Gift Smarter: Tax-Wise Giving to Family and Charity

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In today’s episode, we’re tackling some big topics relating to year-end tax planning:

💸 Cash isn’t king – Gifting appreciated assets can save you (and your kids) significant taxes.

🎁 Donor-advised funds – Get the deduction now, give later, and simplify your recordkeeping.

🙌 QCD advantage – Over 70½? Give directly from your IRA and reduce taxable income.

🧮 Annual limits – Gift up to $19,000 per person (or $38,000 per couple) tax-free each year.

👨‍👩‍👧 Family strategy – Thoughtful planning builds multi-generational wealth and avoids tax traps.

Listen Now:

The Smart Take:

In this episode of Retire Smarter, Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP®, breaks down how to gift smarter — whether your goal is to support family or give back to charity.

With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) reshaping charitable deductions starting in 2026, now is the time to rethink your strategy. Tyler explains why cash may not be the best asset to give, how Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) and Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) can maximize your tax efficiency, and what to know about new AGI floors and deductions.

He also covers practical, non-deductible gifting strategies — from using annual exclusion gifts to structuring intra-family loans that can help children or grandchildren without triggering unnecessary taxes or gift filings.

If you want to make your generosity go further — for your loved ones, your favorite causes, and your long-term financial plan — this episode will help you do just that.

Go Deeper Into the Conversation:

0:00 – Intro

1:34 – Tax legislation

4:21 – Deductible gifting

6:50 – Donor Advised Funds

16:08 – Qualified Charitable Distributions

21:00 – Non-deductible gifting

 

Learn more about the Retire Smarter Solution ™: https://www.truewealthdesign.com/ep-45-retire-smarter-solution/

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The Hosts:

Kevin Kroskey, CFP®, MBA – About – Contact

Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP® – About – Contact

Episode Transcript:

Tyler Emrick:

Today we’re talking about how to gift smarter, whether that’s gifting to a charity or gifting to family. For charities, we’ll dive into donor-advised funds, qualified charitable distributions and the like. And then we’ll finish up with your family gifting and ways to do it more tax-efficiently and smarter, all coming up on Retire Smarter.

Walter Storholt:

We’re back on, Retire Smarter. Welcome in once again, Walter Storholt alongside, of course, Tyler Emrick. He’s a certified financial planner, a chartered financial analyst at True Wealth Design, one of the wealth planners there and guides us each week through sometimes a hard to understand financial world, but I feel like we’re taking a different tactic today, so we’re not getting towels and-

Tyler Emrick:

All the fun tax stuff? Come on.

Walter Storholt:

We’re still talking taxes and tax strategies, but at least it’s in the wrapper of giving and gifting, which I know this is the time of year as we record this in late October, and that starts to become front of mind for a lot of people.

Tyler Emrick:

It does. It does. Well, and yeah, just as anybody who’s listened to our last handful of podcasts, they certainly have been tax-focused with the new tax legislation past. Certainly we’re heading into the end of the year here, so inherently, we’re kind of getting some of these out of the way. Certainly, I feel like this is the time of year where it’s kind of top of mind and everyone’s kind of evaluating and thinking through their tax and their gifting strategies. So we wanted to make sure that we were pretty timely with it coming out, but we promise we’ll get to some of the more fun lighter giving stuff a little bit later on, for sure.

Walter Storholt:

There you go. Well, it makes sense though, because a couple of things, we’ve had new tax legislation this year and lots of changes in that realm, so that’s why there’s a lot of tax focus right now. It’s also what you guys do. It’s a differentiator for True Wealth Design, because this level of planning is not something that, if you’re watching this show, maybe you know this, maybe not, but if you hear the word financial advisor, that can mean a lot of different things. And not all financial advisors do this kind of planning, which is definitely deeper and next level than a lot of the folks out there are willing to do.

Tyler Emrick:

Sure. I mean, these coming months, here in October, November, even in the beginning part of December, I mean, they truly are probably our busiest time of year as we kind of think about, “Well, hey, we got the deadline, December 31st.” And anything that we’re trying to do from a tax planning standpoint has to be in by that time for the most part. So we’ve got to be mindful of that. And then you kind of stack that on top of… I had so many dynamic conversations with clients over the last few weeks around income targeting, planning and the impact that the new legislation has had, probably more so than really a recent memory, kind of changing what that income target is or adjusting how we’re doing some of our gifting, which is kind of what prompted the podcast here today.

So it’s always fun, but making sure that we’re presenting that in a way that families are digesting and understanding and making sure they understand those decision points is extremely important. So it’s been a fun few weeks. Certainly, we’ve got a few more ahead of us here. Yeah, I mean, it’s a good time of year, for sure.

Walter Storholt:

We’re going to clip that one for the archives. “Tax planning, it’s always fun.” Just pull that quote out and-

Tyler Emrick:

Come on now.

Walter Storholt:

We’re going to replace that quote behind you with, “Tax planning, it’s always fun.”

Tyler Emrick:

Yeah, we can get it up on the wall. We’ve got a little bit of a quote back here, but yeah, we’ll have to add in one for that, for sure. But yeah, so gifting, whether it be… We’re kind of going to separate it out into two types of gifting, I guess. Think of it more, Walt, is like, “Hey, what gifting is tax-deductible?” And then maybe separating out to gifting that’s maybe not tax-deductible. I’m thinking friends, family, kids. We get it quite a bit, family’s coming in, “Hey, if I end up gifting to my kid, do I get any breaks for that or anything?”

Walter Storholt:

Nice. They really need the help. It’s charitable.

Tyler Emrick:

Yes, yes, absolutely. But certainly, there’s ways to think about gifting to your kids and family, and if you’re going to be doing it, certainly there’s things that we want to be mindful of. And I think it’ll be good for us to kind of go through some of those pointers. But I think we’ll start today kind of talking about more of the deductible giving. And it always fascinates me how much of the families that we work with, Walt, are charitably inclined. I mean, it’s a big piece of what a lot of families do and it’s a wide spectrum here. And thinking through how you’re doing that gifting, I think is always a really, really good exercise. So we can kind of dive into some of those high level. I mean, really, Walt, a lot of families are, “Hey, I just give cash. Hey, I’ll go to a church every week, I give in the donation box. Hey, at the end of the year I gift to my charities. I gift to my alma mater schools,” whatever. And a lot of time it is just, “Hey, here’s a check, here’s cash.”

And when we think about gifting, cash is probably our last resort when we’re thinking about what we want to actually be gifting. So things like gifting your investments, mutual funds, stocks, things like that can certainly have some tax advantages to them. You think about, “Hey, I’ve held Apple stock for the last 15 years.” And if you’ve done that, hey, you’re probably up quite a bit. And now you’re trying to figure out, “Well, how do I diversify out of this? Maybe I’m not as happy with Apple’s performance or I’ve had the stock for a number of years, doesn’t have to be just Apple.” But any stock, right? “And it’s grown. How do I get out of it?” Well, gifting those highly appreciated stock shares, ETF shares or mutual fund shares is a very, very tax efficient way because you can gift those shares and you don’t have to pay taxes on the gains as you normally would.

So you think about maybe looking at your portfolio and looking at your investments, that’s a really good starting point to say, “Hey, are there any of these investments that I’ve held for a number of years that maybe I can gift those to a charity this year as opposed to just writing a check or giving cash?” So that’s the first thing-

Walter Storholt:

And the average person probably isn’t realizing that they can even pull those levers, right?

Tyler Emrick:

Sure. And it’s really not all that complicated. I mean, normally you would talk to whoever you’re going to be gifting to. A lot of that stuff’s online. You get the information, maybe you have to fill out one form, shares transfer electronically. Really, it’s not a lot of heavy lifting. Obviously, if you’re working with an advisor, you should be leaning on them to do some of the heavy lifting and the logistics back and forth, but it’s really not a daunting task. And the vast majority of charities or churches are going to be able to accept those types of gifts, for sure. So that’s one. “Hey, just what are you gifting?” And taking a look at it.

So the next becomes maybe a little bit more complicated, but this is maybe thinking about, “Well, how and when and what maybe accounts do I use to gift?” So Walt, I’m sure you’ve ran into donor-advised funds. I think we’ve talked about them here on the podcast before, for sure.

Walter Storholt:

From you.

Tyler Emrick:

From me? Hey, there you go. So donor-advised funds for listeners that maybe aren’t as familiar, a donor-advised fund, you can kind of think of it as, I say, “Hey, it’s like your own personal charity.” But it’s even more simplistic than that. It’s really just an account, very similar to a taxable brokerage account that you might hold investments in. And for tax purposes, this account is a charity. So anytime that you move investments, you move cash or you move anything and fund this account, from a tax standpoint, it’s like you are completing a gift to the account or a deductible gift. And then you can use that donor-advised fund. It doesn’t all have to go out and be gifted to wherever you want immediately. You control that account and over the next year, two years, three years, you can use that account to actually complete your gifting.

A lot of times these donor-advised funds accounts can be just held wherever you custodian your money at. For our families, a lot of our families have their money held at Fidelity or Schwab, for example. Both of those custodians have donor-advised accounts that you can open up, you can see them when you log in, you can see their accounts, and a lot of times, a lot of families find them very easy to use and to manage. I was actually just sitting with a client yesterday, where we’re not going to be doing a big gift this year from a tax standpoint, but he’s like, “Hey, I’ve got automatic checks going out of my donor-advised funds every month. It’s so set up. It’s so easy. I want to make sure that I can still use that account just because it’s automatic and it’s easy and it’s convenient.” So a lot of families, once they get used to using them, Walt, I mean, really find them to be helpful.

You don’t have to necessarily use a custodian. There are foundations and things like that, that have maybe more pointed goals with their donor-advised funds. But talk to your financial advisor, these accounts can be extremely valuable to be used. And as I was describing them, there was one key point here that we want to be mindful of and why they’re so valuable, and that is that you can put money or investments into them, but yet you don’t have to gift that money until a year down the road, two years down the road, three years down the road.

Walter Storholt:

That’s what made the light bulb go off for me, Tyler, is, “Hey, maybe I’m distracted right now and I’m not in the charitable mode, I’m just being honest.” I’ve got a kid on the way. It’s like I’m trying to be charitable, but it’s not at the top of my mind at this exact moment, but I still-

Tyler Emrick:

It’s a family gift. Hey, 529 accounts, for all the accounts, all that stuff. The kids, right? That might be [inaudible 00:09:46].

Walter Storholt:

That’s where our next section’s coming in, right?

Tyler Emrick:

Or just have a toddler and having a new kid and all this stuff that goes with that.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, but I love the idea of being able to still, one, get the tax benefits of putting into the plan, putting into the fund, but then I can pool that for later down the road when something does inspire me or I do want to be more charitable, or maybe there’s a charity you want to give to in a more impactful way, and you don’t feel like just contributing, I’m just pulling a random number, $500 one time, two, is going to move the needle in the way that you want to do it. But if you could save up for two years and make that a $5,000 contribution, that’s how you want to handle it. That seems to be just very powerful and a really cool tool. It reminds me of like an HSA, not all the exact same tax benefits, but I’m seeing a parallel there of-

Tyler Emrick:

We love the HSAs. Yes.

Walter Storholt:

I’m saving for future healthcare costs that I can use at my disposal whenever I want to. In a year, I might need it more than I do right now. Those kinds of things.

Tyler Emrick:

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And too, these accounts are like investment accounts. Not two weeks ago I was sitting with an individual where we were contemplating how much we’re going to be putting into her donor-advised fund, and we were kind of looking at what was left. And really, she was down to just investment earnings inside of that account. So she had this account for a few years, had actually invested the money inside the donor-advised account-

Walter Storholt:

So like an HSA, you can invest the money in there. Okay.

Tyler Emrick:

You can. And the account had grown, so she was now just gifting the earnings inside of that account. That was-

Walter Storholt:

That’s cool.

Tyler Emrick:

… well above what her original contribution was inside the account. Now, you kind of hit the nail on the head too, on your prior comment about the tax law changes this year have kind of made us think about these accounts a little bit differently, especially here towards the end of this year, because with the one big beautiful bill, the next year, there is going to be a half a percent floor, half to half a percent of your adjusted gross income before you can actually start deducting gifts or your itemized gifts that you take. So you would take your adjusted gross income, 0.5% of that would be basically you have to gift over that amount and then you start getting the actual deduction.

So if we’ve got some very high-income earners here listening to the podcast or maybe checking us out on YouTube, that floor can get pretty high. You start making a half a million dollars a year, $750,000 a year, you do normal gifting. Well, hey, I have to gift a certain amount before I actually start getting a deduction for it. That’s not the case in 2025. So if you’re starting to think about, “Well, hey, should I be using a donor-advised fund? How do I want to do it?” Your gift to that donor-advised fund this year might be substantially more impactful than what it would be if you’re deciding to open and fund a donor-advised fund come next year. And that was a change, again, through the one big beautiful bill act.

There was another change that’s kind of making your gifts this year potentially a little bit more impactful as well, and that was the whole, “Well, hey, you get a $2,000 deduction above the line.” When I say above the line, there’s a kind of a key distinction here, because when we think about gifting, you have to itemize your deductions before your gifting starts to be a tax deduction for you. If you take the standard deduction, which is pretty high, Walt, right?

Walter Storholt:

Sure.

Tyler Emrick:

We’ve been on these high standard deductions now for a while, married, filing jointly, its 31,500 this year. So that means that really your itemized deductions, things like gifting, state and local taxes, maybe your mortgage interest, things like that, all have to add up to over 31,500 before you’re really starting yet some tax deductions for your donor-advised fund contributions or for your gifting. So that’s where these donor-advised funds become so important is, you can bunch big gifts for a few years out, get yourself over that standard deduction and get a little bit of a tax benefit. Well, come next year, the IRS said, “Hey, we’re going to give above-the-line deduction for your gifting.” Meaning that you don’t have to itemize. You can still take the standard deduction, and if you’re married, filing jointly, take up to $2,000 of your gifts.

There’s some other quirky rules there you got to be mindful of, but essentially, a $2,000 deduction, even if you don’t itemize. So again, you think about how you’re gifting, when you’re gifting. I always say, “Hey, well, we’re not doing our gifting for a tax deduction.” But the new tax legislation this year have thrown us a few wrinkles to really be thinking about like, “Well, hey, how are we going to think about our gifting, not only this year, but maybe next year and the year after?” And starting to get a game plan for how you can kind of maximize some of that tax benefit.

Speaker 3:

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Walter Storholt:

I’m curious, does this also make tracking a lot easier, because I’ve done the routine before over the past and many years of getting to that end of the year and finding all of your receipts, the work of having to keep up with throughout the year, where you donated money, to which charities, all of those kinds of things. Am I okay in assuming that that’s a lot easier if everything is happening at the donor-advised level, because the distributions from there, I don’t care about as much from a tracking standpoint, from the IRS’s perspective, it’s about what’s going into the account?

Tyler Emrick:

100%. Correct. And then we know exactly what went into the account, you funded it, that’s a definite-

Walter Storholt:

Easy to do that math, right?

Tyler Emrick:

There you go. No, it does simplify things quite a bit from that standpoint.

Walter Storholt:

I guess you can’t put clothing items and physical objects in a donor-advised fund may be the only catch here?

Tyler Emrick:

That’s fair, yep. But we can do investments. And likely you would want to do investments. Again, some quirks and caveats you got to be mindful of, certainly talk to your advisor. You probably should already be talking to your advisor about these things. But donor-advised funds aren’t the only consideration as we think about our gifting. Another big one are qualified charitable distributions or QCDs, you might hear them be referred to, right? This is this whole-

Walter Storholt:

A good one to shorten to QCD. I like that.

Tyler Emrick:

Yes. And this is the whole idea of, “Hey, once you turn 70 and a half, you can actually use money inside of your IRA accounts and gift them directly to qualified charities, churches or so on and so forth.” Now, this is a big deal and certainly something we want to be mindful of, because what the QCD allows you to do is, you can take money out of your IRA and it doesn’t even hit your tax return. So meaning that for those individuals who maybe do not itemize, maybe take the standard deduction, using a qualified charitable distribution, if that’s afforded to you, if you’re over 70 and a half, is a wonderful way to do your gifting because you don’t even have that stuff hit your tax return. You start thinking about, “Well, all these limits we got to be mindful of.” There’s the IRMAA limit we talk about all the time. There is the new senior bonus deduction, where if you’re in your modified AGI goes over 150K, you start to potentially lose that, married, filing jointly.

So you think about, “Well, hey, if I use a donor-advised fund, that deduction is after my modified AGI, so that doesn’t really help me for IRMAA, that doesn’t help me to get the senior bonus deduction if you’re over 65. But if you’re over 70 and a half, you can do these qualified charitable distributions. That means that those gifts don’t even hit your tax return, don’t even hit your modified AGI and allows you to manage that and maybe pick up more of a standard, that senior deduction or not have to have some worries about staying under IRMAA limits and things. So qualified charitable distributions, QCDs are a wonderful tool to start using if you do your gifting once you turn 70 and a half. And then once you turn RMD age, potentially 73 or 75, it actually lowers those RMDs as well. RMDs, required minimum distributions, where the IRS kind of makes you start pulling money out of your retirement accounts because they want you to pay taxes on it.

And those QCDs are a way for you to potentially lower that as well. So we certainly don’t want to forget about QCDs and how they fit in the picture, especially if you’re considering maybe, “Hey, I want to put some money in a donor-advised fund.” Well, are you going to turn 70 and a half in a couple of years? You want to maybe be mindful of how much you’re funding a donor-advised fund, because you might want to switch How you do your gifting come 70 and a half. So these donor-advised funds, qualified charitable distributions, I think when we’re thinking about gifting, tax breaks and your federal taxes, these are two of the big ones. And then the first thing that we touched on, gifting appreciated stock, mutual funds or ETFs, that’s always a good practice to be thinking of as well. Certainly, there are some things to be mindful of, gifting from a state tax standpoint, like here in Ohio, we get some state tax credits depending on what you’re gifting to and maybe if you’re gifting to certain scholarships or things like that.

So always make sure your CPA, your financial advisor, are understanding where you’re doing your gifting, where you’re being charitably inclined, so that way they can make sure that they’re picking up all the credits, deductions and all those quirky things that you can pick up potentially from a state level as well. So that’s the deductible gifting.

Walter Storholt:

Great. I do want to throw one caveat in, not caveat, but just back to the donor-advised fund, I said earlier that you didn’t really have to keep track of then where the money was going on the distribution side. That was probably definitely simplifying it too much. Like an HSA, it’s got to go to a certain purpose, so still track where you’re sending that money.

Tyler Emrick:

Now, well, the beautiful part about that is most of the custodians where you would hold these at, they’re going to make you put in the charity, put in the church’s information and not let you send that.

Walter Storholt:

You’re not going to buy a car with that money, right?

Tyler Emrick:

There’s some fail-safes in there. So maybe not quite as simplified as what you had it, Walt, but certainly pretty darn fail-safe and fail-proof there. I had a client, who actually, their church had some issues getting qualified, so they went to gift to their church, and the donor-advised fund says, “Hey, we don’t see this church, you can’t send to them.” So they had to work with their church and get it worked out and go through… They got it done, but there’s been some unique circumstances there to make sure that… And on the front end, if you put money under donor-advised fund, hey, you control where it goes, but it’s still got to be gifted. So you got to make sure that you’re very comfortable about, “Hey, our gifting is not going to necessarily change or you don’t over fund it or get too committed to it.” Because that money, once it goes in there, you’re getting the tax benefit, it’s going to go to church or charity.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, good point. All right. Non-deductible giving.

Tyler Emrick:

Non-deductible, right? So this is where we’re thinking about gifting to friends, family. I have some families that I work with who actually support different missions, families and so on and so forth, that maybe don’t give a tax deduction, but they still want to gift to them because they support the work that they’re doing. This is that broad category. Obviously, our children probably are going to be the biggest culprit that falls into this. So we don’t necessarily get a tax deduction for the gifting that we do our families. But the caveats that I would want to bring up here and make sure individuals are thinking about is like, well, just as we think about with our church and charities, what we’re gifting. I said, “Hey, cash may be the last resort from a gifting standpoint.” I would argue that’s potentially something that we would want to look at as you’re gifting to your kids as well.

If you have some of these investment positions that have appreciated in value quite substantially, maybe you’re in a very high tax bracket still, but your kid’s just starting out, you’re trying to help them. Maybe they’re not quite making the money that you are or they’re in a lower tax bracket. Well, we’ve had scenarios where we have gifted stock, ETFs or mutual funds to an account under the child’s name. The child then sells that, and then they’re able to realize that gain at sometimes 0% tax rate, depending on what their tax situation looks like.

Whereas if the parents would’ve done that same thing, where they sold the investment, then gifted the cash, well, the gain would’ve hit their tax return and they would’ve paid 15% or more on that long-term gain. So that can really start to add up and be very advantageous. So you start thinking about working with your financial advisor. A lot of what we do is really working with the family too, and understanding that dynamic and understanding that, “Well, hey, if you’re wanting to help out your children, how do we want to do that in the most tax-efficient and really a way that’s being mindful of your family’s wealth?” And they can-

Walter Storholt:

This is generational wealth. This is how this gets built, right? Family A is like, “Hey, here’s 10,000 bucks to help you out. This is wonderful.” Family B is, “Here’s $10,000 and I’m just going to pick stocks.” But those two things aren’t created equal in what you’re laying out. These are the strategies that people are using to build this long-term wealth using the bounds within the system to do things as efficiently as possible.

Tyler Emrick:

Absolutely. So many times over the years we’ve looked at their children’s tax returns, trying to understand what they’re doing, trying to understand how this gifting can be done in a very efficient manner. Now, one thing we also got to be worried about, not only like, “Well, hey, what things are we gifting to our children?” But also, “Well, how much can you?” I get this question a lot. “Hey, we want to help with a down payment on a house. Hey, we want to help with some student loans. What do we need to be mindful of if we’re going to be gifting to our children?” And it is pretty simple, to a point, is that any person can gift 19 grand this year in 2025 to another individual and not have to report that from a tax standpoint, it’s not taxable to the individual that you gift that to. Really, that is the limit or the exclusion amount before things start to get a little bit more complicated. Now, you think about a married-

Walter Storholt:

Is that per year or lifetime to an individual?

Tyler Emrick:

That’s per year. Good caveat there. And that does go up. Last year it was 18,000 per person you could gift. This year it went to 19. Generally, it goes up each year when we think about that. So depending on how, when and who, that amount might be applicable. Now, another caveat here would be, hey, if you’re married, you and your spouse can actually gift each gift 19,000 to your son or your daughter. So that’s actually $38,000 that you and your spouse can gift to one individual without triggering any type of tax consequences or anything like that. Now, if you want to gift more than that in a given year, a lot of times this comes up with down payments on houses or hey, maybe you have enough wealth built up to where you don’t want to necessarily gift 300, $400,000 to your kid, but you want to really help them with the house, interest rates are still very, very high.

This is when you get into a situation to where, okay, if you’re trying to gift more than that 19,000 per person per year, now there’s some caveats here. We would have to file an estate gift tax return if you go over that amount, that would go against your lifetime gifting limit. Another option that we’ve used quite a bit in the past is this whole idea of an intra-family loan, where you actually loan the proceeds to purchase a home or put a big down payment down to your son or daughter. And this can be a very effective way to not trigger that estate tax gift return, but gift more than say the 38,000 bucks to one individual. And these intra-family loans, there are rules that we have to follow around setting them up, around the interest rate that has to be charged and so on and so forth. But on the flip side of that, they can also be pretty flexible, meaning that, hey, maybe we don’t have payment set back, that the children are the individuals paying you back. Maybe there’s no payments. Maybe you forgive the interest each year.

So there’s so many unique things where you can kind of set up this loan to where you kind of protect yourself from a tax standpoint on the backend, or you set it up to where maybe you protect yourself in other ways. I think about, hey, you gift your son, just got married, maybe they didn’t just get married, but a divorce happens down the road or something like that, you want to be mindful of-

Walter Storholt:

Rosie scenario.

Tyler Emrick:

I was going to say we’re going down the rabbit hole a little bit.

Walter Storholt:

Just got married and now they’re divorced.

Tyler Emrick:

I said they just got married, that is not going to work. It would be like-

Walter Storholt:

When they’re a few years older.

Tyler Emrick:

[inaudible 00:27:23] flip side. Yes, a few years older, and you want to be mindful of how much are you gifting to the household in general. The family loan can give you a little bit of recourse and kind of set that up as well. So yeah, hopefully not as soon as you get married, for sure. But gifting your children, friends or family, the big thing to keep in mind is, “Hey, you can do it, but just as you have a plan for how you’re gifting to church or charity, we want to go through and have some type of plan put in place for, what are your gifting expectations to those family, and can we take advantage of some of these things that we had talked about to make it more efficient and to kind of just create better outcomes for you and the family in the long run?”

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, these are some great solutions, great scenarios. Gives you a lot to think about. Also, no matter how old you are, it’s interesting to see the donor-advised funds kind of works for this phase of your life, but then as you get older and you get to that RMD age, maybe it makes more sense to switch to the QCDs or find a different mix of how you’re approaching things. And I think you’ve said it multiple times, my big takeaway is, and it’s surprising because I think of cash as flexible, liquid, king. Cash is king is another thing we’ve heard our whole lives, and you’re constantly, at least in this context, like, “Hey, kind of a last resort to go to cash.” There’s way better options for a lot of people’s situations, and that’s probably a different line of thinking that a lot of people don’t necessarily have top of mind or assume. So that’s helpful, I think.

Tyler Emrick:

Absolutely. I would agree wholeheartedly.

Walter Storholt:

Well, this is just another example of the kind of planning that Tyler and the team at True Wealth Design are doing each and every day in the office with clients. So no matter where you are, they also meet remotely with clients from all across the country, even if you’re not in Northeast Ohio or where they have the physical offices, doesn’t matter. So feel free to reach out, have a conversation about your financial life where there are some areas for improvement or opportunity that you may not even know about, like some of the things we discussed today just in this small little narrow window segment of talking about gifting, but it’s another example about getting more efficient with your finances, making the most of all the hard-earned dollars that you’ve earned throughout your life and whatever you want to do with it in retirement, whether it’s gifting or something else, making sure that you’re doing it efficiently and successfully. That’s what it’s all about.

So if you’d like to set up a time to visit with a member of the team, it’s very easy to do that. You just go to truewealthdesign.com. We’ve got that linked in the description of today’s show, and you’ll also be able to click on a button that takes you right to being able to book an appointment. It’ll be a 15-minute call, or I think it’s 20 minutes now, right Tyler? 20 minute call.

Tyler Emrick:

20 minutes now, or as long as we need. We set it for time. I tend to run over on them sometimes, Walt, so to be fair-

Walter Storholt:

Okay. All right. Good to know.

Tyler Emrick:

I can talk with the best of them. So sometimes it might be 25, 30 minutes [inaudible 00:30:07]-

Walter Storholt:

I’m sure people aren’t complaining about having a few extra minutes to tap into your expertise and hear your thoughts and helpful opinions. But set up that conversation and that call to see if you’re a good fit to work with an experienced advisor. So again, you’ll find that link in the description of today’s show or by going to truewealthdesign.com. Set up that time to visit, see if you’re a good fit. Tyler, thanks for walking us through a great conversation today. This one, I feel like I definitely am retiring smarter after today. I learned a few things, so thank you.

Tyler Emrick:

No, that’s great. Yeah, it was fun. Appreciate it. We’ll catch you on the next one, for sure.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah. Have a good rest of your week, everybody. We’ll see you soon, right back here on Retire Smarter.

Speaker 4:

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