The majority of people I meet with who do some level of charitable giving in retirement

aren't actually getting into tax deduction for any of it.

And while charitable giving should be driven by reasons that have nothing to do with taxes,

you should absolutely look to maximize the tax effectiveness of any giving you're already doing.

A donor advised fund is an excellent way to do this, and in today's podcast, I'll show you how.

This is another episode of Ready for Retirement. I'm your host, James Cannell, and I'm here to teach you how to get the most of the life with your money.

And now, on to the episode.

So just a bit of background before we go into today's episode because prior to 2018, I would say

this strategy was not used a whole lot. And maybe I shouldn't say it wasn't used a lot,

but it wasn't used to the extent that it now makes sense to use it today. Well, what happened in

2018? New tax law went into effect. And one of the changes with new tax law is the standard deduction went up

pretty dramatically so if you go back to 2018 the standard deduction for a married couple was

$13,000 for 2023 that standard deduction is $27,700 or if you're both 65 or older, $30,700.

So for the sake of this podcast, I'm going to use that $30,700 number as an example.

If you're single, you can simply cut that in half.

The standard deduction just doubles based upon your married status or your tax filing status.

But what does that mean? What does

the standard deduction even mean? Well, the IRS says you can deduct things on your tax return,

things like mortgage interest, things like charitable giving, things like state and local taxes,

up to a cap. So when you go to file your tax return, you add all of these things up.

Now, this isn't a comprehensive list when I talk about mortgage interest, charitable

giving, and state and local taxes, but they're the three most common deductions.

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