absolutely. And as I say, we were just blessed that this couple did decide to say yes, even though they hadn't really done a whole lot of research about it. But again, that just speaks to the relationship that we have with them, and their willingness to take care, quote unquote, of Melody-Anne, because it's not that they're going to be doing any of her personal care or any of that piece. This is just specifically for the trust and the disbursement of it. So yeah. 

Okay, so John, tell us, what government programs can family’s access? And what does it take to qualify? 

Sure.

There are a ton of government programs, depending on your disabilities. A lot of them are run by the state. So the first course in looking over or looking what you can qualify for is going to your state website and looking at, how does number one, my child, if you haven't already got a diagnosis, and then a lot of those places will assign you a case person that will help you go through all the benefits that are involved in your situation, based on geographical location, income, whatnot, I think that's a big step and it takes a lot of time, especially for folks that are first getting into it. But big programs are going to be Social Security Income Supplement, Social Security income, if your child qualifies for that, and they may not qualify right now, based on the income of their parents, but when they're 18, and they're considered an adult, they may qualify. And a lot of those that qualify for Social Security Supplemental Income will also qualify for Medicaid, which will help reduce the cost of care for them in the future. So it's important if you have a special needs child, to start looking into that and to see if they're going to qualify for that, either now, or when they're 18.

That's very important. And if they do qualify or might qualify for that, that's really when you need to start considering opening up separate accounts to help them with their finances, right. And I'll tell you why right now, Supplemental Social Security Income for somebody that special needs provides $900 at max $967 a month. 

Okay. 

That's not a lot. 

No. If somebody is paying for maybe a car, health care services, things around their house to help them with their disability, food, shelter, that doesn't go very far. Right. But if you have more money in your account than just $2,000, which is not much, that benefit could be reduced, or could be null and void. So obviously, you could have somebody that needs more help if they were left money in a special needs trust, or let's say they have another account, we can get into this further called an ABLE account. Extra funds, those funds will not impact if they're used correctly will not impact what Social Security calls as ‘deemable assets’. So that person can afford to go on a vacation, that person can afford a new TV, they're not living in an environment that you wouldn't want them to live in later in life. So that's why it's important to look at those. And if we talk about other programs a lot of those are State specific. But there's a lot of programs that will provide some sort of respite care for parents and whatnot. And that's where your case workers should step in and say, ‘Hey, you guys qualify to get some assistance from this service or that service’,or ‘We can assign you an advocate for this service that might be able to go into IEP meetings with you and help you explain and advocate for your child’. So those are some of the other services that you might also find beneficial for a child.

Hm Hmm. Okay, thank you so much for sharing that. I'm just thinking $900 a month, right, it's not going to go very far. I think here of my, my daughter, my oldest, she is living in our Forever Home that we set up for her. And my eldest is on AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped) and they get $1,900 a month. So for that, her and her housemates can pay for their rent. They can pay for the programming that they're part of because they, most of them leave the house to go to different programs. My daughter has one, she has music therapy that comes into the home. So she pays for that. And then she has a little bit left over as well. So it's tight, especially if you're paying for food, but their bills, hydro, gas, all of that kind of stuff is included in the rent. But it's enough for them to live on and have a life. 

Now, like you mentioned earlier, paying to go on vacation. So one of the cool things is that the ladies at Eden House, as we call it, once a year, they actually go on a little mini vacation, they go away for a weekend. And we're very blessed here in Alberta, we have a place called William Watson Lodge. And it's subsidized by the government for people with disabilities. And so they get to go there. And it is beautiful there. Absolutely beautiful.

That's wonderful. Yeah, that I mean, just those things that are set up for the special needs folks, special needs community. I wish there were more of, you know, because they're kind of hard to find. But, yeah, taking advantage of something like that is just wonderful. Because we just, we want our kids to have a wonderful quality of life, no matter what life gives them, you know, so yeah, that's, that's great.

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I agree. And I was just thinking, as you mentioned about caseworkers being able to educate families as they come. I'm going to tell you a little story here. When we were first parents, my husband and I, so we were parents for the first time with our eldest who has cerebral palsy, we had a prolapse cord, which cut off the oxygen supply to her brain. So she wasn't supposed to live. They didn't think she would live the weekend, let alone her first year. But here she is almost 23. Thank you, Jesus. And she is doing amazing. But I remember that first caseworker that we had, I remember her saying to me, so what do you think you need? And I'm thinking to myself, I have no idea what I need. I'm a new parent. I have a child with a disability. And you're asking me, what do I think I need? I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I'm a mother number one, and I'm a mother of a child with a disability number two. 

So I think it was at that time, it was more you had to come up with what you thought you might need. And I was so grateful for a program that we had Melody-Anne in when she was very little. And I remember one of the moms coming to speak to us, she was a mom of triplets. And I remember her drilling it into us. You write down everything you tell them. You paint the picture of the worst day of your child. And that's what you tell them. Don't tell anybody I told you this. But anyway, that was how it was back then. I am hopeful that things are different now. So I'm really glad to hear you saying, John, that workers are now obligated to let families know what is available to them.

It is, you know, and I will say it is, but it isn't, know, because you got to think that these case workers, you know, they get paid to do their job, and they have a lot of cases.

Yeah.

And you still get the same question, what is it you need? And my wife and I, we had the same question that you just had. And we're saying we don't know because we don't know what's available. You know, how are we supposed to know all this and you can spend hours and hours and we get back to that time drain thing trying to research of what's out there.

The one thing that I will say that has really helped us and I can't promote this enough. And it kind of goes along with what you were saying. There is a community out there. And there it is geographical. And you don't have to be on this island alone, because it gets overwhelming. As much as we think that we're unique in everything we're doing yet to the people that we know that's in our inner circle of family, we are unique and we are struggling through things that a lot of folks don't have to deal with. But there are folks out there that have been through it that have navigated it. And if you're looking for resources, and maybe it's even, well, this resource says it really works, but it doesn't really or this resource is unknown, and they've been wonderful. Get involved in that community build those relationships, because number one, it mentally makes us feel better to have people that we know are going through relatively the same situations. And a lot of times, we can weed out bad resources, and we can save a lot of time, just getting that knowledge that somebody else who's been through it can give us. And then in turn, we can give that to somebody else later, that is a new parent that might be trying to do that, ‘Hey, we can tell you don't waste your time with that, go this route that'll save time and energy help relieve the stress’, or ‘This is what we do in situations’. And yeah, this is a very, very lonely island if you don't reach out to folks and don't build a community to kind of thrive in.

Absolutely. And I just want to say and just remind our audience, and I'm sure everybody is aware, people want to help. We want to encourage each other along this journey, because it is a journey, it's going to be a long journey. And we can choose to do it the hard way by doing it alone, or we can partner up with people. And as you just said, John, just learn from each other, help each other, encourage one another along the journey. It's so, so important to be a part of a community.

Yeah, and a little bit of a backstory of how I got more and more involved, know, with my son's journey and education. And, and I think that a lot of folks with special needs children might go through a similar situation. My wife was taking a walk in our own neighbourhood, a year, year and a half ago, and our son, she had the dog, and I was doing something at home. And our son, you know, had an untimely meltdown, you know, in the middle of her walk, and somebody that wasn't understanding came out of their house and threatened to call social services on my wife for being a bad mother.

This is a lady that comes home from a full day of work and tutors our child for an extra hour to make sure he's getting the reading help and the math help that he misses out in school having to do special classes. And, I mean, you're not going to find a better, caring mother than what she is for our child. And as a father, that hurt me, know, really hurt. And I said, you know what, I need to do a better job of getting people to recognize that there's a community out there and the neurological, and a lot of the sensory community becomes ignored because you can't see it. So, you know, I've done something to try to build awareness.

I’ve taken some of the sponsorships that I get with my practice and try to build community events where it is for the special needs community. And we had our first one actually this past weekend with the Easter Bunny. We brought the Easter Bunny out, had arts and crafts. We had it at a place called the St. Louis Carousel, which is a very wonderful place. It's a safe zone. Kids love the carousel. There's a lot of sensory stimulation.

And the special needs community really came out and enjoyed themselves. You know, they could get acclimated, take pictures with the Easter Bunny in a supportive setting. You know, we had headphones for the children that wanted to ride the carousel that were a little noise sensitive, and a lot of activities that were stimulating, and you know, a big thing that my wife kind of saw with us doing this is she was able to celebrate the challenges and some of the struggles with some of the other parents. And a lot of them were moms. And, you know, a lot of them came up and said, you know what, we weren't going to do the Easter Bunny this year. And, you know, as a father, that breaks my heart, because we're so worried about how we're going to get judged in public. And we don't know what we're going to get that day as a parent. But that shouldn't impact us trying to make the best of our family's lives. 

And, you know, one of the things that I'm hoping to do is get more and more people on board and more and more sponsorship to make this kind of a bigger thing and help out the community so that we can do a little bit of stress relief with these parents and make sure these kiddos feel accepted.

Yeah, love it, John. Love it. Love it. Love it. So you heard that St. Louis Easter Bunny, I'm sure this is going to be an annual event.

I hope so. I hope we can make it even bigger next year, you know, just keep building on it and coming up and getting more and more people on board. And you know, there is a lot of places doing a lot of great things, especially in the past four, five, six years that weren't even available. So tip my hat off to all those places that do that stuff. It really means a lot. And being within that community, it goes a pretty far away.

And I love, John, that you saw a need, and you fulfilled that need. And similar for us, my husband and I were instrumental in starting a camp for kids using AAC. So that's augmented alternative communications. So our oldest uses a communication device that's on an arm that attaches to her wheelchair.

And we got invited, well, actually, one of her speech language pathologists, way back, had said, ‘Hey, I just went to a conference, and the camp director spoke of the camp at Idaho, and you know, the camp’s only $75. So you should go.’ And I'm like, Idaho? That's like a two-day drive for us. 

Right.

From where we live. But I thought 75 bucks, let's just make a vacation of it. So we went down and I went with the intention of okay, if they're doing this here, then we should be able to do something in Alberta. So I go there with my pad of paper and my pen took copious notes. And then my husband said to the director, ‘Hey, do you think we could do something like this in Alberta, Canada?’ And she's like, ‘Yeah’, ‘Would you help?’ ‘Sure.’ So in 2016, we had our first camp for kids using communication devices, or some kind of alternative communication.

So this year, we are doing our 10th year. And I just am so excited to see that it's been sustainable. We partnered with the University of Alberta. And we have actually, it's actually morphed, we had a few children with medical like complex medical needs. And we've kind of morphed now we have a lot of actually children on the spectrum that are coming. And so it's just been beautiful to see how we've kind of morphed. But the fact that we've been able to keep going even through COVID, we did virtual during COVID. And this year, our 10th year, we're actually going back to the first format, which was an overnight camp. Because it's not just for the kids. For me, it's getting the family involved and making sure that the family are understanding how to use the devices with the children, how to communicate with them, and have the siblings involved as well. So I'm excited that we're going to be doing this again in July this year, we've been doing it in August, but this year, it's going to be in July. So really excited. So again…

Congratulations! Yeah, that's absolutely wonderful. That's definitely making lemonade out of lemons. I mean, you're really helping out so many people and you hit a key word family. You know, it's about taking care of our family. We have other kids, I have another kid that's, you know, not on the spectrum. It's about making sure that his quality of life doesn't suffer while we're concentrating on something else. It's, you know, making sure that my wife and I are still in a really good mental and physical state while we're taking care. I mean, it takes a team and it takes a lot of help from a lot of different resources to maintain that.

And that's so important and it's great, you have a university helping you out. And you know, my hope is more and more people will see the need and lend the generous helping hand that it takes to, to throw events like that to create that because no one person could do it.

Absolutely, absolutely. And we have been very blessed. And the cool thing for us with camp is that Anne sort of helped us with our camp in Alberta. And then she's also helped another couple, a couple who have a son with autism. They started a camp, I think three or four years ago now in British Columbia. And where our goal, our hope is that we can have a camp, not that we would run them, but just be influential in having camps start across the country. That's our goal.

That would be great. Yeah. Because I mean, we are limited in how far we can travel, you know, and the fact that you guys travel 12 hours is unbelievable. A lot of families wouldn’t do that. But yeah, having that stuff readily available is really a need to all communities.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So John, tell me, why is it important to work with professionals that have expertise in special needs planning, just going back to the financial planning aspect?

Sure. Well, I’ll go back to what I said about the CFP, the CFP being the gold standard, you still don't learn a lot about how to coordinate public benefits, government benefits, with legacy planning. Last thing you want is your 18-year-old child, any 18-year-old child to inherit $2 million, if something were to happen to you, what would actually be worse than that is if your special needs child inherited that because all the government benefits that they receive would basically go away. You know, we're talking about supplemental income, we're talking about Medicaid. So it's very important to plan for that. It's very important. So the Chartered Special Needs Consultant is a designation that was created by the American College of Financial Services. And what was really amazing when I went through this coursework 2 years ago, I was in a class with other professionals that all had ties to the special needs community.

It wasn't folks from outside it, they were there because they had a child, a nephew, somebody that they really cared for with special needs, and they wanted to learn more. And most of my class was actually estate planning attorneys and CPAs. There were a few financial advisors with that. But what's great about working with somebody that has a Chartered Special Needs Consultant designation, whether it be an attorney, a financial advisor or a CPA, number one, you know that they've gone through the coursework to find out more about special needs planning. Okay. But they're also going to have a level of compassion that somebody else may not have because they're not going through it. Right. So one of the things that I try to preach when I'm talking to my folks that come to me for special needs planning is, you're busy, you have time constraints, we get it. That old saying, you know, how do we eat an elephant one bite at a time? That's all we can do.

You know, we might have a laundry list of things that we want to get done, or we feel like we need to get done with our child. But we have to be cognizant as professionals that let's do one thing a month. Let's knock that out. This is a journey. This isn't something that we just get to check off our list and say, Oh, we're done. We've planned it. We're good. You know, things are forever changing. But and I think somebody that is specialized in that area of special needs planning gets it.

Yeah.

You know, and what's amazing, if you go that route, and you look for those resources, you're probably going to find somebody that you have more in common with than you ever thought. And that could also be that help of when you're feeling isolated or on that mountain or that island alone.

That could be a really good resource. And chances are, they also have other resources within the community to help you get things you need. Yeah, or to save you time.

Mm hmm. Yeah, love it. Thank you so much, John. Appreciate that. So John, where can our audience go to find out a little more about you?

Sure. The internet's always a good place. I have a website GalliaWealthManagement.com. Feel free to connect with me there. I'm also on LinkedIn. I do post some things time to time about special needs. Personally on Facebook, you can kind of follow my journey and a lot of what I do with the special needs work as far as events and stuff is highly promoted through Social Media.

Yeah, so those are some great places to look for me. I'm also on Brooker Check, you can look up my information, my history, who I've worked for, how many years I've been in the industry there.

Amazing. Thank you so much. So, John, before we conclude today, I'd love to hear some words of encouragement from you to parents who are raising children with disabilities or special needs. What message would you like to share with them?

I think that saying where it's 10% of what happens to you, it's 90% of how we deal with it really makes who we are. I would recommend for any parent, and this goes beyond the financial planning of special needs children, if you find yourself in that situation, get support from a group, you know, it might be uncomfortable at first, but get involved in a group, have it be social media, make some friends within the community, it's going to go a long way.

There are people that want to go out there and support you and help you. It's a tight knit community, you'll forever be grateful for joining that community. And really look for that good support.

When it comes to financial planning, the earlier start, the better. Or, even if we're dealing with the unknown, avoidance is the worst thing we can do, especially if our kids are young and we can go into that in more detail, later on down the road.

Yeah, so I think last but not least, we are blessed, we have an opportunity as a parent to grow in ways that a lot of folks don’t have the option to grow and if we look for that silver lining behind everything we do, we can live a richer and fuller life.

Love it. John, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Really appreciate it. And I just want to say, to our audience, I will be bringing John back because I've so enjoyed our conversation today. 

Thank you.

I'll be bringing John back and we can go into more detail on each of the financial aspects. So thank you so much for listening everyone. 

John, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Valerie. This was a pleasure.

You're so very welcome. So audience, keep building your child's future and Live with Intention - Embrace the Journey.

Thanks for joining me today on Forever Home for our kids with disabilities. I hope today's episode gave you something new to think about and it increased your confidence on your journey. If you found this episode helpful, do tell others about it. Use the text feature to let me know your questions. Tell me what you want to know. Until next time, take care and keep building your child's future.