Fall is easily my favorite season of the year. It brings pumpkin spice lattes, brightly colored leaves, and football nearly every day of the week! With Giving Tuesday right around the corner, fall is also an important time of the year for charitable giving, as many donors make their year-end gifts. From our perspective, it’s a great time to think about year-end tax planning, with charitable donations as a powerful tax planning tool.
If you are reading this post in the hopes of “knowing your worth” as it relates to your moral character, societal contributions, or, more literally, how much you can get for your plasma, I am sorry to disappoint. But before you click away from this page, this article may give you something more valuable: education on the calculation and application of your net worth. It might not sound exciting, but this could help you focus on goals and live your life to the fullest, and what could be more thrilling than that?
Conversations with clients around the desire to financially support family, friends, and charities are commonly heard within the walls of Woodward Financial Advisors. We love these conversations because they present another opportunity for us to educate and provide value to our clients, as well as to learn what truly motivates folks to give of their resources.
We recently had the opportunity to know exactly where to hit the machine when a client recently approached us with a goal of making a significant charitable contribution in 2020, with the hope and expectation of making the same contribution for as long as they are able in subsequent years. After determining that they could do this without jeopardizing their other spending goals, we set about figuring out the best way to make their gift this year.
Cash may be fine for relatively small gifts, but when the giving involves a few or many thousands of dollars there may be more tax efficient alternatives.