Most of our clients are self-made. They're not inheritors of trust funds or lottery winners or anything like that. They've built their wealth on their own and they get to a point of comfort in living within a certain range of income. And their assets grow, like I said, to the largest dollar amount that they've been at the end of their life than they have been ever.
And we're seeing more and more people look at that and say, wait a second, we don't necessarily want to, I don't know if you would say bless or curse their kids with some large amount of multi-millions of dollars upon their death. We'd like to give some of this money away now while we're living and we can see the good that it's doing. And we can be more intentional. Welcome to Keenan Retirement, a show dedicated to helping you thrive before and during your retirement years.
If you are looking to grow and protect your wealth and want to make the second half of your life the best half, then listen in as well as advisor Bill Keenan and his host sort through the key issues that you need to know in a lively and candid way. Hello everybody and welcome back to Keenan Retirement. I'm your co-host Steve Sandeski and joining me as always is Bill Keenan, Matt Wilson. Hey guys, how you doing?
We're doing good Steve. Alright, well we are going to be talking about giving today. And really I think we're going to go through three aspects of that. One is we're going to do a little quiz.
We're going to test everybody here about giving. Second is we want to share a couple examples of both an individual as well as an organization and how they think about giving. And then third, we're going to talk about some specific strategies around giving your money, giving your time. So let's just start guys with why do people give?
And there's been some research out there, a number of different surveys that have been taken. And the question is what are the top five reasons why people give or not give to charity? So let's start with the top five reasons why people give to charity. What would you say they are?
Well, I always think of it from a pragmatic standpoint. And I think people give because they feel good, but also they do get a tax benefit for that as well. So I guess if I had to rank, the first one would be the emotional aspect of it and then two that would be the tax. Yeah, I think that it's because there's a cause that would be close to someone's heart that they believe they could make some type of difference.
And that in line with the family's values and something that again maybe is close to their life, maybe they lost a parent to cancer they choose to invest I should say or make donations to organizations that look for cures to cancer or any number of things like that. I think that folks believe they can make a difference. And while they're still here because I'm talking about folks that are donating money while they're still living, not necessarily at death. I think some of the other reasons that we may come up with today might be secondary to that.
Yeah, well, I mean, you're right. And the number one reason why people give at least according to this particular survey is altruism that they find it important to help others in need. So that would be number one. Number two is trust.
And what they mean by that is they give their money to organizations that they trust. And so that's a key piece to your homework, do your research, make sure you feel good and can trust the organization that you're giving money to. Third is for social reasons. And what that means is they give money, they give a donation because it matters to someone that they know or care about.
So I think the example you gave there, Bill, maybe you know someone who has cancer and so you want to give to cancer or someone who has Parkinson's disease. So you give to a Parkinson's organization. So that is a way that they define this as a social reason. Fourth is, and this is interesting, egoism.
And that is that people give in order to receive some personal benefits such as feeling good or looking good to others. So some people find that as a motivation. So maybe it's, I'm going to donate $100 million to KU and I'm going to get a building named after me. And that's a little bit of ego.
So and then the final one here, perhaps a bit of a surprise that it's number five and not number two, maybe is tax reasons. So we know that there can be a tax benefit, tax break for giving your money away to a qualified type organization. So that came in at number five. And I might say a distance number five from number one, the altruism.
So any comments surprises from you guys in that information? I guess the surprise is the egoism. I'm surprised that people would actually admit to it. Yeah, I thought on the survey.
I guess it's not. Actually, so if it's not public information, I've seen information in the past on the tax side kind of knowing that isn't the primary reason. And we'll get into some of the strategies here throughout the podcast of how to maximize kind of the tax savings if you are giving. But a lot of people nowadays, especially with the tax cuts and jobs act that was passed in 2017, you don't itemize your deductions anymore.
And there really isn't a lot of tax breaks available to a lot of people. So there was another article that we were discussing earlier today that was talking about 2020 donations. And I believe it was a record, right? It was.
Yeah, more than $71 billion, right? Right. Yeah, in 2020. Yeah.
One of the most difficult years that we've seen recently, at least in economics, politics, COVID-19, all those things and the most charitable in history. And this is post that tax cuts and jobs act. It's like most people aren't getting a deduction for it, which is kind of interesting. They're doing it for these other reasons as the survey identified.
I suppose if contributions and resources go to a qualified charity that's in need, they probably don't really care what the reason is, do they? If somebody does so. How do you go involved? That's perfectly fine for the recipients of these nice donations.
You know, under the social aspect to it, one of the things that's I think important too is I know here at King wealth, we have a philanthropic effort that we're focused on. And we include our team members regularly. We discuss this in our quarterly meetings so that we as a group can discuss where we're putting our resources and what we're getting behind and what's close to our hearts and our values that we're putting our resources and what we're getting behind and what's close to our hearts and our values. We also include our spouses in those conversations.
I know Chris and I regularly get on the same page about where we believe we can make the most impact around things that are in line with our values. And she's even taken it so far as to really study how to go out and research various charities, what their efforts are, what their mission statements are. Look at documents like the 990 tax forms, which demonstrate how resources are being used and getting clear on some of the things that are important to us when we're considering trying to make a difference out there with some of our resources. I think those are really important things.
I talk about our team here. I talk about my wife, Carissa, but also families that we see bringing their children into these conversations as well can be very impactful. Yeah, in fact, I was just having a conversation yesterday with a financial advisor and his wife. And one of the things we talked about and what they talked about was they do have twice a year.
He and his wife, they schedule the time they sit down and they have big picture of money conversations. And one of the things that we were discussing yesterday I was discussing with them was they need to become more strategic and more intentional in their giving strategy. They definitely give away a lot of money, but now they feel like we just have to be more thoughtful on do we want to give to a wide variety of organizations or do we want to focus more narrowly on one or two that are really super important to us. And then they said, we also have the kids.
The kids always have their things that you know, can you do up $50 here $100 there? So like, yeah, we're still going to have this fund over here for all those little things, but then the bigger picture items. We want to really zero in on that and be really thoughtful and intentional. So yeah, I thought that was fantastic.
Yeah, we've talked in the past as well about many of the clients that we've worked with over for me now approaching 30 years end up. At the end of their lives with more money than they've ever had in their lives. One of the reasons they were able to retire and live a comfortable life and an inspiring life in retirement is because they had the habit in the discipline of living within their means and they didn't get all of their happiness from buying things while they enjoyed buying things. I like to say they owned their stuff their stuff didn't own them as a way of putting it, but they were able to get to that point in life because of a long, long history of work and most of our clients are self made.
They're not inheritors of trust funds or, you know, lottery winners or anything like that. They've built their wealth on their own and they get to a point of comfort and living within a certain range of income and their assets grow, like I said, to the largest dollar amount that they've been at the end of their life than they have been ever. And we're seeing more and more people look at that and say, wait a second, we don't necessarily want to, you know, I don't know if you would say bless or curse their kids with some large amount of multi millions of dollars upon their death. We'd like to give some of this money away now while we're living and we can see the good that it's doing it.
We can be more intentional like we just said about where it goes and what's close to our hearts. And hey, if there's a tax benefit, that's icing on the cake. So I think our discussion today, like you said, Steve, we'll have a couple of different legs to the stool about how we get our minds around this topic and focus on the things that we can't control while we're here and with this initiative. Yes, I was preparing for our episode today.
I wanted to do a little bit of research. I was interested into the origins of charitable giving in the United States. Just it seems like it's just interwoven into our society and in the tax code and just how did we get there? I actually found a publication on the IRS's website and I found very interesting.
This is a quote directly from the article. It says here, the origins of the tax exempt sector in the United States predate the formation of the Republic absent and establish governmental framework. The early settlers formed charitable and other voluntary associations such as hospitals, fire departments and orphanages to confront a wide variety of issues and ills of the era. These types of voluntary organizations have continued to thrive in the United States for centuries.
So it's almost like it's just part of human nature. If you kind of based on what that says and I tend to agree with it, especially based on the survey and everything else that we have just discussed that charitable giving is just about kind of who we are as people. Now, the government has used charitable giving to also kind of incent certain activities and part of my research was, okay, well, when did charitable deductions, when did that become a thing? We're going to talk about here how to maximize some of our charitable giving.
In 1913 is when income tax was established, which we've talked about in one of our more recent episodes. That was also the same year that Rockefeller chartered his foundation. And in 1913, fewer than 1% of households were subject to the income tax and the rates were no higher than 15%. Interesting.
However, in 1917, the top rate was abruptly raised to 67% to pay for the First World War. Along with this tax change, the 1917 Tax Act added a deduction for gifts to charitable organizations to go with these high rates, not to encourage the wealthy to give their fortunes away, not to encourage because they were already doing that. But to not discourage their continued giving in light of a larger tax bill. Senator Henry F.
Hollis of New Hampshire, worried that a reduced after tax income of the very rich would end their philanthropy, shifting the burdens that the philanthropists have been carrying onto the backs of a wartime government. Think about that statement a little bit. The government kind of had been using charitable giving as a way to minimize its footprint. You know, this justification that the deductions save the government money and avoided spending rather than costing it money and foregone tax revenue persisted for decades.
So, you know, that's why the government still is very much in favor of charitable giving because they view it not as we're losing money, but these charitable organizations are doing work that maybe the government would have to pick up if those charitable organizations didn't exist. Yeah, that's very interesting. But what I also find maybe contradictory is that in this survey that I just mentioned to you here a few minutes ago, saving money on taxes was number five, a distant number five. Yes.
So I know there's a little bit of conflicting information here. And I guess I wonder what would happen if the charitable deduction went away. I don't foresee that happening in my lifetime. But if it were to go away, would that be the end of a lot of these charities or would I guess, according to the survey, you know, they'd still be getting a lot of money.
Well, let's say we talked earlier, I mentioned giving money away while we're living. That's how I framed this initially. And we're talking now about tax deductibility of contributions while we're living. But think about where the estate tax comes into play.
It's a whole other aspect to it. And then you have a very substantial estate that's above the estate tax limitations. And you know, those are in flux now. They haven't changed yet this year, but we'll see how that works out of the next year or so year two.
But if you knew that call it half of your estate was going to go to estate taxes upon your death, I would be personally thinking about how I could redirect some of those funds, either while I'm living or at death, so that half doesn't go poof to estate taxes. And that alone could fund a lot of charitable causes. I agree. I think if we were to dig into the data a little bit more, we would probably find the percentage of dollars that are coming to the next year.
And the percentage of dollars that are coming from certain donors is the 1% of the top income earners. How much do they donate dollar wise versus everyone else? And maybe that would provide a little bit more insight because a survey doesn't necessarily break out who they're surveying versus where the money actually comes from. Like in Bill's example, he's talking about individuals that have estate tax issues.
Well, you have to be a single person with over $12 million to have an estate tax issue, a married couple with over $24 million. So we're talking about the ultra high net worth that could be giving away tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, that get while they're living or at death to avoid estate tax because they don't want it to go to the government. They'd rather just give it to a charity that's meaningful to them, which they're doing it. Maybe that ticks the box of altruism and maybe number two is the tax in that case.
Well, let's use everybody's favorite example here, Warren Buffett. Yes. So here's a guy that I think is worth over $100 billion. Yeah.
And he's made it very clear that he is giving the vast majority of his fortune to charity, in particular the Bill Gates Foundation and let the Bill and the Linda Gates Foundation take care of it for him. So he hates to pay taxes to the federal government. So very, very little of his fortune will ever find its way to fund the federal government or to fund state or local governments because he only pays himself a salary of $100,000. So I mean, that's an interesting thing to talk about.
Maybe we're not going to buy today necessarily, but just think about that. I mean, is that the way to do it? Where say, look, I would rather have my fortune go to charities or should it go to the federal government, you know, which created resources and some opportunities for him to be able to generate his fortune. I mean, you know, people can make arguments either way, but I think that's an interesting thing to contemplate in terms of what are the tax incentive structures we should put in place to encourage people to give to charity, not giving tax breaks to give to charity so that that money flows into the government so that the government can determine how it's distributed.
So I know people get all worked up on different sides and how they might answer that question, but I think that's interesting to think about because we see some very extreme examples of wealthy people and how they are able to avoid paying taxes because they do give the money away. Think about all the folks, Buffett might argue that he has employed over the years and his vast enterprises that have stimulated economic activity and hence tax pain, resources, all the people that made money on Berkshire stock that have sold and paid capital gains tax. I'm sure he has his argument, although he does talk about needing to raise income tax rates, doesn't he? Isn't he a proponent of raising income tax rates?
I'm losing some of the loopholes, I guess. Yeah, closing loopholes. But the funny thing is they don't affect him because he gives his money away. He doesn't.
Yeah, he's not spending any money or taking a large income. That's right. Yeah, sure. Raise the income tax rates because I only take $100,000 and he's famous for saying his secretary pays more in taxes or has a higher marginal tax rate than he does.
Well, you know, as we mentioned in our episode where we talked about estate planning, I mean, Buffett has an estate plan. He's avoiding the estate tax. We talked about several celebrities who did it. So maybe that's their view.
They say, you know what, I want the government to get this money. Maybe that was their view of why they didn't put in the state plan together and just paid the estate tax. So I mean, it is interesting. Okay.
So you did just mention Steve. So Warren Buffett is donating his majority of his fortune to the bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Is it still called that? I think it still is.
It may change over time, but I think for now, I think it's still the two of them. All right. Well, he donated shares of Berkshire Hathaway shares of his company stock and the most common way people donated is cash. I think your earlier example with the $50 a year, $100 there, that's a very common way for people to make donations.
You know, if it's just almost, I wouldn't say an afterthought, but it's just less of a, hey, I need to create this big complex accounting structure to donate $50. They just write a check for it as you're getting maybe in a larger dollar amount. So people start to think about, well, how do I maximize some of the tax benefits I get? Well, one of the ways is to donate appreciated security.
So that can be stocks bonds, you know, mutual funds, those are the most common ways. And the reason that is popular is because you avoid paying capital gains tax as long as you've owned those positions for over a year. So think about that. So you could sell that stock like Warren Buffett, he could sell those shares of Berkshire and donate the cash, but he just triggered a huge capital gains tax bill to do that.
He just transfers the shares directly. He avoids the capital gains tax. And then the charity gets the fair market value. They're able to liquidate the shares because they don't have any tax liability as a qualified charity.
And, you know, Warren gets his tax deduction and avoids paying, you know, all the tax. So that has gotten more and more popular. You know, as I mentioned the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, it changed the standard deduction, the hurdle for people to itemize essentially doubled and majority of Americans. I mean, I think the last number I saw was 90 plus percent don't itemize, meaning they don't have expenses that exceed this new standard deduction.
And so those common expenses are mortgage interests, state and local taxes and charitable contributions. Healthcare could be added in there as well. So a lot of people aren't necessarily getting tax benefit for their charitable contributions. So how do we do that?
Well, appreciated stocks is one of the strategies. Another strategy that's gotten very popular is utilizing a donor advise fund. So a donor advise fund is a type of account. You know, Schwab, most of the major custodians have them.
And it's a way for you as an individual or a couple, you can kind of create your own, I want to say foundation. I mean, it's, you're really not that, but it's a very simple account structure and you can deposit cash or securities into those types of accounts. And then you get an immediate tax deduction when you make the deposit. And then over time, you can make grants from that fund to any charity that you wish.
There's no schedule and there's no preconceived. Hey, it has to come out at this time and it has to go to these charities. You have complete flexibility for individuals that have a charitable kind of mindset. We sit down with them and we can do some planning and project out what their charitable goals are over a several year period.
We can make some recommendations to say, well, if we sweep over some amount of cash or some appreciated securities into this account, we can not only one, save you the capital gains tax if it's appreciated securities, but then two, we can bunch together multiple years of your charitable contributions into one year, gets you a large itemized deduction in that year to get you a tax benefit that maybe didn't exist if you were to just utilize the old way that you were making your charitable contributions. And the appreciated stock, if you have that, to be clear, that can't be money that comes out of an IRA or 401k. This has to be stocked that you hold outside of retirement plan, but gosh, highly appreciated securities maybe you've held for a long time, at least over a year. That's the rule.
So it's long term is just a supercharged way of taking advantage of that donor advice fund contribution. Yeah, and another kind of tax planning tool that we will add on to this is utilizing a Roth conversion. So, you know, we've talked about this way. I think we've talked about Roth conversion a lot.
That's a phenomenal planning tool that we're big fans of here. But let's say, you know, we're going to bunch together five years of your charitable giving needs into a one year. Now you've got this large tax deduction. Well, let's maybe take a large IRA distribution and convert that to a Roth IRA, and we can combine those two strategies together and not only solve your, you know, get you a good strategy for your charitable giving, but then to shift some of your tax deferred assets into a tax free bucket with a Roth IRA.
So, you know, you have the point that you make there about the donor advice fund to Matt with respect to making the contribution into the fund and whether it's five years worth of your giving ten years worth of your giving even one year of your giving, but maximizing that strategy. And typically what you donate into that fund will get diversified once it's there into a pool of assets that you can control the risk level of. And then you have no time frame on when you're required to make those contributions out to the respective charities. So you might want to have that large tax deduction in one year, but you don't want to commit to giving all that money to the charities you've selected in that one year.
And then you can change your mind down the road. If you decide later you want to identify a different charity, you can direct those funds to that charity and in the meantime, hopefully, as you've invested money in the donor advice fund, ideally it grows over time as well what's left in there. Now what you can't change your mind on is getting the money back. Yes.
Once you put that money in the donor advice fund, it won't be coming back into your own coffers. Another thing we mentioned about that too is we can place beneficiaries on those donor advice funds so that potentially your kids, children you've selected can inherit the donor advice funds and we had one child of a client, they really liked that. And we got this. Oh, good.
We can inherit the donor advice. So no, no, no, wait, we need to clarify. You can now be the person directing where those funds go. You don't inherit the funds to yourself.
But it does and can bring families together around charitable causes around family values and get that conversation started in a very impactful way, very simply as well. Yeah, not overly complicated. I mean paperwork, again, schwamazom, they're very structured accounts and easy to use once you have them set up and we have lots of clients that we've set these up for and very, very happy with them. Yeah, you mentioned securities, stocks, bonds, mutual funds.
It is possible, a little more complex, but it is possible as well to donate. We have a client donate a farm, homes, different things that are valued that can be put into these types of funds that we're going to trigger a large capital gain that we're able to avoid that and get the full amount of the tax deduction. I see no downside to these strategies that you're talking about other than giving money away that you might have needed back at some point. That's not the case.
You got to do planning. That's right. Just be conscious of what you think you're going to need in the future. It's a lot of people that's don't advise funds.
Great. I mean, it's an account. It's in perpetuity. It exists forever.
You know, as Bill mentioned, you have beneficiaries. So it's like those accounts you can fund. You can utilize them. There's ultimate flexibility.
Well, the other thing I think a lot of people don't realize is that once you hit a certain age, which is age 70 and a half, you can make qualified, charitable distributions from your IRA. Now, Matt, everybody knows a lot of people know not everybody. Are used to hearing the 70 and a half got you have to the 72. So just clarify that just just a little because it is correct, which is what you said is correct.
But RMDs now start at 72 for folks. So it's a little confusing. Just right. Congress and the IRS, I think, have a goal to complicate and confuse everybody all the time with this information, which I guess is why we have jobs as planners, because if it was easy, it would be a different story.
But age 72, you are required to take distributions from your IRA. That is, you know, required minimum distribution, RMD for short age 70 and a half used to be the old requirement of distribution age still is what is called the qualified charitable distribution age because it was before they just did not increase the age. So it's not really left it at 70 and a half. But once you hit 70 and a half, you can now execute this strategy.
But all it is, is you instructing your custodian. So again, you know, like Charles Schwab, or your advisor and saying, Hey, I want to distribute $1,000 from my IRA, but instead of sending it to me, send it direct to the cherry. The advantage to that is that, you know, comes out of the IRA, and it does not count as income on your income taxes. So you can ask, well, can we deduct that still?
Well, it never hit your tax return in that case. So there's additional deduction. It keeps it off your tax return so that it doesn't affect things like earn my charges on Medicare and potentially some other factors. That's right.
It's an above the line deduction versus an itemized deduction is considered below the line. So it's a little bit better, you know, from that standpoint, and you can do up to $100,000 a year. So there's a limit, you know, not that maybe anyone has a goal of donating that. But if you have a large IRA and you have a very large requirement of distribution, you know, you might consider that the other advantage to that is your qualified charitable distribution, whatever you decide to do, if any, also counts towards whatever your required minimum distribution is once you hit age 72.
So, for example, let's say you're required minimum distribution, you're now 72 years old, you're required minimum distribution is $50,000 and you want to send $5,000 to charity. You instruct the custodians, send $5,000 to charity. That counts towards the 50 you have to take out. So you only have to take out 45,000 to satisfy your required minimum distribution.
That tool right there, that qualified charitable distribution, that has been around for some time. That isn't anything new. And I find that's an easy thing that people miss, you know, folks that are new, you know, we're first sitting down with, they're not clients of keen wealth. That is something that, you know, we're able to educate them on and, you know, even save them money from a tax standpoint, because all we're doing, they're still doing the charity.
It's just shifting the account that it came out of very easy to do and have people benefit from. And remember, in that case, you don't have to be itemizing on your income taxes to get that deduction. That's an important factor. 90% of the folks in the US don't itemize.
Well, in this case, you don't need to itemize to take advantage of that. What's called the QCD. And a lot of people are contributing to their church, they're tithing to their churches, this qualifies for all that as well. So 50 bucks, 100 bucks, you know, if that doesn't add up to itemize deduction, take it out of your IRA.
Matt, I think a great strategy that we put in play here at King Wealth is having checkbooks delivered to clients on their IRAs so that they can write checks to the qualified charity, whether it's their church or any other charity that qualifies, and most do 501c3, so that the receiving organization just gets a check from you. Really don't care or know the difference. They're receiving funds from you. And that works out.
Yeah, it's very easy. You write a check out of the account and it's a non taxable event as long as it's going to charity. So just make sure to not pay for your groceries with that checkbook. Right.
Right. Great. So guys, I think we're going to get ready to wrap up here. And as you guys were talking, I was thinking about a thought experiment here as it relates to charity.
So we said in this particular survey that we started off our conversation with that tax reasons was like a distant fifth. So what would happen if we eliminated all of the tax deductions for charitable contributions, including on stocks, so people that have billions of dollars of stock, they're not going to be able to give it away and never pay tax on it, and donating illiquid assets directly to charities, no tax breaks. And instead, they have to pay tax on that. But in return for that, because now the government's going to get a whole lot more tax revenue, we lower the individual tax rates, the ordinary tax rates that's commensurate by the historical amount of money that has been foregone because of all of these charitable contributions.
And I think I'm guessing the vast majority of the charitable contributions have come from very wealthy people disproportionately to them. Anyway, kind of interesting to think about. I don't have the numbers in front of me. And I know that'll never happen.
But it might make things a lot simpler. And we could lower ordinary tax rates for people that aren't making billions of dollars a year. Yeah. Well, if it was simple, Steve, you know, we know Congress isn't going to do it.
That's right. That's right. Maybe I'll run for office and that'll be part of my platform. You can commission a study.
That's right. That's right. Well, guys, you want to take us home here and wrap us up? One of the things that we do know about this topic is that every individual, every family is different on their thinking, again, where their values fall with respect to how they decide to distribute their wealth and make a difference out there in the world.
And so we respect and honor everyone's individuality around these topics. I have one good friend of mine who when he sits down with his financial advisor and goes through his financial plan and looks at the income that he's taking out to live on him and his wife, he looks at how values are projected to grow in their plan. And remember, I talked earlier about most of the folks that we've advised over the years end up with more money at the end of their life than they've ever had in their life. And he didn't want that to be the case for him and his wife and they collectively agreed on that.
So they run their financial plan based on not having it go way out to some number that they'll never spend in their life at the end to giving enough now while they're living and they can be involved in intentional and study about the places they would like to make a difference and they budget for substantial giving, only looking at an objective of keeping their wealth about the same as it is each year while they're younger and this particular gentleman's in his 50s and his wife. And then even working to have that wealth tail off as they get out into their 70s and 80s, haven't actually started declining based on what they're needing to live on and based on the money that they've decided to contribute to charity. So it's just a whole other way of thinking about how to utilize these resources and again, like I said, everyone's different. So respect and honor each person's path and journey on this, but it's good to be exposed to different processes for sure.
I would say, as a takeaway from our discussion today, if you're making charitable contributions by writing a check out of your bank account by basically donating cash, and you have appreciated securities, really consider moving some of those appreciated securities, either into a donor advice fund and then distributing from there, or moving those appreciated securities directly to the charity in almost every case, you're missing out if you're just writing a check and paying cash or contributing cash as opposed to giving these appreciated securities into mass point. So I think this a lot of folks get referred into us come to see us and they've been very charitable in their lives and no one ever explained to them. They could be making these contributions of appreciated securities. And again, if you're over at 70 and a half using that QCD as well.
So I think we've covered some good things today around the thought process, some history. It's nice to see in 2020 the United States was more charitable than ever in history. So despite what we're seeing in the news and some of the in fighting and back fighting and things that we see that are out there that there's still a lot of good that is happening out there in the world. Excellent.
All right. Well, great to wrap up there, Bill. And for those of you listening, you can get all the details at our website at keenwealthadvisors.com. All the notes for this podcast as well as all the past ones and all of the great blog posts that we've done over the years.
So we will catch you on the next episode of keen on retirement. Thank you. Steve Sandusky and Belay advisor are not affiliated with keen wealth advisors. Opinions expressed by Steve are his own and not necessarily the opinions of keen wealth advisors.
Keen wealth advisors is an SEC registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where keen wealth advisors and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by keen wealth advisors unless a client service agreement is in place. This program is intended for informational purposes only and should not be construed as advice on or a recommendation of any particular investment, strategy or as tax or legal advice for your specific situation.
Keen wealth advisors is not a tax or legal advisor. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your licensed professional prior to investing. Information in this program was compiled from sources believed to be reliable. Due to the constant state of data changing, we do not guarantee the timeliness or the accuracy of the information provided.
Our view or opinions at the time you are listening to the podcast may be different than they were when the podcast was recorded. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested in too directly. Any prices that are referenced for market forecasts are as of the date stated and are not necessarily our opinions moving forward.
As always, please remember, investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. This podcast is not allowed to be copied, distributed, published, or reproduced without permission from keen wealth advisors.