Welcome to How to Retire On Time, a show that answers your retirement questions. Say goodbye to the oversimplified advice you've heard hundreds of times. That said, we've got a special show lined up for today. This is not necessarily about retirement planning. This is about charitable gifting.

It's the end of the season, and we are excited to really highlight that for the next hour or so. Joining me, I'm Mike Decker with Kedrick Wealth. David Franson here, and we've got a special guest to kick off the show. The one, the only, the head coach of the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, Tammy Reed. Tammy, thanks for joining us today.

You're welcome. It's good to be on.

It's good to have you here calling in. I know you're very busy, so thanks for doing the show and really highlighting the importance of charity. But before we dive into that, I'm just kinda curious. You've got so much going on. You've got so many fun stories.

Does your family have, like, a fun holiday tradition, Thanksgiving, Christmas, kind of this time of year?

Well, yes, we have all the traditional things. If and when we get to do them on the holidays, we still do them because we're playing on Thanksgiving this year in Dallas, so we won't get to have Thanksgiving till the day after. And we're playing here on Christmas, so we won't get to have Christmas till the day after, but we still do the traditional things at Christmas and Thanksgiving. But we also have some charitable things we do. Since our kids were little, we've always adopted a family from whatever organization that we're working with at the time.

I was on the board of Laurel House, a shelter for domestic violence back in the Philadelphia area. So we adopted a family or two every year for that and would the kids loved going to the store, picking out the gifts for the age of the child or whatever. It was it was a blast. We would have carts filled because a lot of times they're like, one to five gifts? And we're like, oh, we're getting five.

You know, we're so blessed that we like to give back. And then now that we're in Kansas City, we also do the our Chiefs Women's Organization does Operation Breakthrough and we also adopt a family for that and it could have anywhere from two to seven kids. And now my kids aren't involved with it, just me and

Can anyone do this kind of a thing? I mean, is it easy just to get connected with the family? Or

You know what? The Chiefs Women's Organization does it just through operation breakthrough, but I bet if you called operation breakthrough, I bet there's a lot of places, homeless shelters. I bet there are domestic violence shelters that if you just call one of those, I bet they have a need for something like that if your family wants to get involved.

Yeah. And you can reach out to us here at KEDGIC Wealth or just the bottom of the podcast if you're listening to it this way. We're going to include just different ideas on how to serve and give back. The unfortunate reality is here in Kansas City, unemployment is a little bit higher than the national average. That's tough, especially as we're getting into the holiday season when you wanna give, when you wanna be with your family, and things are tight.

For those of us who are blessed, if we can do that, there are so many ways we could do that. We could gift or, you know, pay it forward or or whatever you wanna call it. Tammy, is there any easy way that you can just kind of gift? Let let's say you have a little extra. You've budgeted out a little bit.

You're trying to do good in the world, but maybe you don't know someone that's really in need, or maybe you just don't know how to give it to them in the right way. I mean, what's what's an easy way that people are able to give?

Well, we just so happen to have the giving machines going in at Union Station this year, and they will be there all the way till January 1. I think they're taking them away January 1, but that's an amazing way to give back. And the fun part of the giving machines is it's like a vending machine where you can put your card in and pick an item to donate to. There's like eight charities in the giving machine vending machine. And you can pick like last year we had goats.

We had donate socks to veterans, beds for different organizations, baby beds, toys. The fun thing about that one is that we take our grandkids down there and they have the best time. And we have probably a higher limit than most people because we've been so blessed that we'll have a higher limit of money that we would like to donate to this machine. And so our grandkids all get to pick one to five items that they will donate to someone. And the fun part is once you pick the items, it just the cards just start dropping down into the bottom of the machine and you can see, oh, I'm giving a goat to somebody.

Oh, I'm giving a dresser to somebody. I'm giving whatever the items are in the machine. And that's a fun thing to do with your family, but also you get to go to Union Station where they are and there's so many activities there as well. So it's kind of like a win win. You get to do a fun family event day or night and visit some of the things at Union Station, but also give back to our community.

The six of them are right here in our community in Kansas City and the greater Kansas City area. And then two of them are international organizations.

And so you just you put your credit card in there. You pick out the gift. And then Yes. This is supported by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

So It is.

I don't know how the story came about, but the idea is how do you make Christ like gifting charity easy? And I I can't think of an easier way than Mhmm. You click a button. Correct me if I'm wrong. A 100% goes to the charity.

The church does not take any money for operational costs or anything. It just all of it goes to the cause. Is that right?

Exactly. In fact, the church of Jesus Christ for Latter day Saints, it's my church, gives the money for the credit card fee if you don't wanna pay the fee yourself. They do all of the operating money. They take care of all that. So a 100% goes to the people.

And there's items I think as small as $5 if you only have $5 and there's items up to like a few $100. And the fun thing my my grandkids like to do now, and we did this several times, is if you push 777

Mhmm.

It will donate one of every single item in the machine. And I think there's I think there's like 35 items maybe. I I can't remember from last year, but just to watch the kids watch those go down and they count them one, two, three. It's so much fun. And the joy that they get from doing something like that is what makes my heart so happy to see that our grandkids want to give back, and they can do it, you know, through these machines.

They're amazing.

It's a way that we can be human and help people. Yeah. Exactly. So do your grandkids

forward a little bit.

What have you noticed their favorite, like, item is to donate?

Oh my god. Goats and chickens.

Who doesn't wanna give a goat and a chicken?

But then there, you know, our older ones are a little more thoughtful. They're like, Sparkle, somebody needs a bed. And like, can we donate a bed? I go, absolutely. Or somebody needs groceries?

I'm like, yes, let's get groceries for someone. The items are very curated by each of the organizations that are their most needed items. And so it's great to see the kids really study the machine and look at them and pick what they really want to give.

I'm looking at the list here that was given to me about the goat. I think it's $86 to buy a goat. And the interesting thing about a goat, it feeds the family. So there's a food solution there, but there's a surplus so it also creates a business that allows them to sell the extra milk, and that pays for school supplies and other things as well.

It's the gift that keeps giving. That's for sure. Like, these are helping people have a better way of life and to provide for their family while also feeding their family.

I see one for a local charity, 300 pounds of produce. Another one, six whole chickens for someone in need. Yeah. Hygiene supplies, week of groceries. Yes.

It's incredible. And you don't know who to help, but you know if you buy it, it's going to help someone.

And someone local here in Kansas City.

Yeah. Maybe not the goats. Those goats international.

But International. Right.

And I don't know what the items are this year. There may not be any goats this year. I don't know.

There's may

not be any chickens.

I haven't even looked at the

list yet. I'm, like, behind the eight ball here.

Well, there's even refugee female kits for those that don't have access to that, which you'd think everyone has access to that. There's a large part of the world that doesn't have access to that, which is just nuts.

It's mind boggling in 2025 that the whole world is not doing okay. So that's where we step in and do our part.

Make it a priority for everyone listening Kansas City or those in the podcast elsewhere. Let us know if you wanna donate to Kansas City. Or

There are other giving machines around the country.

Yeah. I I don't know.

There's a list somewhere on there.

Google giving machines or or DuckDuck or whatever your search engine is. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the time Give back. To give. If you can afford to give a little extra, there are so many people in need.

Yeah. The thing I love best is that it's a fun family activity. It's something you can do practically free just going to Union Station, but then you if you have $25, you donate $25, and then you just go see the sights and sounds.

Tammy, thank you for joining us today and kicking off our show.

Thank you. Y'all do a great job, so I appreciate y'all having me on.

Ain't she great? Good old good old Tammy Reed. Tammy's great. Yes. Let's keep going though with the show.

And I wanna highlight a couple of things about the giving machine that weren't really mentioned. It's interesting that you have the church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and how they're not being selfish or trying to push anything around. Like, they've got here Catholic charities. Yep. You know, one of the greatest charities of all collaborating on a local level.

So there's there's a sense of community here. There's Halo, which is another charity, Happy Buttons, Mayor's Christmas Trees, Science City

Mhmm.

Harvesters, Community Food Network. These are all charities that help the local community here. Right. Things stay local. As I've become more successful in life, as I've been blessed Uh-huh.

It's harder. You just you don't really know how to help people the same or in that certain way. Like, you don't know that random person across town that's really in need. You might have a friend that just needs a good conversation. Yeah.

But to help people that really are in need, and it's going to become, in my opinion, more prevalent. We are going to, in my opinion, experience more unemployment, hiring issues, maybe more layoffs are coming on their way, and we just haven't heard about them yet. People are in need. You've got resources. You can do it.

Thank you all so much for listening to the show. This is How to Retire On Time, our annual charity focused show. It means a lot that you listen to it. We'll see you in the next episode.