And good evening.

You've got more than money.

You've got Gene Dickerson, your host, your personal financial advisor, serving you this evening, serving you every single time.

More than money airs and really, really happy to be able to do so.

Some of my competitors have suggested, sometimes quite politely, to my face, other times snarky behind my back, that all this time that we spent educating all of you folks, it's time I should be meeting with clients one on one and generating revenue and stop all this serving stuff.

Oh, how silly they are.

It is a, an absolute pleasure to serve you.

It is an honor to serve you.

And, let's be blunt.

What a peek behind the thought process.

Behind more than money.

Let's be blunt.

It is also incredibly profitable.

If you measure profit in all the right ways, incredibly profitable for my for my psyche, my soul, my spirit, and incredibly profitable.

I'm hopeful.

Incredibly profitable to you.

I can reach tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands.

Folks, I would never have a chance, to impact one on one.

And the the ability to have maybe, maybe 100,000 people take one idea and save thousands of dollars in taxes.

Wow, what an exciting idea.

So it gives me great joy.

In addition to that, there are occasions where I actually get to meet some of you.

And the folks I have met have been absolutely wonderful.

So it it it has profited me many, many times over.

And so my, my modest, contribution of time and effort a little bit of wisdom that I've picked up over the years is, is a very, very small contribution for the massive return I get.

And, Joy, at any stage of life.

Course, you appreciate it a bit more if you're a little further down the path of life.

But, joy, anything that creates joy can be, a cash, a tremendous impact, have a tremendous impact on your life.

And you you have had a tremendous impact on my life and fitness.

In addition, you've also made More Than Money, the most relevant financial show on television today.

No matter where, no matter when.

So it's a pretty fabulous accomplishment.

And I thank you so much for I, I'm very grateful to you.

Yeah.

Speaking of grateful, there are, folks that you might be able to make very grateful.

It's, we're getting to the end of the year.

Gifting.

Gifting is a topic that comes up a lot.

And must be done calendar year basis.

So some folks have come to us.

Hey, it's November, it's December, and, I need to help my, my son out.

My daughter out.

I'd like to give him $40,000.

I'm worried about, too much income.

Too much.

There's too much that.

Well, you could just 20,000 now, and in a very short period of time, a month.

You're in the new tax year.

Give 20 more.

Very simple.

So splitting it up in years is, available to you.

But by end of year, all the calendar events have to be taken care of, including gifting, gifting to nonprofits.

For the most part, not not a for 90% of you.

Not an issue that, creates any real urgency because you won't get a tax deduction, in all honesty.

The folks that, prepare taxes in our world tell us that 90% of you, 90% of you are using the standard deduction.

So making a contribution from your checkbook.

Likely will not, decrease your taxes at all because it will come under that umbrella of standard deduction.

For for most folks, $31,000 is a married couple for folks who are 65 and older, $43,000.

So making those gifts directly, may not, benefit you from a tax standpoint if you are 70.5 or older.

You might make those gifts from your IRAs to qualified charitable distributions that may end up being very, very useful.

That's a question for another time.

But in terms of gratitude, quite often, folks, that that we counsel, are interested in helping their their family could be children, grandchildren, parents and and making gifts.

Those are done on an annual basis as well.

So if you are interested in shifting some of your assets to other members of the family, there's lots of good reasons to do that.

Financial and otherwise personal, of course.

But you may also have some residual, tax benefits.

If you are gifting in a, in a strategic way, in a thoughtful way, including gifting of appreciated assets, stock, collectibles, real estate, etc., or shifting assets that are currently producing income to you that you ought to pay tax on, maybe gifting them to someone that will collect that income and not have to pay tax on it.

So lots of things to think about, but it's a wonderful season, the season of giving.

It's a wonderful season to be thinking about gifting.

And if you need counsel, to make sure that you're doing it in an appropriate way, make sure you seek out a trusted and experienced financial advisor.

Outstanding.

Where do we start, sir?

All right, buckle in.

Young lady writes I'm 85.

I have an estate that's worth approximately $4 million outstanding.

I have long term care policy that would pay $500 a day.

Should I need it?

Close to half of my estate.

About 2 million is in retirement plans.

The other half is in, stocks and money markets.

My house is in a living trust.

I was divorced in 1979.

So what would that be?

46 years ago.

After 16 years of marriage to a doctor.

After the divorce, I had almost nothing in the bank.

And two little children to support.

My ex-husband left an estate of $2 million, which was split between my two children.

But the conditions were not equal.

My daughter is 53, well-educated, is not married.

Living with a gentleman for a very long time.

They have no children.

My son has a CPA, married with two children to his wife, who's also a CPA.

He has full use of the assets that my ex-husband gave him, and was able to take two years off to care for his family during the pandemic.

Outstanding.

My daughter has had severe health issues.

But her inheritance has been tied up.

She must apply to the trustee to get reimbursed for her request, including health expenses.

The money is not liquid to use as she sees fit.

She and her partner, who is also a professional, wanted to invest in real estate, which of course she cannot do whatever is left over from her father's estate after she dies.

Goes to my grandchildren.

Her brother's children.

My daughter resents this situation and wants me to leave her a larger percentage of my estate.

So she has some extra liquid cash like her brother.

I have spoken to my son about this.

He wants the estate to be split 5050.

My daughter has a lot of animosity towards my son.

After my ex-husband died.

What should I do?

Because you are kind of in the bind.

You're kind of being put in the middle on all this.

My snark instinct, my snark.

Go meter, is going off, but not at you.

Not at you.

And actually not very much at your son, but your daughter.

Yeah.

She's.

She has triggered the sarcoma and causes me, some real concern about, kind of really who she is and what's really going on.

The difference in how the inheritance from their father was treated, in his design was his design.

He had a reason for this.

And considering some of the undercurrent that you can sense from the email relative to the daughter's feelings.

I think he may have been onto something.

I think he may have been on to something that says, hey, number one, maybe she doesn't exercise very good judgment.

Certainly it doesn't seem emotionally to, to to to feel that way.

And number two, if indeed she has serious health concerns, maybe his concern was that the money would be wiped out with with medical bills and lost forever to the family.

So it it appears to me like your ex-husband, I'm certain there's no exceptionally warm feelings.

It's been a long time since you've been divorced.

It didn't seem to go very well.

Left you kind of high and dry with the kids.

But ended up taking care of the children rather nicely.

Million dollars a piece.

There's nothing to sneeze about with those kind of funds.

But clearly, son, CPA, married to a CPA, they seem to have good judgment, and they seem to have used those funds rather well.

Daughter may be trying to protect her from herself.

And maybe, just maybe, that's something you should think about.

You should think about.

53 and looking for the inheritance.

Give me gimme, gimme.

To make her life better.

And with serious health concerns.

Gifting her and bequest to her.

Bequeathing to her.

Gifting to her in your estate.

2 million bucks.

Might very well just be sending that to hospitals and doctors and gone.

And you might very well swallow hard.

Look at your husband's example and say, that may make a lot of sense.

Now, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

You could certainly say, hey, I've got 4 million.

2 million goes to my son.

2 million goes to my daughter.

I'll give her a million outright, and I'll put a million in trust just the way my ex-husband did.

So that if her health turns against her, they can take a lot, but they can't take everything.

So something for you, to seriously be concerned about.

It's.

You're a mom, and it's natural that you would want to keep both of your children happy.

And in this regard, you can certainly do whatever you wish.

And when you have graduated to the next dimension, they can make of it whatever they wish.

But I will I will, encourage you look at how your daughter is reacting to her brother.

She should, if she's angry, be angry at her father.

Her brother didn't do this.

Her father did.

So is it possible that maybe you've got to do what's best, even if the daughter doesn't appreciate it?

I think so.

I think so.

God bless.

That's a tough one.

It's a tough one.

Next, sir.

That's in double tax savings.

Gentlemen rights.

If I donate part of my required minimum of just minimum distribution.

He tried to say, to charity.

Can I listed as a charitable deduction?

Well, it reduce my income tax.

Does it lower my taxable income and allow me to claim it as a deduction?

Thank you for your advice.

The answer is this.

This is, required minimum distribution, $15,000.

You donate $5,000 to your church.

Is that a potential tax deduction?

The answer is yes.

Is it likely to reduce your taxes?

The answer is 90%.

Likely no, because your standard deduction is larger than the itemized deductions you might put together.

So the 5000 in essence is lost from a tax savings standpoint.

If on the other hand you're taking requirement distributions and you are strategic about it, you can send it directly from your IRA through a QCD to the charity.

And yes, it is not taxable.

In essence, it's fully tax deductible.

It isn't technically by IRS code, but that's the end result.

The end result is that you get the full standard deduction if you're married and over age 65, each of you, that's $43,000 a deduction.

And if you want to give $5,000 from your RMD, that's in essence it's $48,000.

That's the effective way to do it.

That's the way that you you may need the assistance of your, either IRA custodian, your trusted, experienced, financial advisor, a tax advisor.

You may need a little bit of guidance.

So got a little bit of guidance to be able to save the tax on 5000 bucks.

Sign it up.

Get it done.

Get her done.

Sir.

Next.

Here we go.

The most important retirement questions answered.

I love this question.

Gemma writes I'm 56, looking forward to retirement when I am 60.

My 401k is about 800,000.

My wife is 54.

Her 41K is about 900,000.

Oh, he married so well.

We've been watching on PBS for a couple of years, and we've learned that we need to know what our expenses will be to get a good answer.

You make me so proud.

So often the, the email, questions that we get about retirement are.

Here's what I got.

Can I retire?

I don't know.

What do you need?

What do you need on a monthly basis?

Or.

Your bills are paid.

You're happy and healthy.

They listened.

I feel like a proud papa.

I'm getting a little emotional.

I'm better.

Okay.

We've worked on this.

We're confident we will be comfortable with $5,200 per month income.

My company gives me a pension of $700 a month.

But most importantly, it gives me health coverage for both of us until I reach 65.

Once to retire at 60.

That's five years of medical coverage for the two of them.

That could easily, easily be worth $100,000.

It is likely worth far more than that.

But what a huge advantage.

Good for you.

My wife does not have a pension.

We would like to hold off taking our Social Security until 70, if we can.

So he's planning on retiring at 60.

Trying to live on their assets until age 70.

Maximizing social security.

I so far, I like that very much.

Our biggest concern right now is that we are counting on our four one K's to carry us through age 70.

If they drop before we retire, we are out of luck.

What can we do to protect ourselves from our investments dropping right when we need them the most?

Fantastic question.

One that, even though it may not be phrased this exact way, is on on the minds of so many people, so many people, as they're about to retire, they've seen their investments go up and down.

The up part, that's fine.

The down part.

Not so much.

They may have, memories of 2008, when the market dropped over 50%.

They may have had it for one K was 500,000, and it was 250, and their hearts sunk and they in the back of their minds, even though they may not have expressed it quite so clearly.

What if we have 1,000,007?

What if we retire and overnight it's a million to half $1 million gone?

It's it's a terrifying thought.

It's a terrifying thing.

And it's almost, you know, and it certainly feels, almost like a roll of the dice.

Hey, I'm going to retire at 60.

And and through no fault of his own, through no influence of his own, nothing within his control.

The market decides to tumble.

Oh my goodness.

And, Could it derail their retirement for happy, healthy hundred for 40 years?

The answer?

Sure.

Shortcut.

Are there ways to prevent that?

The answer is absolutely yes.

There are.

There is the hope and pray as a as maybe a nice approach doesn't really get you where you want to be.

What you need is to recognize various investment platforms.

Investment approaches that can provide you with very confident income, with little or no risk of losing your principal.

And that comes in a number of flavors.

For those of you who are of an age, you're saying, I get it, you're talking about annuities.

Well, certainly an annuity could do exactly that.

An annuity could take this block of money.

And by the way, they could do that earlier rather than later.

We'll circle back to the idea here in a moment.

They can take this block of money and create a guaranteed lifetime income.

Guaranteed.

No ifs, ands or buts, subject to the financial capacity of the company.

So you would deal with very large companies with tons of reserves, and they would guarantee you a certain income.

Not unusual for that income to be 4 or 5%.

So on 1,000,007, it could be goodness, 85 or $90,000 a year guaranteed.

No ifs, ands or buts.

The investments, the underlying investments might have some variation to them or not.

You can choose an annuity that can do this for you that has no principal risk whatsoever.

And annuities come in lots of flavors, lots of different flavors.

So you've got to be very, very, willing, to, to work, to educate yourself, to become comfortable with the various types of annuity, fixed annuities, deferred annuities, fixed indexed annuities, registered index linked annuities, variable annuities.

There are lots of flavors.

So it is very important you don't work with an annuity salesperson.

Not a good idea.

Work with an annuity specialist, someone that knows all of these types of annuities and can, evaluate you and many, many, many different companies.

So it is, a rare person, but that's the person you need.

And you can look at that very carefully.

In addition, in recent years, 4 or 5 years, there have been a number of investment platforms that have occurred, that have developed, that provide investment opportunities where you can get very serious upside on your your stock market investments, but have some protection or complete protection should the stock market drop, in its simplest form.

You can invest in the S&P 500.

If the market goes up, you get up to a limit.

Currently the limits around 12%.

That's going to change day by day, but currently it's around 12%.

But if it goes down anything up to -15, you lose nothing.

You lose nothing.

Pretty interesting.

Pretty interesting idea.

Now some of you go, but the market could go down more than 15.

There are other options that protect you down to -20, -30, even down to 100%.

So the the gain that you might receive could be relatively modest at 100% protected, 6 or 7%, but no risk whatsoever.

No risk whatsoever.

So is it possible for these folks to gain those advantages?

The answer is absolutely.

Now, easier for him at the moment.

He's 56 years old.

Can he do a investment like this inside his 41 K?

The answer is no.

Can he move the money from his 401 K without leaving his job and do it in an IRA?

The answer is yes.

She is 54.

Can she do the same thing?

Not for another year or so.

The rules for what's referred to as an in-service rollover are pretty clear.

55 and older.

You can pull the money out, put it in an IRA, invest however you wish, and still be part of the for one K plan until you retire.

Lots of different moving parts, lots of different opportunities, and lots of potential for creating tremendous, peace of mind, tremendous confidence in retirement.

Number one, fear running out of money in retirement.

You can create a scenario where you will be assured to never run out of money.

That's pretty cool.

And by the way, your idea, excuse me.

Of waiting until age 70 to, take Social Security.

Unless your health changes, as long as you're in good health.

It's a very, very good idea.

Be aware that every year that you wait from 62 to 68, actually, every month that you wait from 62 to 68, you go up, your benefits go up.

So if you you make the commitment to go to 70, but at 63, your plans change, then you start to collect.

So no harm, no foul.

You can make adjustments as you go.

Outstanding.

Excellent question.

Thank you for listening and paying attention.

Is it simply too late?

No.

We still have time.

Why?

Oh, that's my apologies.

That's the email.

I'm 49 years old.

I have nothing to say for retirement.

I don't see how I can ever expect to retire.

What should I do?

Well, first of all, acknowledge you're not alone.

We would love to think.

And we're very blessed.

We get emails from folks who have $4 million or had $2 million.

Around millions.

That's fantastic.

Good for you.

There are lots of folks, lots of our audience.

They don't have millions.

And in many cases, they're in their late 40s, early 50s, and saying, I, I have saved nothing.

Am I doomed?

And the answer is no.

Now there are at least oh, gosh, there's tons of options.

But but there are a number of options that you might consider.

And I'm going to explore at least two to kind of give you a sense of, of where you might go.

At 49, I got that right.

Yes.

48 at 49.

You currently can put $23,500 in your for one K. Max, that's the max at 50.

That's going to go to 31,000, but for now, 23 five for your 31,000.

Assuming that your cash flow would allow that, assuming that you earn enough money and your your your bills are under control, your your expenses are under control.

And you can afford that.

If you are 49 now and you're you're targeting to retire, let's say 70.

20 years, 20 years of putting away $31,000 a year, it's going to grow.

But let's just use that for a simple example.

And let's assume that your your investments return to you nothing.

They have zero profit over 20 years.

You're going to put away 620,000 box.

That's not nothing.

Now what are the odds that you make zero?

Almost zero.

Make 2%.

3%.

It's not going to be 600.

Might be 700.

Make 2 or 3.

4%.

It might be 8 or 900.

Could it be a million with a reasonable rate of return?

Sure, sure.

So starting late doesn't mean you give up.

Starting late means that you dig in and you get really serious about saving money.

Really, really serious about putting money into your 41K.

Now, I absolutely understand there are folks out there going, Good for you.

Can you who can put away 30 grand?

I don't know.

Maybe it's only 12 grand.

Maybe it's seven that you got to put away as much as you possibly can.

And the 401k is a great plan to do it.

But I would add another piece to this.

An alternative maybe.

Or maybe, a hybrid, an augmentation.

Start thinking about, a job, a profession, how you could get paid for doing something that you would love to do for the rest of your life.

So the idea everybody has to retire now, they don't.

I, I hold myself up as a perfect example.

People say, why don't you retire so you can do what you want to do and hang out with your friends?

That's what I do every single day.

Going to the office.

I do what I love to do, and I hang out with my friends.

My clients, my team.

They're all my friends.

It's lovely.

Why would I retire?

Tired?

Boring.

So I would encourage this person.

Do exactly that.

Do what I have done.

Do what many people have done.

And now, admittedly, it may end up being, gosh, I, I'm a woodworker or I'm a crafter or I, I only think I can make 25 or 30,000 bucks in retirement, doing what I love to do.

Okay.

Your Social Security will be 25 or 30,000 more.

And in retirement, you'll have $60,000 of income.

And that could be quite glorious.

Or you may find out that when you're doing something you really love, you're passionate about.

You make a whole lot more money because you're joyous.

And people sense that they want to hang out with you.

They want to spend money with you.

So it is.

Is it too late?

It's not even close to too late.

And stop thinking about retirement the way other people want you to think about retirement.

65 and and you buy a barcalounger.

Don't do that.

Think about it.

Triple h. Happy.

Healthy 100.

What would you do that you could help serve other people, make other lives better that you would want to do until the good Lord takes you home and then jump all over it and have a ball.

You'll do great.

You'll do great.

And of course, other question.

Send them back.

Speaking of other questions, hopefully you learned a lot this evening.

Hopefully you picked up some great ideas, hopefully some ideas that apply to you.

But if they don't apply to you.

Send us your question Gene and ask him TMZ.com.

Ask mtm.com works beautifully.

We'll answer as many as we can.

All of them back to you.

As many as we can on.

Speaking of on air next week, we're on air with another edition for you right here of more than a month to the.