Charity

I was just reading through the responses to a Forum post on charitable giving. And, as often happens to me, my brain has these thoughts that seek to escape. This morning, they are all about the futility of using/expecting our giving to charity to make things fundamentally better. I usually make our annual gifts to food banks, figuring that this is a safer way to avoid charity frauds and expense issues. But, I know, that even if we gave all of our funds to the food banks,

DRIVING CROSSTOWN, my brother and I stopped at an onramp, where a man held a cardboard sign.
“Does anyone give these people money?” my brother asked, then immediately answered his own question by mentioning a friend who hands out bottles of water instead. “Anything helps,” read the man’s sign.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve seen people pass $5 bills out the window.” A single dollar used to be enough for a panhandler to end his shift and shuffle off to the nearest mini-market.

In our 55+ community my husband and I see signs of food insecurity on a regular basis. The line of cars picking up food boxes at a local church frequently fills the parking lot. 
Earlier this year, two of the three local grocery stores started selling pork, beef and chicken sausages–made with scraps of meat trimmed away from higher end cuts–for 25 cents each. 
After Thanksgiving, many residents began setting out their leftover food on the tables outside one of the recreation centers.

I have been checking the Bogle Center looking for the release of the 2024 conference videos. I have enjoyed and learned from the prior year conference videos. The 2024 conference videos are now available.
https://boglecenter.net/2024conference/

As someone who has never done a QCD, this article by CPA Mike Piper (www.OpenSocialSecurity.com, Bogleheads speaker, etc.) was very helpful. Anyone with experience on making QCDs, IRS inquiries about QCDs, etc., have any wisdom or personal experience to add to this?

Connie and I just had our annual financial meeting- how best to give money away. 
Every since I discovered QCDs – you know what that is, right, I enjoy avoiding taxes on a RMD. 
As long as I have to take the money out of my IRA, I like putting it to good use – tax-free if possible.
Where does it go? A chunk goes to church and several religious organizations- Connie’s call. 
We give to a food pantry on Cape Cod and one local.

FOR MY BIRTHDAY this year, my wife gave me a card that declares, “Not Dead Yet.” That might sound morbid, but I laughed. The reason: My wife had misinterpreted something I used to say to colleagues at my final job.
When they saw me at the coffee machine, they’d often ask, “How are you doing, Dave?”
Instead of saying “fine,” I used to say, “I’m still breathing. Count your blessings. Blessing No. 1: I’m still breathing.”
In many cases,

MANY FOLKS DELAY financial gifts to family and charity until their death. But I advocate a different approach: giving generously during our lifetime, or what I like to call “giving with a warm heart, not a cold hand.”
This not only transforms the lives of the recipients, but also enriches those who give, making their lives more meaningful and fulfilling.
One of the most compelling reasons to give during your lifetime: You get to see the impact of your generosity.

AS ALWAYS, DR. SEUSS said it best: “Oh, the places you’ll go and the people you’ll meet.”
In making this statement, the good doctor could have been talking about the benefits of volunteering. Since inheriting some money in 2011, I haven’t had to work multiple jobs, as I did in graduate school and during the three years that followed. From 2012 on, I’ve had mostly full-time work, leaving me with time to volunteer for causes I care about.

SOME 90% OF TAXPAYERS claim the standard deduction on their tax return. Thanks to 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, today’s standard deduction is larger than the itemized deductions of most taxpayers, including those who previously itemized.
But my wife and I are among the 10% of taxpayers who have continued to itemize, including each of the five years since I retired in 2018. Despite the much higher standard deduction for married couples over age 65,

ANDREW CARNEGIE emigrated from Scotland as a boy, began working at a young age in a telegraph office, and eventually started Carnegie Steel. When J.P. Morgan bought the company, Carnegie found himself with a lot of time on his hands—and a lot of money.
Obviously, he was wealthy, with homes in both the U.S. and Scotland. But it’s what he did with his money that always intrigued me: He gave it away. Instead of building monuments to himself,

WITH DECEMBER FAST approaching, it’s a good time to think about end-of-the-year financial planning. What steps might you take?
A popular strategy is to make charitable gifts, both to support good causes and reap a tax benefit. But before you start writing checks, take a moment to better understand your tax picture. Because of the complexity of tax forms, that’s often easier said than done. Still, you don’t need to decipher every number. Instead,

BUDGETS CAN BE a contentious topic. Some people swear by them. Others argue they’re unnecessary if you easily spend less than you make. No matter which side you take in this debate, I’d advocate budgeting for one item: kindness.
I’ve always enjoyed reading news stories about strangers who left unusually large tips for their waiter. After reading such stories, I’d daydream about where I’d leave large tips if I was that rich. One day,

ONE OF THE CLEARER mandates for a Christian such as myself is to help the poor. Jesus said the poor “will always be with you.” It doesn’t take amazing powers of observation to see that he was correct. There are lots of ways to help the poor, with churches and thousands of worthy charitable institutions working to address the causes and effects of poverty.
Many years ago, I became acquainted with a large Christian organization called Compassion International.

FELLOW HUMBLEDOLLAR contributor Marjorie Kondrack concluded a recent article by saying she’d “never been to Paris or Prague, Timbuktu or Tokyo.” I had always thought of Timbuktu as an imaginary, faraway place. Only recently did I discover that it actually exists.
Timbuktu is a town in Mali with a population just north of 50,000 people. But according to Wikipedia, thanks to gold and salt that could be found in the area, it was once a “world-renowned trading powerhouse” with a population of 250,000.