John, good to see you happy. Almost New Year today, we get to talk through four ways to maximize your giving and minimize your taxes. The end of the year is creeping up, and you are always thinking of ways to help clients lessen their tax burden, one of the many things I love about you, and you were recently telling me about a good option for people who want to donate to charity, and, again, maximize tax efficiency. Yes, Erin, The holiday season is upon us, and I have my little friend here. Oh, Merry Christmas. It's time to give gifts to the less fortunate. So we are spending the next couple minutes talking about that giving time of year and charitable donations. So let's start then, John with one of your favorites, and that is a qualified charitable distribution. Yeah. So in our last video, we mentioned a lot of these, and we didn't go into some very important details. So the qualified charitable distribution the last video, we talked about it, you're going to give money directly from your IRA to a charity of your choice. The Money does not is not made out to you. It does not be sent to you. It's directly from the IRA to your charity. So a couple key things to remember here. Number one, you have to be age 70 and a half or above. This strategy works well that if you are donating to your church or a charity and you're just donating writing checks out of your take that IRA money, the worst tax money, and get a one for one, tax deductible donation. And this is you can, even if you're claiming standard you can still get the qualified charitable distribution. Here's here's how it works. You take that money out of your IRA. It's an IRA distribution, but it goes straight to the charity. Guess what? You took the money out if you have a required minimum distribution, you satisfy that required minimum distribution, but you get that dollar for dollar tax deduction because it's a qualified charitable distribution. Now, Erin, here's some key points. You have to be 70 and a half. We already talked about that. Number two, it has to be the first money out of that specific IRA account. So let's say you have a couple different IRAs, you have an IRA account, you have two IRA accounts with fidelity, and let's say you have an annuity that's an IRA account, and you've taken an income stream out of that annuity, which is an IRA, you're taking some other money out of account number one, Ira from Fidelity, you cannot take the qualified charitable distribution from either of those two accounts. It has to be from account number two at Fidelity, you have not taken any distributions out. So they has to be the first money out of that account. So even if you've taken distributions from other IRA accounts, you tap that IRA account that you have not taken a distribution from, and then what you do is you have your custodian, in our example, fidelity, make the check out to the charity and have it mailed to you, as I mentioned, to have it be a qualified charitable distribution, the money has to go directly to the charity, which is having a check made out. Why do you want to mail to you? Because you want to make a photocopy for your records. Once you get that check, you then forward it off to the charity, and now that qualified charitable distribution is complete, however, the reporting is not, and that's why you want to have a photocopy of this check, because come tax time, if you do your tax records, or if you have a tax preparer, you must, must, must notify them of this qualified charitable distribution, give them the copy of the check, because if you don't, the tax preparer is not going to know it, and the IRS isn't going to know it. And if they don't know it, it never happened. It just came out as a distribution, and you never got credit tax wise for your charitable distribution. And just to underscore why this strategy is so popular, those IRA funds are loaded with taxes. Yeah, they are. You know, Ira is the ordinary income tax. That's one of the worst taxes you can have in retirement. So again, you know, we've saved a couple different clients, 1000s new clients this year, 1000s of dollars, because they were very, very giving, but they were giving out of their bank account. So we used two strategies, one I'll get to later, but one of them was a qualified charitable distributions and said, Listen, no more giving out of your bank account. Let's take that IRA money and go ahead and give it to the church or charity of choice. And next, let's talk through bunching. What is this? Yes, so this is really looking at your taxes in a two year window, okay? And especially if you've, you know, unfortunately, had some medical expenses, or you have a lot of itemized deductions, and perhaps you're right at the top where you know you're maybe around 26 $27,000 but you're right there in between standard and itemized. For a lot of our clients that like to do this strategy, what we'll do is we'll say, Listen, in 2024 in the beginning of the year, we'll give our charitable contributions for 2024 then at the end of the year, we'll make our charitable contributions if you have the ability to for 2025 and we'll let our church or charity know. Say, Hey, listen, we're going to give you double contributions in 2024 nothing in 2025 and this is going to should bump you into the itemized deductions, which is going to be the higher deduction. So now you're actually getting a deduction for your giving, and in 2025 you'll just go back to a standard deduction. This is going to be obviously applicable for people who are giving that aren't age 70 and a half, or they haven't reached that agent. Another great option for those who are charitably inclined is a donor advised fund. Can you explain how this one works? So this is going to be a more aggressive version of the bunching, and this really comes into to play if you had a huge bonus, or you just had a spike in income, or, let's say I gave the example in our last video. You bought in a video at the right time, and he ended up selling it, taking some profits, and now you have a high capital gains or, more commonly, especially for a lot of older homeowners in California who sold their homes, now you have a huge capital gains bill. This is where the donor advised fund comes into play, where you can make a huge check to charity or to you'll what you'll do is you'll establish a donor advised fund with their custodian. You'll write, let's say, a $50,000 check into that donor advised fund, you'll get the $50,000 deduction in 2024 then what you now have is the ability, over any length of time to give to charities from that fund. So let's say you like to give $10,000 a year to various charities. Well, for the next five years, you can give out of that donor advice fund. The only thing is, you already got the deduction, and that's why I say it's a more aggressive and it's usually in in in specific instances where you've had a huge spike in taxes to offset that, because you got that deduction in year one, you won't get the deductions for years, 234, and five in that example that I just gave, but you'll still be able to give the charity. Okay? And last, another great option would be to gift appreciated stock. Yes, and this is another one where, you know, especially if you have non qualified money, and let's say you bought, using the example, Nvidia, you know, for $1,000 it's now it's worth $6,000 and instead of giving out of your bank account again, let's say you wanted to rebalance, like we talked about in that video, You could sell, let's say $2,000 worth of Nvidia, pay the capital gains stock and then gift it to your charity and hope you get the deduction, hope that you're you're above the standard deduction, or you can simply just gift that appreciated stock to the charity. You're not paying the gains on the $2,000 and the charity doesn't pay the tax because they're a charity. So it's really a powerful way, and it's the second way that we saved our clients 1000s of dollars, right? They didn't change their their tax giving strategies. Erin, we just used the 80,000 page tax code to our advantage, right? A lot of people say, Oh my gosh, the tax code to 80,000 pages is convoluted. It is convoluted, but it's also convoluted with a lot of good information and how you can maximize your tax efficiency. Absolutely take advantage of those 80,000 pages, I agree, John, this was really lovely. Not only are you helping clients, but also the charities wouldn't even know the difference if you're being tax efficient with your giving. So I think it's really important. Clearly, though, it warrants a conversation with you. So if somebody wanted to get a hold of you to learn a little bit more about these strategies, what's the best way to reach you? Yes, these are all very complex strategies. You have to have some type of tax planning behind it. You don't want to just do things willy nilly. So if you want to go ahead and look into some of these strategies, visit our website, www.go, securus.com, we have tons of videos and podcasts where we talk about tax minimization and charitable giving. And while you're on our website, if you have any questions, you can go ahead and schedule a 20 minute complimentary phone call or answer any general questions in charitable giving. Or you can schedule a one hour complimentary vision and clarity consultation, and you know, we'll get you on the calendar. And last before we go, Erin, I just want to say, I hope everybody has a very safe and happy holiday season, a safe and happy new year. This is our last video of 2024 Erin, and it's been such a blessing working with you for the last couple of years and building our subscriber list, and really just getting education out to everybody, because folks, there's a lot of good things that you can do for yourself outside of investments that can bring value, not only to your portfolio, but just to your Life, right? Giving you know, if you have children, there's no better feeling in the world. I don't even like opening up my gifts, because I just love watching the joy of our children receiving gifts. And that's the same type of feeling I get and my wife and I get when we give to our charities in our church. Exactly. Well said, John, I totally agree. Happy New Year to you. thanks again for your time today, and explaining these great strategies right Happy Hanukkah Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Take care, folks, see you in 2025.