In this festive episode, host Melissa Joy, CFP®️, dives into the world of holiday giving with a twist. The focus is on gifts that aren't just thoughtful but also contribute to financial wellness. Melissa Joy opens the discussion by sharing her excitement for the holiday season and the importance of meaningful gift-giving. She emphasizes how charitable gifts can teach younger generations about compassion and empathy. Need something in the next week? How about financial gifts like gifting stocks, subscriptions to budgeting apps or services from financial planners or coaches? This episode is a must listen for a unique take on holiday gift-giving, emphasizing gifts that contribute to financial literacy and wellness, thereby leaving a lasting impact.
Resources:
Links are being provided for information purposes only. The information herein is general and educational in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to change, which can materially impact investment results. Pearl Planning cannot guarantee that the information herein is accurate, complete, or timely. Pearl Planning makes no warranties with regard to such information or results obtained by its use and disclaims any liability arising out of your use of, or any tax position taken in reliance on, such information. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation. Please note, changes in tax laws or regulations may occur at any time and could substantially impact your situation. Pearl Planning financial advisors do not render advice on tax matters. You should discuss any tax matter
In this festive episode, host Melissa Joy, CFP®️, dives into the world of holiday giving with a twist. The focus is on gifts that aren't just thoughtful but also contribute to financial wellness. Melissa Joy opens the discussion by sharing her excitement for the holiday season and the importance of meaningful gift-giving. She emphasizes how charitable gifts can teach younger generations about compassion and empathy. Need something in the next week? How about financial gifts like gifting stocks, subscriptions to budgeting apps or services from financial planners or coaches? This episode is a must listen for a unique take on holiday gift-giving, emphasizing gifts that contribute to financial literacy and wellness, thereby leaving a lasting impact.
Resources:
Links are being provided for information purposes only. The information herein is general and educational in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to change, which can materially impact investment results. Pearl Planning cannot guarantee that the information herein is accurate, complete, or timely. Pearl Planning makes no warranties with regard to such information or results obtained by its use and disclaims any liability arising out of your use of, or any tax position taken in reliance on, such information. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation. Please note, changes in tax laws or regulations may occur at any time and could substantially impact your situation. Pearl Planning financial advisors do not render advice on tax matters. You should discuss any tax matter
Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and founder of Pearl Planning.
Speaker 2:I'm Melissa Freidenberg, financial advisor. We dive deep into topics like work-life balance, financial planning, personal growth and the intricacies of the sandwich generation.
Speaker 1:Tune in for money conversations that every woman needs to have. Hello everyone, welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. It's Melissa Joy here today. It is toward the end of the year. If you celebrate Christmas, the holiday is just around the corner. I am both racing to the finish line when it comes to both the year as well as my holiday preparation.
Speaker 1:I wanted to spend this episode talking about some of my favorite gifts, which combine two great things. One of them is that these gifts are easy to obtain. In many cases, they don't take up a lot of wrapping, but they're also quite powerful when it comes to money preparation and financial wellness. We're going to talk about holiday gifts that promote financial wellness. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I am also often encouraging clients and friends to consider financial wellness gifts when they are thinking about what to give to family. Many of these gifts are experiential. I just think that they are a great way to do something that can be quite powerful and valuable in terms of giving but not take up space, not be more stuff. I'm really excited to get the thought bubble that I've had for the past couple weeks about the need for an episode like this out into the world. Thanks for taking a moment to listen. Many of these gifts you would be able to pull off. This episode is going to be released on Tuesday before Christmas, but you would be able to pull them all together and have either wrapped under the tree or in certificate form in just a few days. I hope that some of the ideas will stick with you for birthdays and holidays in the future. Without further ado, let's get started.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tie back to the last episode I did, which was on Giving Tuesday, and just talk about charitable giving gifts first. Sometimes and it depends on the person but the idea of giving gifts that support doing good and support others really feels like the reason for the season fits in with anyone who has spiritual and religious traditions that they honor. I always like to lead off with that charitable giving idea. I love the idea of working as a family and choosing some organization or cause as a group that you and your family may choose to give to. There are such valuable lessons when it comes to compassion for others, empathy, understanding the rest of the world. If you're someone who has the opportunity to experience well, that helps you to share with future generations or the rest of your family, a way to do better for others and provide perspective, because, of course, there are many worthy causes that may not have the funding or opportunities that you have. Doing a gift that is doing good for others in honor of someone is a time-honored, well-tested, great gift. Also, doing a family exercise where you're working together to name a recipient you're thinking about doing good for others is something that I always think works well If you're looking for ideas.
Speaker 1:I know in 2023 there's a heightened need for food pantries and there is a lot of food insecurity, even in the midst of a somewhat growing economy. There are also gifts you can give that are companies that support doing well. Perhaps they employ underemployed or artisan or fair trade produced products, and you can support marginalized communities with this. Favorite for kids is to give to organizations like the Humane Society or Pet Shelters. So there's an abundance of ideas, and it's always great to have a family conversation together To see what's important and what shared values that you have as a family you're sharing with each other can be articulated through a gifting project.
Speaker 1:Another idea that I really like is to help to get money conversations started with younger people, so I think it's great when you can consider making important, teachable gifts for kids or people of a younger age. I have given books for young adults that are how to kind of get started thinking about money as a person who has control over your money. For younger kids, there are terrific piggy banks that are kind of divided up for give, save and best, and those can be a great way to kind of parse up money. Perhaps you give a piggy bank with some coins and the kid can choose where to put those funds. You can also have kind of an experience if you talk about hey, I'd like to buy a stock or investment for you and this will be money that is perhaps small but is for you, and perhaps we can do an exercise to pick an investment together and that might be coupled with an age-appropriate financial book or an online savings account where mom and dad have controls and there is an opportunity to start having some money experiential money lessons with a new type of an account for kids. So keep in mind those ideas for the younger people in your life, but then also for other adults perhaps it's a younger, a kid of yours who is now over age 18, or even parents Some great ideas that are investment and retirement related could include getting a person in your life started with a Roth IRA contribution.
Speaker 1:So if you know that they work, because it is required that you have earned income to be contributing to a Roth, but it's often a great starter account, one of the first accounts that people kind of gravitate toward when they're trying to teach people about being an investor and saver. You don't need an employer plan for most people. Unless you're making $200,000 or $300,000 a year, you're eligible to do it. You could contribute to a first Roth as kind of a match or a gift and start experiences early of being an investor, and then you could either walk the person through how to invest or perhaps you put them in touch with a financial professional you could. There are many services where you can open small accounts and there's even a call line or kind of an advice tree that helps them to choose how to invest. That can be a terrific gift.
Speaker 1:Another idea which is related to financials, but not quite there on the nose, is to help someone out who's important to your life with gifts of estate planning. So this might be a gift for yourself as well, but if you are sending a kid off to school. They're 18, 19 or 20, you may not think about it, but they need a healthcare power of attorney, durable power of attorney, because then, if they are ever in need, if they're ever incapacitated, mom and dad swoop in. But there are these kids in your mind, or adults in the eyes of the law, and they need to have given someone permission, perhaps like their parents, and so that might be a gift to yourself, but there are great services. I always first start by recommending that you work with an attorney in person in your state, but if you don't feel like you have either the time or the resources to make that type of investment, then there are affordable digital solutions nowadays. One that is popular and also accessible to anyone listening is trustinwillcom, which has templates across states for these types of documents and are quite reasonable when it comes to their costs, and that can be something that is a gift for a younger adult in your life and, like I said, also a gift to yourself if you're the parent involved.
Speaker 1:But also I gave my mom a couple years ago also an estate plan from trustinwillcom. She lives in a different state. I didn't know any estate planning attorneys there and we have most of her accounts titled in a way where they would pass directly to the people that she wants to be beneficiaries. But it's still important to have a will, a power of attorney, other documents in place, and so that was a gift where I gave her the link to the account, I made the payment and then she and my sister and I kind of talked through all of the different strategies of what was important to her and then we got that onto paper, notarized. Everybody has a copy and that can be a great gift. It's something that is really usable for my mom. It took something off of her to-do list and it made something that felt like it might be a challenge to kind of get done. It made it able to be accomplished.
Speaker 1:When you also, I love making gifts to young families, where they are juggling a lot, they have a lot on their plate, their time is a scarce resource and also come to find out it's really expensive to have young kids. So if you know someone in your life who you care about, who has favorite grandkids, nieces and nephews and they're raising them, it can be fantastic to gift 529 gifts to your adult children and their kids or important people in your life. This gift eases the anxiety and burden of how the heck are we going to save and pay for college. It is a great way to leave a legacy you will always remember. I always know when people have family members that helped to pay for college, because they mention it and it's a great story. It's a gift that keeps on giving when the random popular toy from this year will long have been an afterthought. So another great gift in addition to the Roth or perhaps an estate plan, is a gift of a 529.
Speaker 1:If you are someone who always tends to give by writing a check to family members, maybe you have more wealth and you tend to give. It used to be 15,000 a year, or now it's an index to inflation kind of your gift max. Before you start having to keep track for taxes, I would also consider giving stock instead. Perhaps you have some stock that has grown and you would like to put that in someone else's pocket. But instead of selling the stock, if you give it to someone in your life who may not have as high of an income tax bracket or you may just feel like, hey, they can take care of the taxes. I just gave them a gift. That is a great gift as well.
Speaker 1:Another idea for giving is to just give some practical advice. That can be financial books. It might be a budgeting app, so I know many people use Mintcom, which is a free budgeting service, but that service is actually sunsetted and many of the recommendable budgeting apps and software have costs because otherwise, when they're free, they often are kind of selling your data and information to a variety of financial institutions. So consider giving a subscription to something like YNAB, which is a budgeting tool, or Rocket Quicken has a money tool. So consider that like something practical. Or even a gift of some services with either a financial coach or financial planner or robo planner.
Speaker 1:All of these could be great ways to give practical gifts that are both experiential, which is always a hot button, something that people like to give and receive. They are easy in terms of kind of getting it accomplished, and they also have a powerful legacy effect. So they're an amplifier. They're not something that was just popular for that moment. They can have some real staying power in terms of improving lives and making things better for the people that you really care about. So, first of all, a question Anybody that's listening, do you have a favorite money gift. Is there something that we forgot that we should mention in the future? We would love to hear your ideas, but for those of you who have stuck around, I just want to make sure that you know that it doesn't have to be bought from a store clicked on off of social media feeds. You can also do some really powerful gifting with ideas that are going to leave a legacy.
Speaker 1:I want to leave you with one last idea. Last year, I gave my dad a gift, which was a subscription to a service called Storyworth, and for Storyworth you get a bunch of different questions that the person who receives the gift, or who receives the subscription or purchases themselves answers, and a lot of those are about their childhood or their life. So it's been a really cool exercise, because I get an email as the giver that says hey, here's what we're asking now. We're asking about favorite foods when you were growing up, or how did you get your name, or what was the time when you were really happy at a holiday. So my dad has been writing for the past year, little stories, just a few paragraphs, about him and his life, and you can actually upload pictures, and what you get in the end is both a book for him as well as you can get copies of that book for yourself and give them to others. So I thought that was a really cool gift.
Speaker 1:It's multi-dimensional and it may not sound like it's really about money, but there are so many stories embedded in your life experiences that have everything to do with money. If you grew up without money and now you have more means or resources, or your parents did, you know that those stories of how the world worked and what you did as a family really have staying power. And a book like this is going to be something I can share with my kids. You can even get copies for multiple family members. And so that last gift idea, which feels like both something that's physical and tangible as well as something that has legacy written all over it, and also something that you may really want and they may be proud of too, that is my last gift idea. So leaving kind of a legacy and capturing some really valuable generational stories.
Speaker 1:We are so appreciative of all of our listeners. Our audience has grown this year, and I just want to give you some holiday wishes to say thank you for being a part of such an important community to us. We love the people who are listening. I got a comment from one of my friends who said her husband was bummed because we're the many women money wisdom, but I know there's a lot of wisdom for anyone who's a listener and we thank you for taking the time to an end. Enjoy your holidays. I will close by wishing you some tidings of comfort and joy.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the women's money wisdom podcast. If you found value in our conversations, please take a moment to like, follow and subscribe wherever you're tuning in from. It helps us continue to bring these valuable insights every week. Head over to women'smoneywisdomcom. There you'll find tools, tips and a supportive community to help you gain financial confidence.