You’re ready to start giving while you’re living

Hosts Whitney Reagan and Daniel Sharkey explore the concept of “giving with a warm hand” and the impact of sharing wealth with loved ones and charitable causes during your lifetime. They discuss how to shift from a wealth-preservation mindset to active generosity, from supporting family with major milestones like home down payments and childcare to funding meaningful family experiences.

Learn how to identify your personal values, evaluate the timing and effectiveness of financial gifts and assess what is possible based on your balance sheet. Whether you want to assist the next generation, support worthy causes or create lasting family memories, discover how working with a financial advisor can help you build a personalized gifting strategy.

Transcript

Whitney Reagan: Today, we’re talking about how you know you’re ready to start giving while you’re living. So, stay tuned and you’ll get to hear lots of nuggets of wisdom.

Welcome, welcome. We’re back with another episode of Your Life Simplified, and I am with my best buddy, Daniel Sharkey. Oh, I’m so glad to see you smile, Dan.

Daniel Sharkey: I know, it’s been a rough day. We’re gonna pick it up. We’re gonna get into a positive headspace. We’ve had a little—some tech issues here. But our wonderful team behind the scenes, who our listeners can’t see, are solving it.

Whitney: Yes, today’s topic is giving while you’re living, and it’s a fantastic topic. It comes up a lot in financial planning, a lot with our clients. And I think, Dan, you coined a phrase that I want you to tell the audience.

Dan: And that is giving with a warm hand. Giving with a warm hand, meaning that you’re taking care of your loved ones with a level of emotional warmth, but also warmth, as in you’re still alive.

It’s a little bit of a play on words, but I think it does speak to a huge thing that people focus on and have a very difficult time coming to grips with. That could be charitable giving, that could be giving to their children or other heirs or beneficiaries.

And what we try to encourage people to think about is if you are, I would say, reducing your spending or your expenses or putting money aside now, in the inevitability that you’ll have some when you’re gone, those dollars might be better used now than they would be, let’s say, 30 years from now. So that’s the premise that we’re working off of, is how can we educate people, clients and everyone who comes to us on how they can explore their charitable intent and their generosity while they are alive, to both enable the people they are giving the money to, to use it when it would be most impactful.

And we’ll talk about some examples here in a second but also be able to—on a personal level—to be able to actually enjoy the benefits of their generosity and seeing the fruits of their hard earned labor in action.

And that’s a hugely important thing to us. Our motto, which we’ve talked about a million times is positively impacting the lives of many. And this speaks directly to that ethos which I know Mariner associates live by.

It’s so important. I know how important charity is in your life.

Whitney: Yes.

Dan: And not to put you on the spot, but there is a tremendous benefit of highlighting how this can be impactful. And I’ll just give the most clear example. And that is clients who might be in their 60s, who have enough wealth on their balance sheet that they’re at very little risk of truly running out of money.

Right. So just using that as our baseline.

Whitney: You just think about the innate mindset of that age and working so hard and creating that financial security and finances are their security blanket. And they’ve worked so hard to save. And they’ve been in that mindset also to save and save and save until they’re dead, basically.

Dan: It’s precisely the mindset that allowed them to become wealthy in the first place. And that’s a difficult thing to just switch off as soon as you’re entering what, in their minds, is a very sensitive point in their life. Where they’re at this inflection point in which they’re not working anymore, and they’re going to begin to live off those assets.

And it’s a really oddly uncomfortable place for a lot of people. And by working with someone—we talk a lot about the behavioral benefits. This is at the very, very, very top of the list of having a third party like us, like me, or like you, like any of our wonderful colleagues, to help really educate and benchmark them about what is possible.

So, let me just go back to that example that I was going to give you. If you have a client in your 60s, just retired. His balance sheet is not at risk. Let’s just use that as the broad assumptions that we’re making. Well, if their kids are trying to buy their first home or they may be experiencing really high daycare bills, what is likely to be more impactful?

Giving them $5 million 35 years from now, or helping with a down payment or healthcare or childcare bills or an unexpected hospital bill today? And I’m posing that as a rhetorical question.

Whitney: Yes, today.

Dan: Today. And the idea being that you as the benefactor of these gifts, that while you’re alive, they’d be able to see your son or daughter and their husband, wife, spouse, partner, in that dream home where your grandkids are going to play, whether that might be nearby or the ability to help them achieve their goals along the way.

Whitney: And if you think about that same example, if they lived until their 90s, so what, 30 years from now, then their kids are going to likely be 65, 70. On average, they’re likely going to be financially stable, financially secure and they’re not going to need what gifts they’re going to be going to be given then.

And I love the beauty of giving to your kids while you’re living and getting to see the joy and getting to experience it. Or another idea would be to give to your kids in a way that you’re taking them on family vacations and you’re paying for everything, if that’s something that you want to do, because we also talk about this a lot.

You mentioned legacy goals earlier, but I also just talked to my clients, like what are your values? Is it really important to you to make meaningful memories at this stage of life? Is that something that you really hold close to your heart? Then let’s start doing family vacations, and you wanting to get everyone together once a year or maybe once every couple years. That’s something that’s really meaningful.

Dan: Absolutely. And I’m so happy you brought that up because we want to, in the time that we have left, just highlight, well, how do I actually do this, right? Like what steps do I go? Well, before you do anything, you have to have the conversation with your advisor about where’s my baseline. What is actually possible? Until you really have those foundational pieces and throw things against the wall and see what actually sticks.

And this is very similar to the other guidance that we’ve given, but where am I at today? And is this possible? That’s number one. But after you do that, identifying with someone else, just theoretically, hey, this is what would bring me the most joy. This is how I feel I could do the most good for whoever the end beneficiary might ultimately be.

Whether that’s charity or whether that’s a child or a niece or a nephew or whoever in your community that you may want to help. But identifying—you said it perfectly—what are my personal values that would create the largest impact for me? Because remember, you’re still giving away your own money, right?

So, some of this has to be driven on what you hope to see happen. And not everyone is going to look the same. But once you have that foundation, once you’ve identified what worthy causes that you feel like you can support, you can really go a long way to identifying how we do this.

Now, your advisor will help you figure out what assets do I give? How do I raise the money? What’s the tax impact? It’s what we want you to encourage and think about and that if this conversation resonates with you, pick the phone up and say, hey, this is what I want to do now.

And let me give you just one last piece of things to think about. If you were saying, hey, I’m going to leave my heirs $2 million each, or $1 million each, or $500,000 each, right?

Well, what is that worth today? And you’d almost be normalizing the gift. So, if $200,000 is the equivalent number today, and that’s a down payment on the home that is right around the corner, which means that you get to pick your grandkids up from school. Those are conversations that I really need you to have because if that’s important to you, I don’t want you never really getting to experience in the moment just how your generosity could have been even perhaps more impactful at certain points in life.

So, this conversation is really a gateway to helping you to think about what’s possible, encouraging you to have that conversation, and recognizing that we hear it often and you’re not alone if you’re thinking that way.

Whitney: Yeah, people are starting to bring it up a lot more frequently now, and I think there’s different ways of giving I just wanted to touch on. You can give, you can gift to family and friends like we talked about.

And there’s charitable giving. There’s different ways of charitable giving.

Dan: Everything that you just said, about who the end recipient is, how we do it, what the limits are, what the documentation is—that’s our job.

Your job is to figure out, well, what do I want the world to look like? And how do I want to be able to live this generosity through the assets that I’ve accumulated? We’ll advise you on how you do it, but let’s figure out first what you want to do and whether or not it’s possible.

Whitney: Absolutely. I agree 100%. And I think that’s all we have time for.

Dan: See, I’m in a better mood already. Look at that.

Whitney: You are. It was so fun. I’m glad that we got to talk about this and hopefully the audience, you enjoyed the conversation.

If you liked what you heard or saw, please like, subscribe or follow wherever you listen to your podcasts and we’ll see you again next time.

The views expressed in this podcast are for informational and educational purposes only and do not consider any individual personal, financial, legal, or tax situation. As such, the information contained herein is intended, and should not be construed, as a specific recommendation, individualized tax, legal, or investment advice. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, individuals should contact their own professional tax and investment advisors or other professionals regarding their specific circumstances and needs prior to taking any action based upon this information.

The information provided has been obtained from sources deemed reliable, however, the accuracy, completeness, and reliability cannot be guaranteed. Tax laws are subject to change, either prospectively or retroactively. Any opinions expressed are subject to change at any time, without notice.

Mariner is the marketing name for the financial services businesses of Mariner Wealth Advisors, LLC and its subsidiaries. Investment advisory services are provided through the brands Mariner Wealth, Mariner Independent, Mariner Institutional, Mariner Ultra, and Mariner Workplace, each of which is a business name of the registered investment advisory entities of Mariner. For additional information about each of the registered investment advisory entities of Mariner, including fees and services, please contact Mariner or refer to each entity’s Form ADV Part 2A, which is available on the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training.

The advisor’s personal comments and results may not be representative of the experience of other advisors and there is no guarantee of future performance or success.