Welcome to How to Retire On Time, a show that answers your retirement 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 Kedric 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 the 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. 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. I'm just 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 Kedric 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. Tell me, 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. Mhmm. 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 kinda 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 $7.07 7

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.

And 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 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 in the castle.

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 is. 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 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 Regan. 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, AI is making it more difficult to get into the job force. Just chew on that for a second.

And how does that manifest itself? Like, what are you seeing out there? Like, we hear in the headlines that Amazon, some number of people, what jobs are leaving, and why, and what can we do about it, if It's

easy jobs. Not even easy jobs. Entry level jobs, busyness jobs. Jobs where you just kind of you take an order, you put it in there, and you're just done. Those are being replaced, not just by AI, but by robotics as well.

Mhmm. I was at I was at a conference the other week. And and coming back in Detroit at the airport, I got a burger. Yeah. I've never had a wall burger before.

I was like, oh, I'll try this out. And I see in the back, like, it's just a robot cooking the fries. Really? So people need to get an education. People need to develop skills so that they're not replaced, but you can't stop what's coming.

And especially in Kansas City right now, among other places, we have a higher unemployment rate. That's a problem. People are struggling, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't proclaim to have the solutions to all of this. Mhmm.

But look at this list right here. We got was it $60 for 300 pounds of produce Yeah. That's gonna help feed people. Six whole chickens,

five food boxes, like That's all going to harvesters.

Yeah. These are easy things you could spend money, make an evening out of it. Love Union Station.

Yeah. It's fun going there. I mean, we need an excuse to get there sometimes.

Yeah. And you go to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, get a little nice little treat. We go to Science City often because we have young kids. But the Christmas feeling there, it's just it's gorgeous. Uh-huh.

So making an evening out of this, really highlighting that people are in need. You may not know them, but dollar for dollar, it all goes to a place where it's going to help someone regardless

Mhmm.

Of religion, regardless of whatever category you wanna use to divide people, get rid of it. It's going to help humans.

Right.

And then for our podcast listeners or those who are traveling, I just pulled this up here. Gosh. There's a map. The Giving Machines, there's like seven in Australia. I don't think we have too many Australia listeners.

But they're all over The United States. This is pretty cool. Looks like we've got some in Denver, some in Utah. There's three in Boise, one in Portland, one in Eugene, Oregon, two in Washington. There's one in San Francisco, Sacramento.

I mean, they're all over. Yeah. So if you're a podcast listener and you're near a major city, chances are there's a giving machine near you. Orlando, I googled giving machines, and it was there. Yeah.

It's just incredible.

It's a fun idea. Everybody benefits, both the giver and the receiver. It's very transparent.

And it goes back to the original premise. Our mission here at Kedric Wealth is to help people develop a healthier relationship with money. What is the purpose of your money? It's not to become the richest person in the graveyard.

Mhmm.

Who cares?

Yeah. At that point.

Yeah. Yeah. Even the wealthiest person that dies, someone's gonna be wealthier at some point eventually. That's called inflation. Yep.

Like

Isn't Elon Musk set to become the first trillionaire if everything goes right with his new contract, or

do I think he already got that. I don't know. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

But anyway, it's just wild to hear, you know, trillion associated with one

person. And and just not to defend him or anything. Sure. It's not like he's sitting on a trillion dollars of cash.

No. No. No.

Yeah. It's stock.

And

if he sold it all, it'd tank the company. Like, Jeff Bezos isn't sitting on his billions of dollars in cash. Yeah. He's got a lot of money from the dividends paid out from Amazon or whatever, but their assets are illiquid in some sense. It's tied up in a company.

Mhmm.

So it's I think some people misunderstand that valuation process, But regardless, they've got a few extra bucks. Yeah. But so do we. Right. What's the purpose of your money?

You know, there's been an interesting theme the past couple of weeks as we've been doing retirement plans, where I'll ask someone to say, well, what do you wanna do in retirement? I don't know. What do mean you don't know? Well, I'm retiring because all my friends are retiring. Are they happy in retirement?

No. So why do you wanna do what they're doing, which is miserable? Why would you retire and end up worse off from a mental standpoint, from a physical standpoint, from an intellectual standpoint? Work is actually a good thing. And if you think about it, can I nerd out a little bit?

I mean, if we got the time, let's do it.

So what's the purpose of your money is the premise. We want a healthy relationship with money. Forget about money for a second. What about your time? What's gonna give you purpose with your time, your most precious asset, a limited commodity?

You can't buy it back. What are you gonna do with that? If you think about it, well, let's say work is 75% of your time, and then the twenty five percent's divided up into your romantic relationship, your family relationships, and your friends. That's 25% or so. And work is the rest of it.

What are you gonna replace your work with? A lot of people say, well, I'm gonna busy myself with various things. Well, with what? When are you gonna busy yourself clean the house? How many times can you clean your house?

Yeah. How many times can you cut the lawn? How many times can you go golfing or fishing? Mhmm. And so when you start asking questions, you can start to have a more holistic, healthy conversation about your time and your money.

For example, I don't wanna have an existential crisis conversation here, but, you know

Okay.

What's the meaning of life? No. That's not gonna help anyone right now. This is a a podcast show. We could debate that for hours.

What's the meaning of life? Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Right?

These are existential conversations. Well, let's save that for religion for a moment. And let's then take a neuroscience perspective and reverse engineer the feeling of purpose.

Okay.

The endorphins that make you feel like you have purpose. There are three of them. Oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine.

That's all in your body?

Your body makes that? Your body produces these medications.

Okay.

And they feel great. So serotonin is something your body produces. It's an endorphin when you're connecting with someone. All humans are hardwired to connect. So when you connect with a family member, with a romantic relationship, with a friend, it feels good.

When you're rejected, it hurts. Those are the other drugs, norepinephrine, testosterone, cortisol. You don't want those. You want the serotonin, the good connection. Well, how do you build the connection if you leave work and you end up sitting at home alone?

You don't develop it, so you're gonna feel a sense of sadness, a sense of emptiness because this endorphin that supported you, that's given you the sense of purpose is gone. How about dopamine? Dopamine is felt when you accomplish something. You've won. You know, at work, you close the deal.

You solve the problem. You connected two teammates that were bickering, and now they're okay again. There's a sense of euphoria from dopamine. Oxytocin, another euphoric feeling when you get these experiences in a healthy way. So you either have to take the work side of things and develop other activities of intellectual pursuits, of giving pursuits, of and and the list goes on to structure and design it so that the activity itself gives you a feedback loop, gives you these endorphins, you will then fill a sense of purpose.

Mentoring's another one. How are you gonna leave your legacy? What if you spent five hours a week, one day at some sort of library school function tutoring program, or you just are creating a mentorship program for let's say you're an engineer, and you're gonna train up five engineers from college to become whatever type of engineer you were, and you're leaving a legacy. What if you were a researcher publishing your research, leaving a legacy? Those are meaningful things.

Riding out your legacy for your kids and grandkids and generations to come, these are meaningful activities, especially when you get the feedback loop that you share it with them and they're loving it. Yeah. Too often we say, I'm gonna retire because it's what everyone else does, and they're doing busy activities that have no meaning because they don't give you these drugs that your body produces. No one talks about this way. I will even go as far as to say that financial planners, financial advisers have done people a disservice by saying you can afford to retire, so you should.

I believe just because you could afford to retire does not mean you should. You've got to look at the other side of the coin. Yeah. Does it make any sense? Any comments?

Any questions?

Yeah. This I mean, this is something that is maybe not widely publicized. There's probably other people talking about it, but yeah. What what do you do with all this newfound time? You know, I've heard some people say, and I won't mention them by name, like, my spouse is gonna drive me nuts now that he's home.

I need to be I need to be away from him.

Here's a story from doctor Himmler's book. It was a general that retired, and his wife ran the house. So they're both kinda generals. One was a general in the army. The other was a general of the family.

They both spent very little time together as the kids were raised. They were both very, very busy. He retired. He came home, and there was a lot of tension there, if you will, because he wanted to run the house. She was already running the house.

Lot of contention. But their plan was, well, they're gonna get on a nice road trip, rent the RV, and go out and see the sites. By the time they made it to Texas, because they were, you know, they started in the South and made their way to Texas, They already had divorce attorneys on the line. Yeah. They were set up to fail.

Right. And it was because our history, our experiences shape our habits. Our habits, a behavioral pattern shape our habitat, and sometimes you've got two alphas in a habitat that don't wanna exist in the same habitat. That's a problem. Yep.

These are things that are not talked about enough that need to be addressed. So going back to this idea, well, you're supposed to retire so you can busy yourself with randomness. That's not necessarily a good thing, and I wanna give everyone listening permission to keep working. If you wanna keep working, keep working. Yeah.

If you're laid off because of ageism, which is a very real thing, who cares? Get another job. Yeah. That's okay. People will see the wisdom in what you do, and hopefully will welcome you to the fold and keep working.

It might be kind of freeing too to be working on your own terms. Like, hey, I don't need to be doing this, but I'm doing it because I want to. Maybe that's different.

That's the cool part. So now let's let's rope this back into gifting for a second. I've had several conversations where the person wants to keep working because they love it so much. Mhmm. And they say, well, should I work for free?

I say, why would you ever work for free? Because I don't need the money. I would tell them, no. You don't work for free because I mean, if you're working with a charity, that's different.

Mhmm.

But if you are a professional, you don't work for free, because if you work for free, you'll be taken advantage of, and it creates this rift, this kind of a wedge in the relationship. And then they ask you for stuff, you don't wanna do it, and the relationship's ruined. Sure. You should be compensated for the work that you provide. That's how it works.

But now you have more money. And as you continue to work and you have more money, you have more opportunities to gift. Now you gotta be smart about this from a tax standpoint. You don't want to necessarily save more in your IRA because if it's in your IRA and you're alive, you can't easily gift to people. You've gotta pay the income tax.

Why are you paying income tax on it? Like, that that's an issue. Mhmm. Now if you're 73 years old or you're qualifying for RMDs, required minimum distributions, you could donate up to a 108,000 or so. Check the tax year to twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six.

Uh-huh. But around $708,000 or so of your RMD to a charity, not pay taxes on it, the charity gets all of it.

And that can come out of your traditional IRA? Mhmm.

Wow. That's like the only way you can really gift from an IRA. Now if you did pay the income tax, you put it into stocks, ETFs, whatever, then maybe you're just waiting for the right charity, the right time, the right gift, and maybe you're gifting to your kids because you wanna help them while you are alive, not dead. Mhmm. Help them get into the house, Help them pay off their student loans, whatever it is.

Maybe that's your version of the gift. And the annual gift tax exclusion, 19,000 per recipient per person or 38,000 if you're a couple. Okay. No reporting needed. That's kind of nice.

Yeah. But if you wanna gift more, you can. You just have to report it. I think it's form seven zero nine of the tax code. You're just gifting part of your estate exemption.

Yeah. A lot of big words there.

That's why you work with a tax professional, but you can gift more now. And it's cool if you sell the security. Right? You might pay some capital gains, but you can help right now. Or you can just put assets into a growth portfolio, and then you gift it without selling it to a charity.

They don't pay capital gains tax. They're a five zero one c three.

Yeah.

So what if your purpose is to continue to work, continue to create wealth, so that you're able to gift it when you want. Very nice. That almost gives your work, which you already have purpose and already love doing, an extra bonus.

The cherry on top.

I mean, why wouldn't people wanna do this? Yeah. And it's okay if you don't. I mean, if you wanna go golfing, let's talk about that real quick. I don't wanna bash people that enjoy golfing.

Yeah. Golfing can be a very productive thing or fishing or any hobby, sewing, quilting, running, exercise. It could be traveling. Anything could be a productive exercise, a productive activity. The difference is are you wasting time or are you growing?

Happiness is rooted in growth. So if you're a golfer and you go out to the golf course with your buddies just to get drunk and waste four hours, it's probably not good for you. If you go out to the golf course because this next time you just learn this new way that you can a new technique that should take off one stroke of your game and you're really excited about it, and it does take off one stroke of your game. Oh my gosh. And you do that with your friends.

You're getting serotonin. You're connecting with friends. You're getting dopamine because you've accomplished something. You're so excited. And then you've got the oxytocin that also is in there just for the euphoric activity of the success that you've experienced.

That's a really cool situation. Yeah. So then golf can become productive because you're anxiously engaged in growth, in development. When people say, I don't need to learn anymore, and they sit in front of the TV, you're basically just asking yourself to speed up your date of death. If you're busying yourself with cleaning the house every single day and mowing the lawn for the sake of mowing the lawn, and and you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, or because you wanna keep up with the neighbors, oh my gosh.

I mean, what have we done? Oh, you could afford to retire so you should? Ugh. I don't know.

I just We gotta find some purpose is what you're saying.

And it's not the existential crisis. I mean, I love religion. I go to church every Sunday. I think religion is one of the best things that a human can have in their life. But we don't need to have the existential crisis for the atheists out there, for maybe people who aren't Christian.

Whatever it is, you can still find purpose, not in the existential sense, but in how you're connecting with others, how you're challenging yourself, your intellectual pursuits, your physical activities. I mean, it feels really good. You play tennis. Right?

Yeah. I have. I've been known to. You've dabbled or

you mountain bike as well. I do that also. Yeah. Actually, hold on. You had a recent story.

How'd it feel when you kept up with the mountain bikers? Because you were lagging a little bit. You got a little lax.

I ride with people much faster than me, and so I'm always chasing.

But there was one time you kept up with them. How'd that feel?

Yeah. That felt really good. I mean, I was able to keep up with him. I don't know if I should divulge what substances I used, but it was all legal.

You had some ketones. Yes. I did. That's not a weird let's not suggest it was anything weird.

There's nothing nefarious. Yes. Some ketones mixed with some caffeine.

But anyway You've never had ketones before. And for those who don't know what ketones are, ketones, it's just something that professionals or enthusiasts use as a caffeine substitute to help your endurance exercise. Yeah. Consult your medical professional or a dietitian or just read the label. It's it's a healthy thing.

But I used that, and I kept up. And years I've never kept up. And then I did this time, and it felt really good.

Yeah. What experience. Yeah. Was. I loved it.

So anyway, when it comes to purpose of life, charitable gifting, helping others, we're not here competing against people. We're here on our own journey to grow, to develop ourselves, and then our abundance may be part of it can be used to help other people.

Yeah. Isn't that great?

That's the moral of the story. If we had anything today, I think that would be today's conclusion on at least the charitable gifting. Hey, everyone. Mike here, financial adviser, insurance agent, tax professional, and founder of Kedric. Did you know that two thirds of baby boomers say that they are not on track to have enough saved for retirement?

And to make matters worse, we could be headed into a flat market cycle, which could make it more difficult to grow your assets, and so on. Look, these days, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by inflation, market risk, the job market, the economy as a whole, and so much more. There's so much fear out there. That's why having a clear plan is more important than ever. Now at Kedric, we specialize in helping people prepare for retirement so that when the time is right, they can retire on time with confidence and clarity.

The reality is that preparing for retirement is more complicated than putting money into the market and hoping that it grows. As you approach retirement, you've got to consider how you're saving the future tax implications of those decisions. You've got to account for the risks that you're taking now as you approach retirement and even after retirement. This list just goes on and on and on. Putting together a comprehensive plan now, even if retirement is ten years away, can help you better prepare for a more deliberate and efficient retirement plan so that when you do retire, you can potentially get more out of your hard earned money.

Schedule Your Wealth Analysis today by calling (913) 363-1234 and explore what your lifestyle and legacy could look like. (913) 363-1234 or go to www.yourwealthanalysis.com. You're listening to how to retire on time. Now let's talk about tax strategies.

Okay.

So a lot of people say, I wanna minimize my taxes. You can't gift your way to wealth. You can't deduct your way to wealth. So let's just have some fun for the rest of the show talking about tax strategies.

Okay.

In my opinion, investment management is a wonderful thing, and we're very proud of our performance. We're very proud of how we manage our money. But it is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of work that tax planning can have on someone's life, on the benefits of their their life. So when you're looking at a ten forty, when you're looking at tax planning, if you wanna get more out of your money, it's the secrets, I think, are really in the ten forty. Ten forty, that's when you file your taxes, you have the ten forty.

That's kind of a review of of your return.

Mhmm.

Understanding the differences of how you structure your portfolio and where the money is going to go is huge. Whether it's for gifting purposes, whether it's for your spending, whether it's for you helping your kids, whatever it might be. Huge differences between ordinary income versus qualified or ordinary dividends versus qualified dividends. People don't know the difference. Yeah.

One's taxed at ordinary income, one's taxed at long term capital gains. And it's how you invest in your dividend portfolio, how you structure the portfolio that's gonna determine the difference.

Yeah. You were showing me this earlier today here in the office, and my eyes got big. The difference between the numbers. Thousands of dollars every year in less taxes. Yeah.

Because of qualified versus nonqualified dividends.

Yeah. And we just assume, oh, that's the easy button, so let me just do that. There's unintended consequences to it. Especially if you're reinvesting the dividends that you're paying taxes on over and over, you create a larger issue with your income. Or understanding this is an interesting one.

If your income and your Social Security is at a certain level, maybe you've maxed out a certain threshold, and then you go $1 over. Maybe it was interest from your high yield savings that you put in there. $1 over, there's an extra $23,000 in your taxes. Yeah. So understanding how you end a year and then how you start the next year and how you do your planning in 2026, these things matter.

Yes. It's good to grow your money. Yes. It's good to invest. It's good to have a strategy, and we're very proud of that.

But unless you incorporate the tax planning side of things, I think it's difficult to really do it well. Just some thoughts. Yeah. I kinda wanna wrap this up full circle. Common questions that I get, and please add some of the questions that you get when it comes to what's the purpose of your money is a great question.

Mhmm. Is it for charitable gifting? Is it for legacy to the kids? Is it for maximum income? Notice how it's all about the result.

Depending on that result is going to influence then where you put the money. It's gonna influence your income strategies. It's gonna influence your tax, high rate Roth conversions, for example, strategies, because where the money is going, it makes a huge difference. Mhmm.

So let's say someone wants to just spend most of their money as opposed to giving, like, either to their their

Wealthy, not wealthy.

Yeah.

Which category? So where would

they if they're looking to just spend it, like, where should it be versus if they want to, give?

If they wanna give, they need to have flexibility. If they want lifetime income, then you gotta have a couple of strategies based on if the market up or is the market down. If the market's down, you gotta have the ability to take income from a protected source so you don't accentuate losses. Now those who have less might buy an annuity, have guaranteed lifetime income, because you don't wanna trip up in a market crash or a flat market cycle where the stock market makes no returns for ten years. Like, there are certain precautions if you have less money.

If you have more money, you've got more flexibility. So if you've got more flexibility, then you can do a more deliberately designed portfolio for tax efficiency and flexibility.

Okay. Yes.

And so you're looking at things like and this is a common misconception. Let's have some fun with this.

Okay.

People want the highest average annual return. Yeah. That's not what people should be looking for.

Right.

You can have a lower average annual return and grow your money faster than a higher average annual return and grow your money slower.

Yeah. That would seem counterintuitive.

Mhmm. Retirement is won by strategies, not by products. The $60.40 portfolio is a product, not a strategy, because you buy it, you hold it, and maybe rebalance once in a while, and then when the markets crash, whatever. What if you have some assets long term in the market, you've got some assets that are protected, and you you're ready for a market crash. Take income from a protected source.

Your other accounts are down. You're doing more IRA to Roth conversions, because if, let's say, the stock's a $100, it's now down at $50 a share. You can get twice the amount over from IRA to Roth. You pay taxes out of another account.

Mhmm.

So you're not accentuating losses. You just two x'd your IRA to Roth conversions and pay the same amount of taxes. Those are cool things. If you have charitable gifting when the markets are down, think just think about this way, the long term perspective. If markets go down, you've got some assets that are protected that you can pull out of and buy at a dip.

If you're buying things on sale, then whenever it recovers, you've exaggerated your growth. It's leapt forward, assuming that whatever you put money into grew. Now you got more money to give. It's not about set it and forget it. It's not about the product that you need to buy.

It's not about buying an annuity here or buying these ETFs over there, and that's good enough. The oversimplification is what prevents people from getting more out of their money through strategy, through understanding how to change based on the dynamics and the evolution of the market of your portfolio and so on. And it pains me, and the reason why it pains me is because I know people could probably pay less in taxes. I know people could probably pay less in taxes when it comes to income or IRA Roth conversions. They could be growing their wealth probably a little bit better, more strategically.

When there's more that could be done, why wouldn't you? Mhmm. And the answer is because you just didn't know. I mean, do you remember the first time when you came to work here at Kedrick Wealth, What it was like to firehouse? Because Yeah.

You worked in the industry before.

Yes. I had You left. Many moons ago. Yeah. And then you came back.

Yeah. So there was a little bit of a baseline knowledge, but it was a while ago. And, there's a lot to this industry, and there's a lot of things I had never thought about in my life until you started talking about a lot of it. And it's been eye opening for me. I've had to ask myself some questions.

A lot of questions. Like, what am I gonna do about this or that, or how am I gonna plan for this? I hadn't even started to plan.

Yeah. And kind of wrapping up, I would say this section of today's show, there's a certain sequence that must be followed if you are to shape your retirement or potentially not retirement. Maybe your retirement is really you continue to work. Whatever your encore is in life, You've crossed the threshold of financial independence. You don't need to work.

You might continue to work. Maybe you don't. The first question that must be asked that catches a lot of people off guard is, what do you want to do with your life? What's your lifestyle goal? What's your legacy goal?

How do you wanna spend your time? Will it give you purpose, or are you just busying yourself for the sake of just wasting time? What does that look like? Until you can articulate that, I'm not sure you could really put together a good financial plan. Once you have that figured out, then you can put together a plan.

Now planned really is just an overview of cash flow, of just the money flows and so on so that you understand, could you afford to retire? And if you could, is there excess? Are there limits? Are you kind of cutting it close? Do you wanna work part time?

Do you not wanna work part time? You you put all of the projections together, then you explore strategy. Notice we haven't talked about investments or products yet.

Yeah. We haven't I haven't heard sixty forty split. I haven't heard annuity. It's too soon. Heard none of that.

So when you have your plan put together, you know what the purpose of your money is. Is it going to charities? How much is going to charities? Is it going to income, or do you want maximum income? There's nothing wrong with having maximum income in retirement.

If you wanna have the most income, great. Yeah. It's your money. Do what you want with it as long as it's legal. Yeah.

And then you've got the strategies, which is how do you accomplish your financial goals more efficiently? This is where you break down the, hey. I wanna be charitable next year. Great. Here's how we're gonna take your income and accomplish your charitable goals next year specifically so that it's more tax efficient.

And then the year after might be a totally different income strategy. Having that flexibility, the ability to dynamically adjust based on what you want your money to do for you is essential, in my opinion.

Mhmm.

And then once you've figured all of that out, you can then start talking about investments and products you may want.

Yeah. And not everybody does it in that order.

No. Usually, it's, alright. Here's the portfolio. Here's the strategy. We're gonna grow your money.

Here's how much you can take as income. Here's an annuity. Here's what the lifetime income is. Can you live off that? Great.

Here you go. Sign up today. Yeah. Here's a privately traded REIT. It's gonna pay this much cash flow.

Does that work for you? Great. Here's private credit. It pays this much right now. It's almost like ignore the fact that when markets shift, this could be disrupted.

And markets will shift. We do know that. Right?

Oh, yeah.

That happens. It can't be predicted.

It works until it doesn't. Simple truth.

Mhmm.

So that's how it has to be done. And for everyone podcasts or otherwise listening, there's still time in the year to put together at least a plan so that you're able to make good year end planning decisions whether you do IRA or Roth conversions, or maybe you don't do IRA or Roth conversions. Maybe you've got a little bit of room for charitable gifting. There are so many questions that need to be asked. If you wanna discover what that is, go to retireontime.com.

Click that button that says discover what's possible. That simple. Retireontime.com. Visit there tonight, tomorrow, whenever is a good time for you. Retireontime.com.

Click the button. Schedule a thirty minute call with me, and let's talk about your lifestyle and legacy goals. Let's talk about charitable intent. Let's talk about what you want your money to do for you, your lifestyle and legacy goals. And then eventually, we'll get to the appropriate investments and products for you.

Yeah. I was just gonna say, during that thirty minute call, are you gonna mention any product names or any

No. I mean, you might have a question, but not it's too soon. Yeah. I mean, would you feel comfortable talking to a doctor who says, alright. So here's the drug.

I think you're gonna want it. Now what what's hurting again?

Alright.

No doctor's gonna do that.

No. No. They need to first diagnose, and then they can put together a plan with some kind of prognosis. Right?

Yeah. I mean, hey. I'm hurting. Where does it hurt? Has anything happened recently in your life?

Has this been a reoccurring issue? Yeah. Let's run some tests. Like, they wanna figure out the problem before they solve it. In finance, we gotta figure out the problems.

There's no such thing as a perfect investment product or strategy. There's no such thing as a riskless retirement. There's always risks. The trick is you gotta find the risks. You gotta learn about the risks.

You gotta understand the risks, and then decide which ones are you okay living with and which ones you're not. And what's interesting is when I tell people that, some people will say, I don't want that. I don't want to acknowledge there are risks, and they go to a salesperson that says, nope. We're good to go. Guaranteed income for life or whatever it is.

You're all set. You don't need to worry about it. Well, that's deceptive. You want the truth, or do you wanna be told what you wanna hear? I'd rather tell someone the truth.

Yeah. Just my opinion. W w w retire on time dot com. Click that button. Discover what's possible.

David, let's wrap up today's show. Our charitable special focusing on charities. Go to The Giving Machine wherever it's near you. If you're here in Kansas City, you might even see me there. My son and dad, we might go a couple of times a year just because it's so fun.

There are goats that need to be purchased.

We buy goats every year and a few other things as well. It's a real treat to know that dollar for dollar, this is going to someone.

Yeah. I mean, it ranges from $5 all the way up to looks like $250.

What's the $2.50?

That is rent assistance. There are people that need that out here, you know. It's rents are going up. People might lose their job. They might be in a temporary situation where they just can't make it, so it's in the upper right hand corner on our card here.

Oh, yeah. Rental assistance, $2.50. Utility assistance, $95. Family meal kit, 25. I mean,

you could buy cheese for someone.

Yeah.

A family meal kit, $25.

Winter gear. I mean, gosh. Yeah. Reliable transportation, you chip in like $70.

Can you imagine a kid without a coat in the winters here? Ugh. I mean, it just the fact that it's on here means that there are kids without coats.

Yeah. Right? I'm gonna that.

I'm gonna buy that one, at least one of those. Yes. And it's nice that it's going to the right place. Yep. It's going to someone that's in need.

Someone in need that's local Yeah. These are fully vetted partners here.

It just it upsets me that there's still this much suffering in the world. Alright. That's not some, like, virtue signaling crap. That's not what I'm trying to do here. It's just that there are real struggles and people trying their best, and they just need a little help.

It's a great time to do that.

Yeah. This makes it easy.

I I'll tell you two stories here. So growing up, we had a family tradition that and it was usually on Christmas morning before we opened our gifts, we would make lunches, peanut butter jelly sandwiches, or because some people have peanut allergies, ham and cheese sandwiches as well. We'd get, like, a 100 different lunches. We'd all put them together. And then we'd go down I grew up in Seattle, so we'd go Downtown Seattle.

There's a homeless issue there. Mhmm. And I didn't wanna say homeless issue. There are people that are struggling that just are down on their luck. They are homeless, and they're just trying to get back on their feet.

And then there's the addict issue. People that are just they are slaves to a drug, and the idea that they can just get out of this addiction is ridiculous. I don't think most people understand how difficult it is to fight an addiction. I'm lucky enough. I have not had to deal with addictions.

But if you really understand addiction and addiction recovery, I mean, these people, it's basically like you're in a canoe throwing marbles at a battleship expecting expecting that that you're you're gonna gonna take take it it down. Down. It is difficult. It is incredibly difficult. And so the fact that they're there and they're in these positions, that's really tough.

And so we would do what we can, and we would feed the homeless. Right? Or those that were suffering from addiction. Yeah. And if you think that I'm being a little bit verbose here.

But if you think, oh, well, they're just they made dumb decisions, and they picked this addiction, and it was their fault. You don't understand addictions. Life is hard. There's a kink in your armor, and sometimes your kink just happened to be associated with that addiction. Addictions choose you.

Some people just don't have to deal with that.

Right.

So be kind to those that are suffering from addiction. Anyway, so we would go to these people. Sorry. And when you look them in the eye and you're helping them, it's so it's so interesting because you don't know what to do. You don't know how to help them, and you really can't save them from it.

It's their journey. But if you can at least help them in that moment, what a beautiful thing that is. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, if I could walk up someone and just heal them from their addiction or whatever it is, I'd do it all day long. Yeah.

I don't have the power to do that. It's going to be their journey, and there are things that can help them along that journey, but it's still gonna be their decisions. But just to alleviate another human with that, it was a very it was an impactful part of my childhood.

Whose idea was it to start this tradition?

My dad. And we did not wanna do it at the beginning. We really didn't. It's uncomfortable. You know, it's Christmas morning.

We wanna do other things, but that's the morning when everyone's at home, and so they were more in need of of just some help. Yeah. So, yeah. Kids are selfish. We didn't wanna do it.

We were forced to do it. Mhmm. But it really shaped a big part of my childhood.

Yeah. Clearly.

So when you're looking at the giving machine, it's like that. And maybe you go down to Downtown Kansas City, or you go down to wherever you are listening to show, and you help with a soup kitchen or any other place and help people, it changes you for the better. It really does. Because it's not about status. It's not about wealth.

It's about two humans connecting. The second story I wanted to share is the inverse of it. So I'm just some stupid college kid on a break, and I decided I was gonna do fake being homeless for a day. Mhmm. I wanted to understand the other side.

I've helped the homeless. I've fed the homeless. Like, I've done this. I wanna see what it was like if someone perceived me as homeless. Mhmm.

And I went to the thrift store. I got some crappy clothes that didn't really fit me very well. I rolled around the dirt, and I went down. I was, again, living in Seattle at the time, so I grew up. And I I just walked around with a sign that said, don't need food, don't need anything, just want a friend.

And I just sat down the side of a road with that sign. Sorry. I haven't thought about this in a while. What was so interesting was everyone that walked by knew I was there.

Mhmm.

I knew they knew my presence, and no one was making fun of me or belittling me. There was no negative sentiment towards my current situation, which for all they knew, I was just in a tough spot. But it was very apparent because they didn't know how to help. They just walked by. Mhmm.

Humans are good. I know there's a lot of crap out there. There's a lot of reasons to be angry. The news floods you with all sorts of reasons to hate half the country or to hate certain people. If you'll really look at understanding what media is, the more angry they can get you, the more likely you're gonna keep tuning in.

And it's really done a disservice. But when you get two people together, regardless of background, regardless of beliefs, regardless of anything, and you just look at them and and you think just imagine them smiling. Just imagine them laughing, telling a joke. Humans want to be good. Humans are inherently good.

It's just sometimes we don't know how to connect with someone. It's sometimes we don't know how to help someone. Dave, what's your take on this as I try to get my composure together? Yeah. You've been thrust into service positions and had

to help people. Yeah. Helping people is I think it's one of those things we just all of us, once you start doing it, it just feels good. It's almost like the difference between eating a good healthy meal and how you feel afterwards versus just a bunch of junk. My kids are telling me all the time, oh, why does my stomach hurt?

Oh, well, it's because you had that candy, then you had that sugar filled thing, then you had that sugar filled thing. That's why. That's why you feel bad right now. And so when you are giving and you see the impact that you've helped someone, it instantly feels good, and then you wanna keep doing it more. Yeah.

It's

I mean, I'm a Christian, so I'm just gonna say it's the most Christian thing you can do is to help lift someone else's burden. Absolutely. So a couple of highlights to wrap up the show today. Our annual more emotional show, I almost got through without tearing up, and it happens, whatever. But if you don't know how to help people, look up the closest giving machine to you.

A 100% of whatever you put in there goes to the cause.

Yes.

That's rare for a charity to do something like that. Yeah. And it's coordinated with the different charities. It's a conglomerate kind of effort here, which is really, really cool. If you want a more interactive experience, one of my favorite, at least here in the Kansas City area, is called the Flourish Furniture Bank.

I wanna give them a shout out. Yeah. There are people that were down on their luck. Many women were abused and had to leave tough situations. It's them and their kids, and they're getting their apartment or their new house or whatever their living situation is, but they can't afford furniture.

Do know about this place?

Yeah. So they were a part of the they were part

of the getting machines last year. People go there, and they get beds and couches and plates and everything they need Yeah. Just Yeah. Start

Yeah. What a great thing. It's needed, and there's someone out there's a resource there that coordinates it.

You can just flourish furniture bank, Google it. Yeah. You could donate your time. You can help families. I've gone there, and I've helped take old blankets and stuff, and I've set it up to where we're creating rags and stuff.

I mean, it's it's such a cool thing. And if you have kids or grandkids and you take them to this, you're helping them become a better human. Yeah. There's another site, Just Serve. Is it justserve.org?

Yep. It is. Just explain what

that is. Justserve.org, not only is it a web page, but it's also an app you can download, and it is a listing of all of the charitable needs. So if you have some time that you wanna volunteer, you can go on there and then just scroll almost endlessly through all the needs. So it's sort of like an aggregator for service.

Of charities, of nonprofits Mhmm. Of service opportunities.

Opportunities. Yes. And so on. If you're whether you're an individual, a family, or a big group of people, like, we're looking for something to do, you go there.

We are so blessed as a society. There are many people though that aren't as fortunate. Mhmm. If you go out of the country and you see how most of the world lives, it's a very sobering realization. Yeah.

So we want to implore everyone, if you have extra, find either time or money, consider donating wherever is right for you, whatever you can get behind. It's not about being the richest person in the graveyard. I mean, heck, if we could help you do some tax efficiency, free up a few thousand dollars, donate it. Yeah. Gift it.

That's a great reason for it. Yeah. Agreed. But it's, this is what it's really about. It's connecting, it's helping.

This is what wealth is. It's a quality of life. It's not about more money, but more money helps. But more money helps make those decisions, allow us to do these great things. Anyway, I'm I'm being a bit I'm dragging on here, but justserve.org, great resource.

Giving machines, you can look them up, find one near you. Kansas City Union Station, I'll be there several times. So if you recognize me from the YouTube channels, say hi. Yeah. We'd love to chat with you, but do try and go there.

Make an experience this holiday season. Make this season a gift focused season. We are going to, in my opinion, experience more unemployment, some hiring issues, maybe more layoffs are coming on their way, 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. Means a lot that you listen to it. We'll see you in the next episode.