Episode 7: When To Itemize Your Charitable Donations

At this point, you may be saying to yourself, “this is good information and all, but I’m not retired, and I won’t be for awhile, so what’s the point?” If this is you, I would encourage you to keep listening. As I said in a prior episode, you don’t just show up to retirement without preparation. And if you do, you are probably not prepared to give generously in retirement. I want to share some ideas for everyone today. The truth is that there are things that we can all do to retire generously, regardless of where we are in the journey.

I’ve always said that generous people tend to be happier and more successful. But that can be a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. Are generous people happier because they are more successful? Or are they more successful because they are happier? I don’t really know for sure, but I do think that there is a strong correlation between the two. I said that we will only dip our toe in the waters of psychology. There are reasons for that. A psychologist I am not. I’m a financial advisor. But you can’t deny that the two subjects often crossover.

On today's epiosode we explore some outside the box ideas to help family and friends with two big financial burdens. Medical expenses and tuition expenses. By using direct payments to the provider or institution, you exclude the gift from your gift tax return, which allows you to be more generous in other areas. After all, if you are planning to be charitable in retirement, remember charity begins at home. Someone once said that, and it sounds good to me.

When does it make sense to itemize deductions? Well, if you are far exceeding the standard you’ll want to itemize. But you can also look at opportunities to “bunch” charitable donations. Sounds pretty simple, right? We all know that the tax code is anything but simple, so you need to make sure that your tax preparer is totally on board before you employ a bunching strategy. Learn more on today's episode.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in the first few episodes. We’ve talked about a couple of different strategies for tax-efficient giving. We talked about ideas that specifically benefit charitable organizations. We talked about ideas that specifically benefit the next generation, likely your children. And today we are going to explore some ways to benefit both. As an added bonus, some of these ideas may be more beneficial to you as well. I’m talking about tax-efficient beneficiary designations. Don’t worry, it sounds a lot fancier than it really is. Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of it.

Roth conversions can be done systematically as a part of a really effective financial plan. It’s a strategy that requires meticulous planning and perfect execution, so you need to proceed with caution. However, if retiring generously includes being generous to the next generation, you can see why this is a worthwhile endeavor.

One of the most effective strategies for the charitably inclined is the use of Qualified Charitable Distributions, or QCDs. That’s right, another fun acronym for you to remember. But if you simply remember that QCD is short for tax savings, you’ll be fine. The great thing about QCDs is that we aren’t re-inventing the wheel here. We’re actually talking about doing something that you probably already do. The difference is the order of the steps that we use.

We’ll spend our time today talking about the how and why of RMDs, and if you follow along, you’ll see the conundrum that they create. In later episodes we’ll talk about tax savvy solutions to resolve the conundrum, but for today we first need to understand what we’re dealing with. Before we solve the problem, we first have to have a grasp on what the problem actually is. Here we go.

Like most worthwhile endeavors, planning is essential to being wildly generous in retirement. And these 3 milestone ages present planning opportunities to set ourselves up to do just that. We will continue to build the foundation by looking at these milestones ages individually in episodes to come.

Most people have bigger goals in mind than just surviving when they retire. For those folks, retirement is about more than just financial security, it’s about service. Service to their family, or their church, or their local non-profit of choice. Retirement becomes an opportunity to be more generous with their time, money and resources. These are the people that I find are most fulfilled in retirement. They have a driving purpose. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to work with people like this. And what I’ve found is that there is nothing more fulfilling in my business than helping people utilize their resources to be even more generous. And not only that, but to do so in a tax efficient manner. As it turns out the tax code, even with all of the recent changes, still rewards the charitably inclined. So, if you find yourself in the group of financially independent, with a generous disposition, or you aspire to be in this group one day, keep listening. This podcast may be just for you.