Old Fashioned Finance Blue Jay Financial Group

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.