Planning for Your Legacy
Planning for your legacy through family gift giving, estate planning and charitable gifting ensures that your values and wishes are honored long after you’re gone.
Thoughtful family gift-giving allows you to share your wealth and memories with loved ones in a meaningful way. Estate planning provides a clear roadmap for the distribution of your assets, reducing potential conflicts and ensuring financial stability for your heirs. Charitable gifting extends your impact beyond your immediate circle, supporting causes that reflect your passions and leaving a lasting mark on the world.
Together, these elements create a comprehensive legacy that reflects your life’s purpose and values.
What kind of impact to you want to make on the future?
Maximize Family Gift Giving
Gifting your wealth to your family during your lifetime and beyond can carry immense emotional significance. Beyond the practicalities of financial security, it embodies a profound expression of love, trust, and care.
It’s a tangible way to demonstrate your desire for their happiness and prosperity, ensuring they can fulfill their dreams and aspirations. There are many other benefits to lifetime gifting.
The Benefits of Lifetime Gifting
Reduction of Estate Tax Liability
By making annual gifts, you can gradually reduce the size of your taxable estate. This may be beneficial in lowering potential estate taxes that could be levied on the estate after your passing.
Asset Protection
Gifting during your lifetime can help protect your assets from creditors and potential legal claims. Assets transferred as gifts are generally no longer considered part of your estate and may be protected from certain claims.
Shift in Income Tax Liability
If you gift income-producing assets to family members in lower tax brackets, it may result in lower income tax liability. This is because the income generated by those assets will be taxed at the recipients’ lower tax rates.
Estate Freeze
Gifting can be an important part of an estate freeze strategy, where you transfer the future appreciation of assets to your heirs. Gifting assets when their values are lower, means any subsequent appreciation accrues to the beneficiaries, potentially reducing estate taxes.
Family Wealth Transfer
Annual gifting allows you to pass on wealth to your heirs during your lifetime, providing financial support when it is needed. This can be particularly useful for funding education, buying a home, or starting a business.
529 College Savings Plan
Maximize the success of your family by front-loading a 529 college savings plan with up to five years of contributions without incurring a gift tax. You can double this benefit if you spouse makes the same contribution. This will not count toward the lifetime gifting exemptions if no other gifts are made to the same beneficiary during the five-year period.
Gifting your wealth to your family and causes you are passionate about during your lifetime and beyond can carry immense emotional significance.
Create a clear gifting and legacy plan
By sharing your wealth while you’re alive, you have the privilege of witnessing the impact firsthand, fostering deeper bonds and creating lasting memories. Moreover, it can instill a sense of responsibility and gratitude in your loved ones, knowing that your generosity was a deliberate choice born out of affection rather than obligation.
We realize too, that gifting can be complex in larger families and can sometimes cause strife. We can work with you and your family to create a plan that maintains family harmony and success, while also protecting your retirement and financial well being for the remainder of your life.
Let a Financial Advisor Guide Your Journey
Charitable Gifting and Your Legacy in the World
Charitable giving is a powerful way to make a positive impact on the world, extending your values and compassion beyond your immediate circle. By supporting causes and organizations that align with your beliefs, you contribute to meaningful change and help address critical needs in society. Charitable giving also enriches your own life, fostering a sense of purpose and fulfillment as you witness the difference your contributions make. Additionally, it can inspire others to give, creating a ripple effect that amplifies the good you’re doing. Ultimately, charitable giving is a way to leave a lasting legacy of generosity and social responsibility.
Please ask us about how to best structure your charitable giving through cash contributions, Qualified Charitable distributions, Donor Advised Fund (DAF), and Charitable Trusts.
Partner with Platt Wealth Management
We are here for you to discuss any changes or new milestones in your life. We are always available to assist you with any financial matters of concern to you and look forward to serving as your partner along your financial journey. With diligent stewardship, guidance and an experienced, skilled team of professionals, we help your family live up to its fullest potential.
We would be happy to schedule a roundtable with your tax advisor, as well as, your estate planning attorney to see what options might make sense for your individual circumstances and meet your family’s charitable and gifting wishes.
Platt Wealth Management is a fee-only, fiduciary wealth management firm dedicated to making a meaningful impact in the lives of our clients.
Knowledgeable and expert.
