Dylan Potter

Sunflower with raise of sunshine peaking through

Street$marts: Enhancing Your Charitable Giving–The Role of Donor Advised Funds and Qualified Charitable Distributions 

Today we’ll be discussing donor advised funds and qualified charitable distributions, which are two popular methods of charitable gifting. If you are one of the many individuals that donate to charity on a regular basis, you may find yourself wondering what your options are outside of the usual cash donation. Donor Advised Funds and Qualified Charitable Distributions are two methods of charitable giving that allow an individual to be strategic and thoughtful about how and when their donations are made.

READ MORE
Parents helping daughter walk

Street$marts: 529 College Savings Plans–A Comprehensive Guide 

When it comes to saving for college, parents and guardians often search for tax-advantaged options that offer flexibility and growth potential. One of the most popular vehicles for this purpose is the 529 College Savings Plan. Introduced in 1996, 529 plans provide families with a tax-efficient way to invest money for education expenses. In this guide, we’ll dive deep into what 529 plans are, how they are taxed, key strategies to consider, how to change beneficiaries, and how withdrawals are taxed. Personally, I’m a fan of 529 plans. I have three New York 529 plans, one for each of my three boys.

READ MORE
multi generation family sitting on a log looking out a view from a mountain top

Lessons on Dying from Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett often says that he wants to be remembered as a teacher. “That would be very flattering, I would feel, if that was on my tombstone,” he said in an interview in 2018. He is the world’s greatest investor, but he has the uncanny ability to break things down in such a way that they can be understood in the living rooms of ordinary Americans. Like my colleague Sarah Swan wrote last week, his wisdom is timeless. At age 94, Buffett recently shared his strategy for how to pass wealth on to the next generation while minimizing family conflicts. His advice is applicable, he says, even if you aren’t a billionaire like he is.

READ MORE
two girls walking down a path in golden light

Things I’ve Learned

I have a habit of jotting down the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and while they might not always be captivating to others, I find them valuable. I think this habit goes back to my time in the Army, where we carried small, hardcover green notebooks in our cargo pockets. These “green notebooks” became repositories for countless notes, lessons learned, mission plans, and guidance. In fact, carrying a green notebook and a pen was an unspoken expectation for every leader—always ready to capture the insights of the moment.

READ MORE
American Flag waving in the wind behind a boat

Don’t Bet Against America, We’ll be Okay

We are at the time of the cycle where talk turns to the election. If this update is too long, we have a simple message: regardless of who wins the election, don’t bet against America, we’ll be okay.

READ MORE
car on dirt road in foggy field with man looking at a map

The IRS Attempts to End the Inherited IRA Confusion

In long-awaited final rules, the IRS finally “clarified” the controversial 10-year rule for inherited individual retirement accounts (IRAs). The new guidance, set to take effect in 2025, addresses a key question that has puzzled many advisors, accountants, attorneys and beneficiaries since the passage of the original SECURE Act five years ago.

READ MORE
Father and child on beach in California

Taxes and the Cost of an Obsession

“Return on hassle” refers to the concept of evaluating the time and effort required for a financial decision in addition to its expected financial return. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has another name for this idea: “Return-on-invested-brain-damage.” If the return isn’t high enough to justify the brain damage or hassle, move on. For real estate investors, this includes the mental and physical labor involved in finding tenants, maintaining properties, and managing debt, among other responsibilities. These are “hassles” that traditional investments like stocks and bonds don’t typically entail. An obsession with tax avoidance is perhaps my favorite topic when considering the “return on hassle.”

READ MORE
Canoe on lake front

What is the Value of a Memory?

Awareness is the bedrock of financial planning. Awareness of incoming and outgoing cash flows, of risks and returns, of various investment vehicles, of economic conditions, of goals. Awareness. After awareness comes control. Controlling cash flows by directing them in the right investment vehicles at the right time over a long time-horizon to achieve those goals. For perhaps 70% of our lives this is what we are doing. We are saving, investing, and accumulating. Part of accumulating wealth is keeping our burn rate in check. As NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway says, “Rich is having passive income greater than your burn. People on a path to money focus on their earnings; people on a path to wealth also focus on their burn.”

READ MORE
old apple computer

Diversify

At Howe & Rusling, we read a lot. I just picked up Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox by Charles Ellis. The book is a walk down memory lane, especially if you are from Rochester. For those that know the story, after graduating from the University of Rochester and Harvard Business School, Joe Wilson, inherited the struggling Haloid Company from his father. Haloid teetered constantly on the verge of irrelevance and bankruptcy. Over the course of two decades after World War II, Joe Wilson poured nearly every personal and company dollar into the R&D that eventually led to “dry coating xerography”—a method that used electricity, physics, and dry materials to create copies rather than the traditional methods that relied on “wet chemicals” controlled by Eastman Kodak.

READ MORE