BenePLAN Tip: Planning to Return to Work? Meet With Your Benefits Specialist.

Brian Forsythe, Benefits Specialist, Resource Partnership

As you prepare for your return to work, it is important you understand how earning wages will affect your Social Security benefits, health insurance, food stamps, and public housing. A Benefits Specialist can review all your benefits and provide you with a solid understanding so you can make a decision about going to work that is best for you and your family. Your Benefits Specialist can also help you explore different work scenarios such as part-time, full-time, or part-time to full-time work schedules to see how each scenario will affect your benefits.

I have found from my experience working as a Benefits Specialist over the last seven years that most of the people I have seen benefit from working at least part-time. For example:

• An individual currently receiving SSI, MassHealth, Food Stamps and living in Public Housing decides to return to work. When he returns to work, his SSI benefit would be reduced $1 for every $2 earned over $85 each month. MassHealth would be unaffected; Food Stamps would be reduced due to the extra income. The reduction in his SSI check and Food Stamps would be more than made up for in extra income earned from working. Furthermore, if this were his first work attempt since moving into public housing, his rent would be frozen for one year under a Housing and Urban Development rule called Earned Income Disallowance.

• An individual receiving SSDI, Medicare and MassHealth, decides to return to work. If she returns to work and earns $900 per month or more, she would see her SSDI check stop, but only after she has completed a 9-month Trial Work Period and a 3-month grace period. Her Medicare would remain intact for 93 months after the completion of the Trial Work Period. MassHealth, on the other hand, would be shifted to CommonHealth with a sliding scale monthly premium so the individual would see an increase in her health insurance costs. But once again this should be more than offset by the increased income earned from working.

As you can see in both of these cases the individual benefited from working. Other cases in which I recommend you contact a Benefits Specialist in your area are: when your living situation changes or you have received correspondence from Social Security to which you need to respond.

To learn how working and earning wages will affect your benefits, contact Brian Forsythe, Resource Partnership Benefits Specialist at brian@resourcepartnership.org or 508-647-1722 ext. 14.

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Resource Partnership
251 West Central Street, Suite 31, Natick, MA 01760
P) 508.647.1722    Toll-Free) 1.877.YES.WORK    F) 508.647.9622    TTY) 508.652.7284
info@resourcepartnership.org

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