And good evening.

You've got more than money.

You've Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial adviser for the next half an hour.

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If you are a loyal viewer of more than money, you know exactly how this works.

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That is our gospel promise to you that we will give you everything that we have to make that a reality for you.

It is not lost on us that you are such an important part of our show.

You allow us to make the very bold claim that we are the most relevant financial show on television today, bar none.

And we believe that quite sincerely, because we don't set the agenda.

You set the agenda.

You send us your emails, Gene, at ask MT dot com works very, very well.

Gene at ask MTM dot com, you send us to us making screens out of you.

We answer as many as we can on air.

Perhaps you'll even hear your own on air.

It can be a pretty exciting event when your question comes popping up on a future show.

It's very worthwhile and as a result, we're relevant to you.

We take what's most important to you, make it most important to us.

We don't make those choices.

You do.

And gosh, you make fantastic choices.

Your questions are far more interesting than anything I would come up with, and answering them is a privilege and hopefully one that you appreciate.

And even for folks who have questions that are not answered on air, we answer every single one back to you.

We have an entire team and our more than money world headquarters that answers questions back to our viewers and we will help in any way that we are able.

So having said that, as a kind of setting this the table, so to speak.

Let's turn to our financial correspondent and see where Megan starts us this evening.

Hi, Jean.

Our first question tonight says, My wife and I have heard from friends that we can support our churches capital campaign by taking money out of our IRAs without paying taxes.

Wondering if this is true.

Well, quite fortunately, it is.

It almost sounds too good to be true.

I understand that the IRS making something a bit more accommodating, a bit easier on everyone.

Doesn't sound like the IRS that we know, but it truly is.

The IRS code allows you, if you are past age 70 and one half, to move money from your retirement plans, in this case, your IRA directly to charity.

These can be plural, can be it can be one.

It can be simply a capital campaign contribution to your church of a significant amount.

Or it can be split up into a number of different charities.

That's your choice.

Your custodian, your IRA custodian will then issue those checks during rectally to those nonprofits.

They do not come to you for distribution.

You can have the checks come to you for distribution.

You can hand them to folks, but the money does not come to you.

It goes directly to the charities in question.

Qualified charitable distribution.

Q A c. D is how this is referenced in the IRS code, and it works very, very well.

The upper limit has been adjusting.

It is above $100,000.

So even if you want to make a very substantial contribution on an annual basis, your limitation is quite high.

And if you're making relatively smaller contributions to multiples, as long as they add up to something under that annual limitation, you will be just fine.

And for you, the tax free part is better than tax free.

It is not taxable to you and then deductible as a charitable contribution, it is not taxable to you at all.

So let's use $50,000 as an example.

If you were to typically take money from an IRA at $50,000 level that would add to your taxable income, you would lose a chunk of that to taxes.

You would then be able to contribute a balance, say, 40,000 to and I a a charity.

You would get a deduction for the 40,000 where the Q d it's the inverse.

You never touch the money.

It does not come to you.

The entire $50,000 is non taxable income.

So not only does it not add to your tax burden, but it also doesn't hurt you from a medicaid I'm sorry, a medicare premium standpoint.

As many of you know, if you take too much income, if you receive too much income after starting with Medicare, the premiums can rise and in some cases rise dramatically.

This does not affect Medicare premiums.

It does not affect your tax bracket.

It's really rather lovely and very easy to do.

Custodians, all the major custodians, are doing tens of thousands of these a year.

You'll have no trouble whatsoever.

Your friends were right.

Their friends are not always spot on.

But in this case they were.

And good for you.

Excellent.

Makes a wonderful start.

That's a very positive thing.

Helping out their church and helping out a capital campaign.

Who do we serve next?

Well, our next question is pretty brief.

It says you mentioned an investment that only goes up and never goes down.

So I'm wondering what it is.

Well, it's not a mystery.

The idea of an investment, it goes up.

It never goes down is actually not uncommon either.

For lots of folks, they are surprised to find that there are lots of investments that go up and don't go down.

I'll give you a simple example if you have a CD.

If you put $100,000 in the CD, the $100,000 is insured.

It's not at risk.

The only thing that's the moving part is what interest rate you might receive.

So that's an example of an investment that goes up and not down.

Now, for those of you who are already reaching for your your cell or your laptop to send me an email going, Whoa, whoa, whoa, how about inflation?

I absolutely understand the impact of inflation.

We are talking about nominal amounts.

Investments that you can make where the dollar amounts do not go down.

A CD would certainly qualify.

An annuity would qualify.

There are certain annuities these days that are guaranteeing over the next three, four or five years well in excess of a 5% guaranteed investment return.

Again, the principle is guaranteed.

The return is guaranteed.

Very few moving parts.

Of course, all the guarantees are made by the insurance companies, so they are subject to the financial strength of that insurance company and being able to make those payments.

Back to you.

But that's another example of an investment that goes up and not down.

There are tons of investments that don't qualify.

Of course, real estate can go up and down, stocks can go up and down, bonds can go up and down.

There are some new platforms, new investment platforms that add this characteristic to the idea of investing in the stock market.

This is where an investment in the stock market can go up, but not down.

In the old days, that was a an annuity, a floor form of annuity that required you to tie your money up for quite some time.

Five, six, seven years was fairly typical.

There are new investment platforms that might only require you to make a commitment of 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, a very short period of time.

But yet you can have your principal pretty acted.

100,000 means you will get minimum 100,000 out.

The differentiation is that it is in the stock market and it can go up with the stock market up to a a limit, a cap.

So there are structured notes, there are buffered ETFs, exchange traded funds, there are barrier based exchange traded funds, ETFs.

So there are quite a number of investment opportunities out there where at least the dollar amount goes up, never down.

Does any of that fit you.

No way to know at this moment, but it is something that you can explore where they trusted experienced financial advisor who has access to all of those kinds of investments.

You want an advisor who is independent and has access to a complete universe, not one that was employed by a firm that that kind of pushes a particular investment.

You want the entire menu available to you.

Interesting.

Short question.

Long answer.

Where do we go next, Ms.. Megan?

Our next email is definitely looking for some guidance.

It says, My husband passed away a few years ago and he has a41k that I am the beneficiary of.

I am not sure how to handle this.

4401k.

I am 58 and still have a year and a half until I'm 59 and a half.

I am worried about the taxes that I may have to pay.

I would like to retire at 59 and a half.

I have $560,000 in savings and $500,000 in a41k.

I do not have a mortgage car payment or any other debt other than my taxes and basics like car insurance, phone, food, etc.. Any advice on any of this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Well, first of all, our condolences.

You mentioned it's a few years ago when you lose a loved one.

A few years is not very long at all.

So I pray that you are handling, you are progressing and you are blessed with some peace.

That's that's what we start with.

We.

We.

We certainly pray that for you.

Secondly.

Tip of the hat.

Real compliment to you.

You've done some very, very good things.

You've held on to a significant amount of money.

You have virtually no debt.

You have basic expenses.

You are frugal, apparently.

And you are asking excellent questions in advance.

You're not asking a question of, hey, getting an email, hey, we did this.

It didn't seem to work out.

How do we fix it?

You're asking about how to move forward prior to actually taking any actions.

We really appreciate that.

Far easier to to advise in advance than it is to fix in arrears.

Your age is a very interesting variable in this circumstance.

You are 58, typically taking money out of any retirement plan prior to age 59 and a half would result in a penalty.

Since you are the beneficiary of your husband's retirement plan that 41k, you may take money from that for one K prior to 59 and a half with no penalty.

It is taxable, but you would not feel a penalty.

You may not need to do this.

You mentioned retiring in a year and a half or so.

Translation We know you are working.

We're prayerful that your employment, your income from that employment is such that that you have little or no financial stress.

That's our prayer.

But if you find that the reality is a bit different and that for the next year and a half or more, you might be a little tight.

You may actually take distributions from an inherited IRA, even though it's from a spouse, from an inherited IRA.

Prior to age 59 and half with no penalty.

And then you can set it up so that once you reach 59 and a half, it goes into your IRA that gives you control.

Once it's in your IRA and you've reached 59 and a half, the the issue of how to handle it becomes very straightforward.

You will withdraw money at a pace that you require at 59 and half.

Of course, you're not eligible yet for Social Security.

At 60, you would be eligible for a survivors benefit as a surviving spouse.

You look carefully at that.

At 62, you'll be able to take a discounted a reduced Social Security benefit on your own employment record at 67, you have normal retirement age for Social Security, which is kind of a misnomer because if you wait until 70, it's a much higher number.

The difference between starting at 62 and and and starting at 70 are waiting until you turn 70 almost doubles, almost doubles your Social Security.

So you may want to lay out a plan, a strategy where you take money from your 401k from your savings to bridge to a point where your Social Security benefit is pleasing to you.

Whether that's 62, five, seven, 70, that's a personal decision, or it may end up being a financial decision as well.

But once we know those kind of road marks, road markers, timelines, then we can determine exactly how to invest the money so that it is available, safe, sound, predictable, reliable at the points where it needs to be.

And also so that in if we have a block of money that's not needed, so to speak, or not expected to be needed in four or five or seven or ten years, we can have that maybe a bit more at risk, a bit more in a growth mode.

These are all decisions that would be made after we lay out this timeline.

You should work with a trusted, experienced financial advisor and I think that result in short order will be very pleasing to you.

I think you're going to find out that your retirement is going to be perhaps earlier than you thought and perhaps much more smooth go much more smoothly than you might have expected.

Very interesting question.

And again, congratulations to you.

You've done a number of very, very good things.

Now we just need to polish it up a little bit so that it's as good as it can possibly be, makes it as good as it can possibly be.

Might very well be the answer to the next question.

I hope so.

This one's a little bit different than the last one you were talking about.

This is looking at decisions in hindsight and wondering if they did the right thing.

This says, My wife and I are both 52.

We have good jobs, own our own house with a small mortgage, and have two daughters who are educated and on their own.

We paid for both of their colleges so that they wouldn't have loans.

My income is $130,000 and my wife's is $55,000.

Now we're looking at retirement and fear.

We are simply too late.

We spent our money on our girls.

Of course, we wouldn't change that for the world.

They both make us so proud.

But did we do this wrong?

Well, we just have to accept that we will be working for the rest of our lives.

Wow.

Yes.

Is this is the asking for forgiveness rather than permission part of the program?

This is what we've done.

Did we mess this up?

And if so, how do we fix it?

Did you mess it up?

Please.

As the father of three daughters and one granddaughter.

Anything we can do to help our children and our grandchildren.

That's not messing anything up.

You.

You have great satisfaction.

I'm sure you're extremely proud of your girls.

The question is, is, is this irretrievable?

And I have a strong suspicion, even though I'm going to start my answer with it depends.

I have a strong suspicion it is not irretrievable.

If you were able to assist your daughters with all of their college expenses that they came out with that loans, you have been laying out a tremendous amount of money, even at the bare minimum, you've been laying out a tremendous amount of money.

Depending on the college.

It could be a staggering amount of money so that they would have no loans.

If indeed you and your wife have, quote unquote, learned to live on much less than your income because you've been sending out all these checks for all these years, that may end up being your saving grace.

It may not only not be that you made a mistake, it may be that it has prepared you for what, over the next.

I'm I'm saying ten, 12, 15 years might be a rather wonderful march into retirement.

And here's why.

Collectively, you're making $155,000 a year between you and your wife.

Let's assume just for a moment that you've been laying out 40,000 a year for college funds for your daughters.

That's probably a much a much lower number than reality.

But let's use as an example, it popped into my head, if indeed you've been used to living on 40,000 or less.

If you now direct that 40,000 into a4a1k, hopefully both of you are employed with companies that have four one K's.

Hopefully that is the case.

If it is not, you may have to rely on one and then do a an IRA for the other.

But again, for our purposes, if both of you have four one ks and we're putting 40,000 a year away over the next ten years, you will save in excess of $400,000 over the next 15 years, which would take you to age 67.

Normal retirement age for Social Security purposes.

You will have saved over $600,000.

That's simply the savings amounts.

This is not accounting for any return whatsoever.

So if we assume that you've invested your money so poorly that you have received a 0% return over the next 15 years saving only 40,000, not increasing it with pay raises, not trying to squeeze out more, you will have over 600,000 in savings to augment your Social Security.

If your Social Security is relatively modest at age 67.

You'll each have about 2500 a month.

That's 5000 a month.

Your 600,000 modestly should throw off about 2000 a month.

And at age 67, you could look forward to an annual income of about $85,000 and not eat into your principal and have no stress or strain.

If 85,000 doesn't seem like quite enough, you might have to save a bit more.

But apparently you guys are really good at that.

If you've been able to do what you've accomplished with your daughter's education, I have a feeling that the next 12, 15 years, maybe a bit longer or maybe not.

Will end up being wonderful for you.

If we used a very modest rate of return over 15 years.

It wouldn't be 600,000.

It would be 1,000,002.

And you wouldn't have an extra 2000 a month.

You'd have an extra 4000 a month.

And now we're not talking about 85,000.

We're talking about over $100,000 a year in retirement.

Not too stinky if you're not sure exactly how to have that all unfold.

Make sure that you reach out through a trusted experience, estate, state or a financial advisor and make sure that you put that on track again for one case, likely to be one of your best friends.

Outstanding.

I think you're going to be just fine.

Is there someone else we can help make sure?

Our next question says, I have two children that have a 19 year difference in age.

All communication with the oldest child has ended.

The youngest child has moved and has little to no contact with me either.

Both of my children have.

They have been diagnosed with spectrum learning disabilities.

I need to get a living will and will documented.

I would like to make my younger child the executor of the estate.

I also would leave most of my assets to the younger child, but also would like to leave my eldest son something.

I have some financial investments that at the time of my death would need to be divided.

The eldest receiving 25% from that.

It is a concern that my eldest child may try to cause issues with the younger who would receive the majority of the benefits.

Can you give me any advice before I move forward on contacting an attorney with my estate matters?

Thank you for your consideration and time.

Well, you're quite welcome.

This is a sad situation.

There's there's no getting around that.

And the sadness of the the the separation between you and your children adds to the complexity of what you're asking to have accomplished.

You have little or no contact with your older child and minimal contact with your younger.

Naming either of them as the executor, in my opinion, is not a great idea.

So one of the first things that you should do in order to minimize the potential for significant conflict is to prior to meeting with a trusted experienced estate planning attorney is to identify someone or multiple people in your life that you would trust to fill the role of, at minimum, executor of your estate in order to carry out your wishes with as little conflict as possible and potentially, potentially the trustee of the trust that you may wish to set up.

You should carefully consider prior to meeting with the attorney whether or not the challenges that your children have in terms of spectrum learning disabilities are significant enough that they need protection, financial protection after you are gone.

And again, using numbers I have made up.

If if we have $600,000 and one fifties going to the oldest and four fifties going to the younger.

Bottom line is these are substantial sums of money.

And again, based on their level of of developmental disabilities, that may be overwhelming.

It may be handing a can of gasoline in a match to someone who doesn't know that they should not light the match.

And that would call for the creation of trusts and a trust is a legal document that would receive these funds that you're passing would be directed by a trustee of your choosing.

Could be an individual, could be an attorney, could be a trust company, but they would follow your instructions as to how this money would be distributed to your children.

This is an extremely powerful tool of giving both peace of mind to you relative to how the funds will be handled after your passing.

It's also an extremely powerful tool for protecting people in some cases.

We might use the phrase against themselves if they have abilities that are limited in these areas or might be in a position where perhaps they could be taken advantage of.

Perhaps.

You mentioned your older child maybe putting stress or influence on the younger and creating an ongoing issue by bringing those two individuals out, your children out of this equation, having someone, a professional, perhaps in charge of both your estate, carrying out your will exactly as it's outlined and potentially acting as trust trustees for these trusts that we've discussed might very well end up providing your your both of your children with tremendous financial security, much less stress.

Well, almost eliminating the opportunity for them to have a conflict between each other because neither is making decisions for the other.

Very challenging.

Certainly not not a pleasant process to go through.

But your instincts, your intentions to help, hopefully will will be addressed by using these suggestions that we've given you.

One other observation.

I just finished a very interesting biography of of Elon Musk.

Tesla Space X, Twitter, etc.. Elon Musk, as has been very open.

He has Asperger's.

He is certainly on the spectrum.

There's no question about that.

And yet depending on the day richest man on the planet.

So the fact that your children are on the spectrum is it's an interesting observation, but it's not a determination of their future.

I pray for you and for them.

A very bright future indeed.

Now, our future has to end here momentarily.

We've come to the end of our show.

We've answered as many questions as we would fit into the time.

We want to thank everyone who has sent us your emails, the questions that we've used on on air and the ones that we have not that we've answered directly back to you.

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We hope that you'll continue in what be willing to share your questions with us by sending them to Gene and ask them to an account.

Thank you so much for spending some of your time with us.

Hopefully you'll be willing to come back next week and be right back with us on another edition of more than a month.