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April 8, 2024 in Charitable Giving, Estate Planning, Family Money, Financial Life Planning, Money & Finance, Tax Management
At the end of 2025, portions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) are set to expire. Many changes will come with the sunsetting of many rules, including the possibility that federal estate and gift tax exemption levels will revert to pre-TCJA levels. What’s changing?1 Currently, you are subject to federal estate tax only if your individual estate is worth more than $13,610,000 for individuals or $27,220,000 for married couples. These...

December 13, 2017 in Charitable Giving, SAGE Reads, Tax Management
Being smart about charitable giving  1.   As Barry Ritholz notes in this oldie but goodie -- “giving to charity is personally fulfilling and it helps those in need, but some charities are better than others in channeling donations to where they are most needed.” Find out how to do your homework before you give.  Be Smart About Charity (Bloomberg View, 12/4/2014)  +   GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities through in-depth analysis. Thousands of hours...

December 17, 2013 in Charitable Giving, Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
In our last post, we covered an important part of philanthropy: ensuring that your gifts bring joy to you and your intended recipients in equal measure. Meaningful giving is an admittedly qualitative, “Venus” measure of success. Today, we’ll visit “Mars,” where we explore some of the more quantitative components of your philanthropic plans: Effective Giving – How do you assess potential charitable organizations you’ve identified to ensure they will make good...

December 10, 2013 in Charitable Giving, Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
Earlier this year, we covered how charitable giving can be a win-win activity, bringing as much happiness to the donor as to the recipient. We believe this is true whether you’re giving gifts to loved ones or fulfilling philanthropic goals. But especially for the latter, the giving is best done intentionally as part of your greater financial life planning: Meaningful Giving – First and foremost, does the giving bring you joy? Effective...

April 24, 2013 in Charitable Giving, Financial Life Planning, Gratitude, Mindful living
In the past few weeks, I’ve dedicated our SAGE blog to four streams of consciousness that combine to serve as the undercurrent, or the “life” portion, of financial LIFE planning: Gratitude Meditation Spending time with your tribe Giving I’ve intentionally saved Giving as the best for last. If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a...