On this episode of "On the Money" the financial advisor team at Ruedi Wealth Management discusses how our clients incorporate acts of love into their financial plans.
1:05 – Economy
15:27 – Financial Acts of Love
Paying for Education
“We look at some of the great goals of life and there aren't that many when you think of a family and financial plan but one of them clearly is education. Will my grandchildren receive the education that my children received?”
- Paul A. Ruedi
“College education is a great idea that a lot of people want to fund.”
- Ryan Repko
Giving to Charity or Institutions
“If you're not quite sure today what charitable cause that you might want to give to but yet you want to put some money to work towards that, you can use what's called a donor-advised fund (all the major firms have them; Schwab, Vanguard, fidelity, you name it) and it allows you to invest that money today, take your tax deduction if you're going to be itemizing a tax deduction, and down the road every now and then when you get an idea that hits you, you can give to a particular cause.”
- Paul A. Ruedi
“I think a lot of folks have the desire to help out not just family but also in this case maybe an institution that helped form them like the University or maybe their religious church or synagogue but they just think ‘oh I can't afford to do that’ or ‘I don't have enough that I could give.’ One of the things we as financial advisors do is ask ‘why not?’ ‘Why can’t you afford to do that?’”
- Ryan Repko
Gifting
“You can give $15,000 a year for an individual to any individual that you would like (it doesn't have to be family member) and if you're a married couple you can double that amount and give up to $30,000 to anybody in any given year without having to file a gift tax return. If you want or need to give more, it's certainly ok you can still give more than that $30,000 (or $15,000 if you're an individual) but you just have to file the gift tax return and it's tracked against your lifetime gift giving. Chances are for most folks you will not have to pay any gift tax on that because they're the gift tax level is very high.”
- Ryan Repko
Spending More Time with Family
“It's a personal thing for me, I have two sons, as you know, down in the Dallas, Texas area; Daniel in the in the city and Paul in The Colony, Texas. So my wife and I got an apartment in Plano, Texas and we opened a small office down there.”
- Paul A. Ruedi
Providing for Loved Ones Should You Pass Away Early
“One of the greatest things you can do for your family is to make sure that if you were to die prematurely that your family is taken care of and you don't pass on any burden financially that they couldn't afford. I talked about two different perspectives: one is the older couple or maybe just someone who's late into their career - chances are they’ve built up a lot of financial assets already so they have the ability to self- insure. What I mean by that is they simply have the money that they could pay off debts if they have any still if they die early.
The alternative is someone who maybe hasn't built up that critical mass yet or they're just younger, someone like myself in their 30’s. I haven't had that long of a work career to have that amount of assets. So maybe life insurance is something that is a critical point of making sure that if you do pass away early, you have the insurance that would pay for your home mortgage or any outstanding college debt or just any debt at all, so your family can keep living without further turmoil or having to be uprooted from the home.”
- Ryan Repko
“We recommend that people pick up term insurance and not whole life or permanent or universal or variable or any of those types of insurance. So you're much better off using the term insurance regardless of what industry is going to tell you that we're crazy, that's just our view we've done the math and that's the way I would go.”
- Paul A. Ruedi
Leaving my Spouse in Good Hands
“I can think of so many clients that came to me and came to us where one of the purposes for seeking out a financial advisor (where maybe that particular spouse didn't feel the need to hire an advisor) was just in case something happened to them. It's not unusual for one spouse to be more dominant on the financial side than the other, and it's not always the guys, it can be females as well. It's really important I think and I have a large number of clients that have come to me just for that reason - they want to have a trusting relationship that they can develop while they are alive so that if something happens to them, they know that their spouse is going to be taken care of and is not going to be taken advantage of.”
- Paul A. Ruedi