Bri Conn, CFP®: [00:00:00] Welcome to Childfree Life by Design. Today, we’re talking about how and when to give back and what it means for people who are building a Childfree life on their own terms. I’m Bri Conn, here with Dr. Jay Zigmont, and in this episode, we’re covering giving time versus money, deciding where to give, and tips to help you start giving. If you’ve ever wondered how to avoid getting to the end of the year without making any intentional donations, this conversation will give you the clarity and tools to make intentional decisions that support the life you want.
Intro: From Childfree Insights, this is Childfree Life by Design, the go-to resource for building the Childfree life you want. Every episode gives you practical guidance, clear direction, and meaningful conversations to help you live intentionally and design a future on your terms. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.
Bri Conn, CFP®: So all right, Dr. Jay, [00:01:00] we have these conversations with clients pretty often when it comes to giving. We’re often talking about legacy and impact, and we wanna say, “Well, what do you wanna do? What do you wanna do with your money? What do you wanna do with your time?” It’s a conversation that I think can be easy to forget about or pass to the side because it can be really tricky. But what are some things and what are some places that when we’re starting this conversation, you like to start with?
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: First let’s start with a piece of data. We found out that Childfree people give at three times the rate of parents. And that’s not judgment, that is just facts. And by the way, nonprofit world knows that because they come after us for money. It is the truth, like, you wanna get on a mailing list, say you’re Childfree, and you’re trying to figure what to do with your money, they will call you every week. They will be there to check on you. But we have clients ask us like, “All right, what the heck do I do with my money?” So I was just talking about a client on this, really interesting, and they were looking at, you know, some money they got, let’s say it’s from an inheritance. [00:02:00] And they were like, “Hey, should I just use this money all for myself? Should I share it with friends? Should I use it for charity?” And that’s a great question. And my question is, “Okay, ignore the money. What do you care about?” And that’s where this starts to go a little sideways because we gotta kinda set a different path. So like, some of the money I wanna use for myself. Interestingly enough, I find that clients tend to be more willing to use money for themselves when they give an equal amount to somebody else. Like, it kinda, pays off the guilt. There’s actually a term for that. I can’t remember. There’s like a whole thing around that. But then I’ll use it that way, but my question is, like, “What impact do you wanna make with your money?” And they go, “Well, nobody’s ever asked me that.” And I go, “Okay, well, what do you care about?” And some people, it’s their friends, some people it’s a charity, But I’m like, “Okay, cool. Then let’s figure out how best to give once we figure out what you want– who you wanna impact or who you wanna improve.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: Yeah, it’s a step-by-step process, and these conversations [00:03:00] don’t happen all in one day. And I think when we’re talking like that of what impact do you wanna make, it can be really powerful for people to sit back and reflect on it. And I always encourage people, don’t answer it and then think that that’s your only answer. It can be a reflection over time, and it can evolve because again, not only the impact, but also what brings you joy and how do you want to do that? I’ll use myself as an example. I wanna make an impact, and I really believe that education is incredibly important. That is what I decide. How would you guide me to find, okay, I know that this is important to me. It’s one of my core values, but I don’t know what that means when it actually comes to giving. Give to my school system or what?
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: It’s possible. So I had somebody the other day, they were getting into you know, back to school season. They were like, all the teachers are there, like, “Hey, I need 500 bucks for crayons,” or whatever you know, school supplies ’cause the school doesn’t provide them. Okay, there’s a difference between, like, random acts of kindness of just giving somebody a couple [00:04:00] hundred bucks to help. When my sister was teaching Montessori schools, I always used to just throw a little something. And by the way, when you do that, then they email you every fall like, “Hey, I need new carpets.” But the question I would ask you, Bri, is the same one, interestingly enough, that I would ask people when they’re starting a business. And the question is, who do you wanna serve, and how do you wanna serve them?
Bri Conn, CFP®: That’s a good one to go with. And I am a huge advocate for children and reading. In fact, I love it so much that the sorority I belonged to in college, that was our philanthropy, was education and reading for kids. And that’s something I’ve done a lot of throughout time, probably because I used to pretend to be sick and skip school so I could read. Whoops.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Okay, we’re all nerds. Okay, now I’m old enough to remember when you had that book fair come to school. I mean, that was the big thing. I remember I actually got kicked out of a bookstore once, dragged out by my father ’cause I was in there too long. [00:05:00] Like, all right, we’re book nerds. And we’ll include in the show notes, there’s a great TEDx talk, Ann Patchett did on love of reading, and she talks about it. She wrote a whole bunch of books on this, just in general. But she opened bookstores because her point was, if you want to encourage people to read, you have to have things like bookstores. And her bookstore, we were actually there a couple weeks ago because it’s local to me, it’s a really nice, cool little bookstore. I am sure she makes no money on it. But it’s not technically a charity. It is just a way to do this. So the local food bank was doing an event there. My wife said, “Hey, let’s go.” And this author had written this kids book about the yellow postcard that comes in and food insecurity and the box of food you get, and it was an amazing event. And I’m like, “This bookstore made 12 bucks on this event.” I swear. But they’re doing the right thing. And when people think about giving, they often think about like, “I need to write a check to a charity.” No. I mean, there’s a lot of ways you can do [00:06:00] it.
Bri Conn, CFP®: That brings up a really good point is sometimes when it’s giving, giving can also lead to experiences too. And I know I’ve been to the Truman House in Key West, and one of the things that the tour guide was telling us was, “Hey, if you donate X amount of money, you can spend the night here.” And so afterwards I went up to him and I said, “Hey, can you tell me more about how much money that you would have to donate to spend the night here? ‘Cause that sounds really interesting.” And it was $5,000 when I did this back in 2024. Just clarity, I did not donate the $5,000 to the Truman House ’cause it’s not that high on my priority list. But it is interesting. You have talked about things where you’ve donated money and then because of it, it leads to another experience. Can you share more about those?
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: I love these. So realistically, if you look at kinda where my wife and I’s money’s going, it’s really where she wants to send it, I’m just gonna be honest of that. Just kinda how that works. But it’s really around food insecurity or around animals, and animals being kinda both rescue and the local zoo. [00:07:00] She volunteers every week at the local food bank, and she loves it. One of her big things, she’s now lead volunteer, and she now knows how to use an electric pallet jack. Sure. She’s an epidemiologist. She wouldn’t normally in her job use a pallet jack, but yeah. So the food bank locally was like, “Hey, we’re having this event.” And I was like, “Sure, we’ll give money. We’ll do whatever.” And by the way, you’re gonna see a lot of these trends, like you give money to charity, you get something back because we want you to give with a warm hand while you’re alive ’cause you see the tax benefit and you get to be part of it. So we gave them 300 bucks a seat. We ended up at The Ryman. So this is Nashville. Ryman Auditorium is 3,000 seats. It’s one of the, like, historic areas. And there’s four guys, they happen to be guys, doing a writer’s round right in front of us, and they’ve written every country song you’ve ever heard of. And I’m like, I’m first row jamming to these guys, like, playing all these songs. I was like, “This is amazing. I would’ve never gotten this of this if I didn’t put some money in.” [00:08:00] I mean, 300 bucks is nothing, and it was just part of an initiative she liked.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: So Bri, what do you think about giving 300 bucks to go to a concert?
Bri Conn, CFP®: I would absolutely do it. I mean, I’ve definitely spent that and more on concert tickets before. But if it was going to a good cause, sure. That sounds like a great time to me, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And people look at it as charities and they’re like, “Well, but I’m getting something for it.” And what the charity will do is they’ll send you a letter and say, “Okay, for the $300 ticket, the value of the event was $97. The other $203 is the donation.” You can actually write off the 203, not the 97. But this is a commonality. And the hard part is figuring out where you wanna do it. I mean, on the flip side, we did the zoo event. So we do these every year, and they have a boozing event. We don’t drink, but we still go. But then they have an event where they bring all the local, like, food [00:09:00] trucks and all the, like, local restaurants, and they set them up in stations all across the zoo, and you, like, grab one little piece of whatever, and there’s all these random things. And I think it was $1,000 for that ticket. But then you get to actually have animal encounters. You get to go hang out with the animals. They bring out animals to see you. Oh, I’m gonna have the names wrong and my wife would yell at me for not knowing. There’s, like, two pigs they brought out, and, like, they’re the Instagram stars for the zoo. It’s just a great event. Let’s be real. Yeah, $1,000, we probably ate 40 bucks of food. And you know what that’s what it’s for, but, they have these events. And the zoo actually, now that we’re on the list, we get invited to a whole bunch of things. They have some bigger ones. Like, for example, and this is on my list one day to buy for my wife, and it says buy, but it’s a donate, is for $25,000 you get to be a zookeeper for the day. How it’s like 25 grand to be zoo keeper for the day is a once in a lifetime experience.
Bri Conn, CFP®: And it’s not something that you could just [00:10:00] go out and do without giving like that. There’s not gonna be opportunities to just say, “Hey, I’m gonna go pretend to be a zookeeper and do all these things.” It can be connected to giving, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, and I can understand why people get conflicted about doing that and get hung up on it too of, “Well, I shouldn’t be getting anything if I’m giving.” If you’re enjoying giving to the organization regardless, who cares? Who cares if you get something back? It’s fine. It really is.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And if you don’t wanna do the event, you don’t have to. If you wanna, like, just make a donation, they’ll take it. Like, I have some clients that are like, “I don’t wanna go to any of the events. I don’t wanna do any of that.” Awesome. Send them a check, call it a day. But there’s also opportunities to be part of boards, like my wife with this food bank, she volunteers and then she gives. She does a whole bunch of things with them. And I’ll tell you right now, that’s where she’s meeting a lot of her friends. We had a whole episode recently on how do you meet Childfree friends. And the answer is, go volunteer on a Tuesday. I’m telling you right now, if you’re volunteering on a Tuesday, it’s probably Childfree people.
Bri Conn, CFP®: The thing about that too is I always tell people to [00:11:00] start small. You don’t have to automatically be volunteering every week. And in fact, I don’t volunteer at things on a weekly basis simply because I don’t have the time for that. And where I’m at in life is I pop around to too many locations. There’s no way I could do that. However, you can try those things and get set up where maybe you’re just doing a one-time volunteering at an event, and you step in and say, “Yep, I’m gonna go volunteer for this day, and I’ll come back and volunteer a couple other times.” That’s okay. I did a volunteer event, it was actually twice a year, where I would go and I would help build the set of a musical. And then in return, they did give us tickets back. So I’ve seen a number of musicals, and I can’t remember all of the ones that I’ve seen now, but I’ve seen a number of them with free tickets from volunteering and doing those things. That can lead to bigger things, but I also have friends that way. I’ve made other connections that are beneficial in life. It doesn’t have to be a [00:12:00] automatically jump to the big dollar donation or the weekly commitment. That’s where I think some people also get tripped up because they wanna jump to that when they don’t have to.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And this is one of those questions. Do you wanna give of your time? Do you wanna give of your money? Do you wanna give of who you are, whatever it is? So, right now I am wrapped up in the businesses and all that, and a lot of my time’s are kind of aging groups and talking to that. And I’ll volunteer my teaching groups and different things. By the way, Bri, I just volunteered you to talk to a CFP® group, so I’m just saying.
Bri Conn, CFP®: Yes, actually I scheduled that. I—
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Well, this is what happens is you get volun-told certain types of things. My wife says to me, and I think it was last year, she’s like, “Hey, the local shelter is full of dogs, and what they’re gonna do is there’s a community parade, and they want us to walk the dogs in the parade and hope people see them and adopt them. They have a couple dogs that are a little rough. Would you take one?” So now I am on a, freezing cold morning at 8:00 AM, with this, pit bull that [00:13:00] was just all over the place, walking through the town. You know, it was a hell of a workout, actually. But, like, it was great. It was just one of those things. And I think some people wanna give time, some people wanna give money, some people wanna give both. It’s the combination that works for you.
Bri Conn, CFP®: It’ll be different points that you’re like, yeah, you don’t have a lot of time to do it. Also, I really hope you have a picture of this, and I would love to see it. And if you don’t share it Dr. Jay’s wife, you know where to find me. Please send it to me. I’d love to see it.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: There are, but I’m not sure they’re gonna make it. I think the other thing I have with clients, so I had a really interesting discussion with a client. She was getting to kind of the end of her career and, you know, getting to a point where she could retire. And we had done all the numbers, and we finally got to a point where she could just tell work what to do with her money. This is the old F-you money. Like, you have enough that you could tell your boss what to do with it. So she got to that point, and she’s like, “I don’t need to go up the ladder anymore. I don’t want to go up the ladder anymore.” And her big passion was church. Awesome. So I said, “Okay, [00:14:00] do you wanna quit work and go volunteer at the church?” She said, “No, not at all.” I’m like, “All right. What do you wanna do?” and she was in the finance world. She’s like, “Look, I think I’d rather just work and give all my money to the church.” I was like, “That’s perfect.” Seriously, like, if your best usage of your time is for you to go work this job and then make a donation, that works, too. I think sometimes we get stuck because we want the perfect solution, or we don’t really know how to give it perfectly. And I’m like, “Just find what you like and do it that way. Nobody’s gonna judge you.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: Exactly. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, directly tied to anything that you have necessarily going on. I can just imagine this person probably also asking then if she were to volunteer, knowing she’s in finance, being like, “Oh, can you be on the finance board?” Because that has happened to me at church, and I’m like, “I am not gonna be on the finance board. I’m not gonna do anything with money when it comes to [00:15:00] church. No, thank you.”
Mid-Roll: Hey, let’s talk about money. Being Childfree gives you unique financial opportunities, but it also comes with unique questions. Are you looking to utilize your assets over time? Do you need help understanding what it means to adjust your finances for your Childfree life? Stop guessing. Take advantage of our Childfree Wealth Checkup today. It’s a quick, focused review designed specifically for your Childfree lifestyle. Head over to www.childfreewealth.com to schedule your checkup and start designing the future you actually want.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: While we’re talking about church, I wanna talk about tithing for a minute. So, because this is a really interesting question. I have clients who ask me, “Okay, I tithe 10%.” That’s fine. “I stop working, what do I tithe on?” And I was like, “Well, that’s a good question.” And my question is, what is your goal with tithing? And some [00:16:00] folks will go to the biblical, and they’re like, “Okay, it says, you know, you give a 10th,” and all that. Cool. What you’ve invested for retirement, you already took a 10th out of your income. Do you give a 10th on your retirement income? And by the way, I don’t get to choose this at all. This is one of those, like, you have the discussion. But what’s interesting is when you start pulling it apart, clients often have been giving without thinking about it. They’re like, “I just always do this.” I’m like, “Okay, first of all, we’re gonna keep track of it. We’re gonna, tax deductions. We’re gonna keep doing all this stuff.” But I think there’s kind of like, you get in the habit, “Oh, I must do this,” or like, “I’ll give when I die.” I’m like, “Yeah, you could probably make a lot more impact while you’re alive.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: A bigger impact, but also you could see it too and have fun with it. And another thing with that too is I want you to test now before you give at the end, because what if you give to something and you find out the organization sucks? We know clients who [00:17:00] have done this and gone, “Oh, I’m really glad that I did this now. I didn’t give them a bunch of money when I’m gone.” Because that very well could happen.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And by the way, I’m not gonna call any charities by name on all this. But there are charities that all the money goes to executives. You wanna look at their 990 forms, it tells you where it goes. But there’s one that I was thinking about a client, and I think Bri and I are thinking about the same one. They were gonna give to a veterans charity that was for suicide hotline, and they called up, said, “I wanna make a donation.” Nobody talked to them. They finally gave up and called the emergency number.—nobody answered that number. Guess what? You’re not getting any money. Seriously. And if the charity’s not picking up the phone, they’re not getting the money. If they’re all about the different whatever executive structures, all that. I probably have more of a list of charities that I kinda say to clients, “Double-check that charity before you donate,” than I have like that’s my absolute you love this charity, we should give to that one.
Bri Conn, CFP®: I found a lot of people asking recently of how do they [00:18:00] find hyper-local charities so they can actually see the impact and see that the money that they’re giving is doing what is said is gonna be done versus just going to a bunch of administrators and execs and not really impacting the people. When it comes to those hyper-local charities, any community group that you can be a part of, great thing to do. The library, if you see volunteer organizations, checking there and seeing, hey, is this a charity that is very hyper-local to me? The more you can get connected with people, which does, if you’re an introvert, mean leaving your house for a little bit to try and find the places. I’m just laughing at your face right now because yes, that is your wife’s job. And getting connected and seeing that and going, “Okay, well, here’s a charity that is adjacent to what I like, and I would feel good about giving, and I can see the impact that’s being made,” versus the one where you’re calling the phone number for suicide hotline, and they’re not answering, because that is a huge problem.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: But [00:19:00] let’s, pause for a second on these hyper local small charities. One of the things I worry about, so I’ve had a few clients that wanted to give 5, 10 million to one of these local charities. If that charity’s total budget is a couple hundred thousand dollars, you giving 5 million to that charity might destroy it. They don’t have a process for how to handle that money. You can actually set up trusts so that a certain amount’s given per year. There’s some different structures you can do it. But you need to think about, is my donation going to make a difference in the way I want to make it? You know? And I think with the super local ones, you’ve got a better idea of what’s going on, but they may not have a way to scale.
Bri Conn, CFP®: I’m gonna go back to my church here for a second. The church I attend sold their building for multiple millions of dollars and has decided that X percentage, I can’t remember if it’s 30 or 40% of the proceeds, are to be given away. So we have this [00:20:00] fund where we give to hyper-local charities like that. Anybody in the congregation can say, “Hey, I found this charity. I want to give X amount from these millions of dollars sitting here to it.” That’s one of the questions that I ask, a couple other members too say, “Can the charity handle it? What is it being used for exactly?” Because if we’re just giving them money to give them money, nope, I’m gonna vote no on that whenever that comes up for a vote. However, if they’re equipped to handle that gift, usually it’s not giving, I don’t think there’s been any gift of millions, but tens of thousands, maybe $100,000, saying, “Okay, they can accept that. It’s going to be used for this,” and it’s very specific as to not overwhelm them, because you can’t necessarily give a hyper-local charity millions of dollars. You also can’t give a hyper-local charity sometimes a bunch of stock options or really complicated stocks that they might have to unwind. You’re gonna have to look to larger organizations who can handle [00:21:00] that.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yeah, and this is where first question is, like, who do you wanna give to? Then the second is how do we do it in an effective way, and how do we do it in a good tax plan? And that’s where working with a financial planner helps. I think the other part of it, though, is I don’t want you to just do giving because of the tax benefit. So the other two areas I see a lot of folks give to that I want you to think about, one is giving to friends and family, and we’ll come back to that ’cause there’s a whole bunch of nuance around that. That’s not gonna get you a tax deduction. The other one that people don’t often think about as giving, but it is, is investing in small businesses. Like the local makers area or angel investing or other things where you’re putting money into companies that otherwise might not exist. That is giving. You’re hoping it has an investment coming back to you, but most of them don’t. Let’s be honest to that. But we’re not just doing giving for the tax break.
Bri Conn, CFP®: Correct. And if it’s just the tax break, it’s not gonna be real exciting to give, honestly. There is a lot more fun in [00:22:00] giving when you find joy in it and can do it because it’s fun and exciting, not just a tax break.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: And if you’re doing it with a tax break, you need to work with a CFP®. We need to work through a plan. There’s ways to do it. And often, like, when you’re top earning year or you have, like, a exit from a company or something, come to a financial planner. We’ll figure out a way to help you with the tax stuff. It’s kind of like, what do you want to do with it? But let’s shift for a second because, Bri, we get a lot of clients that want to give to family and friends. So I was just talking to one the other night, and they really do want to make a difference to their friends and family. But they don’t want their friends and family to be like, “Oh, you’re the rich people giving us money.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: That could be difficult and that can be tricky depending on where it’s at. I still struggle when it comes to this of how to handle it because it can be awkward and—
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: So let me give you some of the advice I give to clients on giving to family and friends. First thing is it’s not about taxes, so [00:23:00] please keep that in mind. Second is my rule, and let’s check on you, Bri, if you agree with this, I don’t give cash to anyone.
Bri Conn, CFP®: Correct. Yep, I’m not giving cash. I will pay for things,—
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: I’ll pay your medical bills, I’ll buy your groceries, I’ll pay your electric bill, I’ll pay for school. I’m not giving cash. And I say that—
Bri Conn, CFP®: It’s a holiday gift.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Well, that’s a whole separate thing. I give them a gift card then. But you don’t want to start a habit with family and friends of giving cash. I can think of this client I had, he was early 70s, a disabled vet, and he came to us because he was like, “Hey, I’m gonna have to take out a loan because I have to replace this fence in my house.” And I’m like, “Why? You’ve got all this money coming in. You should be able to afford the fence.” And what we found out was on the first of the month, every one of his friends and family came to his house asking with a handout. “Oh, my transmission blew,” or, “I need this,” right? And I was like, damn it, they’re taking advantage of this guy. Once you start [00:24:00] giving cash to friends and family, it’s broken. If you ever watch Shark Tank, Mr. Wonderful, the way he says it is if anyone in his family asks him for money for a business, because this is what he does for a living, he will always give it to them. And then what he says is, “You will never ask me for money again. I will never ask you about this money again. We’re done.” And that is one way to do it. And I’ve had some folks, like, where they’ll give, like, scholarships to somebody to start a business, something like that. You’re investing in something. You’re not giving them, “Here’s cash.” And one of my favorite on socials is, “Oh, I need money for baby diapers.” And then you send them diapers, and they’re like, “No, I said I needed cash.” And I’m like, “You said you needed diapers.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: Yes.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: So you have to be very mindful when you’re giving to friends and family. What I like to do to get rid of some of the awkwardness, not all, like it’s all still a little awkward, is buy them services. So buying aging care manager for somebody, buying financial planning for somebody personal training, career coaching, [00:25:00] going back to school. Buying them education, buying them services that’s going to help them get up on their own rather than just giving them a check. What do you think about that?
Bri Conn, CFP®: I really like that. And in fact, I just did a press right before this, that was one of the questions of if we’re gonna do estate planning and if we’re gonna leave money behind, well, what should we do? And I said, “Well, you should actually think about considering buying them services like financial planning prior to that, so they have the knowledge versus just giving them cash.” Because if you just are giving cash and, hey, great, they’ve got cash now, but they may not make the best decisions. So having skills and giving skills to people through paying for those services, I’m a huge fan of. That is, I think, way more valuable than anything else.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Absolutely. And I got some folks that’ll buy trips for folks and all that, and that’s fine. The other one I’ve had a lot of fun with with clients on that kind of thought about buying education [00:26:00] is sponsoring speakers to either come out for dinners or for a day. Like, “Okay, we’re gonna make a dinner. I just saw this TEDx speaker. I love what they’re talking about. Let me have them come to dinner. We can talk about it.” Now, that is freaking cool. Now, that might cost you 3, 4, $5,000 to have it, but you have a cool little experience that we’re all there. And I was talking to somebody about this, and there’s, like, brews with professors or something like that. And I’m like, “You’re doing this for your friends with people that you like.” The other one I’ve seen folks do is, okay, as a family, I’m going to say we’re all gonna read this book together, and then I’m gonna have the author come out and talk about it. We’re gonna do, like, a family trip to somewhere, rent an Airbnb. They’ll come out and hang out with us, do a workshop with us. That is something that’s gonna have a lifelong impact. And by the way, it’s cool.
Bri Conn, CFP®: That is really cool. I think it’s a lot of fun, and having that is gonna be so much better than just, “Oh, here you go. Here’s a little bit.” Nope. Bringing that knowledge in. I love [00:27:00] gifting education. I love gifting books. I love gifting anything like that. So anytime it’s that realm, I’m probably gonna say that’s a great idea.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yep. The other one that I love to do with clients, and this one you kind of need a third party for, is to say, “If you ever need money, you can write up a scholarship application or business plan. I’ll send it to my financial planner, and if they approve it, we’ll get you the money.” We’re not giving cash directly. But I love having kind of a third party that’s a little bit of a pain in the butt so you can blame the financial planner. I have a whole bunch of people blaming me for everything, and that’s okay. The other part of it is it makes them do a little bit of work to get it, because now it doesn’t feel like a handout. I had to actually make a business plan. I had to actually figure out the scholarship, or I had to do this. And the truth is, from when clients do that, as a financial planner, I’m always gonna say, do it. Like, if you wanna do it, do it.” But it’s just making it feel like they’re working for it as much as it is just a handout.
Bri Conn, CFP®: Yes, it’s a great idea to have them put [00:28:00] a little bit of effort in it versus just getting it just to get it. Because if they can’t put in the work to write that up for you, then they’re not gonna put in the work to use that money for whatever they’re telling you that they’re going to use it for. I mean, that is just unreasonable to think. So you have to start with that basic part. And if they’re approaching you and asking for money anyway for something like that, they likely already have it written up if that’s their true intention.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Yep. If you get a bunch of money and a family are an issue, the answer is to get a professional trustee to do that, ’cause then they can fight with the trustee, not you. There’s a whole bunch of ways you can do that. I will say, kind of to bring this together, it doesn’t always have to be for, like, good purposes. One of my favorite client had a account called Get The Babies To Love Me Fund, and I love the name of it. It’s for the nieces and nephews, and it was specifically for, like, not school. A doing a once in a lifetime trip or something, or maybe their first car or whatever. Love that. The other one that I have a client working on right now they decided [00:29:00] whenever their nephews graduate from high school or college or whatever else it is, they give them a small amount of cash, ’cause you just have to, and then they tell them all, “All right, you graduated high school. I will take you on one trip for a week. You tell me where. You want to go see a concert, you want to go a certain place, you go with me, being your aunt and uncle, we’re gonna go have that trip. And if you want to wait till you’re 21 when you can legally drink, we can wait till you’re 21.” And I was like, “That’s freaking brilliant.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: Yeah. I received a cruise with a bunch of family for my graduation from an uncle, and that was really fun. It is a genius idea to have that and give it to them. And also, you said not necessarily a good purpose, but I think that’s a good purpose, just not in the typical way we would think of a good purpose.
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: Well, it’s not like, “Oh, you must go to school, you must get As, you know, it’s like just a once in a lifetime experience. And I don’t know, I think when people think about giving, they’re [00:30:00] talking about how do I optimize it? And I’m like, “Let’s do less optimization. Let’s just go be the zookeeper for a day.”
Bri Conn, CFP®: I love that. And I think that’s a great way to wrap it. So when we’re talking about any of our giving, we just wanna really aim to be intentional so we’re not getting to the end of the year and going, “Oh crap, I haven’t made any donations or done any giving.” Anything else that you wanna add to wrap this up?
Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP®: I think when it comes to optimizing tax plans, all that, talk to a financial planner. There’s a whole thing around taxes. But the key is to start with whose lives do you wanna impact? Who do you wanna serve? How do you wanna serve them? And then figure out the rest from there.
Bri Conn, CFP®: Excellent. That’s all for this episode of Childfree Life by Design. Remember, intentionally choosing to invest in moments of joy is just as important as investing in your future. Until next time, happy designing.
Outro: You’ve been listening to Childfree Life by Design. Make sure you follow the show, leave a rating or review, and connect with us on [00:31:00] social @childfreeinsights. For more resources, guides, or upcoming events, visit childfreeinsights.com.
