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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello and welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Practical Planner podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Coleman. Here with me, Dave Haughton. Dave, good to see you today, man.
- [00:19]
B
Great to see you.
- [00:20]
A
Yeah, I'm excited to dive into this episode. So just so everybody knows, you know, the goal of this episode is really, you know, going to talk through, like, just planning for kids. And so we're not going to get too deep into the estate planning. It's really going to highlight, like, different ways to set up your kids and because I think one of the most common questions I get from my clients, especially knowing that I work with people in their 30s, 40s, and, you know, sometimes 50s as well, is like, you know, how do I plan for my kids future? So what we're going to talk about is the different types of accounts, the benefits, the negatives, and go from there. So when I bring this topic up, Dave, you know, what's the first thing that comes to your mind of ways to plan for kids?
- [01:00]
B
You know, the first thing that comes to mind is that you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know how they're going to end up. We all hope, you know, that we could leave assets to our children at age 18. They'll be mature, they'll make good decisions, but you just don't know. So it's really, really critical that you think about flexibility when you're thinking about how am I going to leave assets to minors? Because we never know when something's going to happen. Something could happen tomorrow and you could have a toddler or it could be, you know, not until they're, they're mature. But up until that point, you want to make sure that you're keeping things flexible so that if, God forbid, there's some kind of issue with the child, they have a substance abuse issue, they're in some kind of financial peril, that you're not going to make the problem worse by dumping a ton of money on them.
- [01:48]
A
Yeah, I think, you know, we see all these like, NIL stuff now, right? And like all of these young people getting money. And I, my co host on my other podcast, Jacob Turner, had a tweet about this today, like financial planning for people at nil. And one of the comments was like, I can't imagine what would happen If I made $300,000 at 18. And I think, you know, we can apply that into this situation as well. Of like, you know, ideally, you're not giving an 18 year old a lot of money. Like we all know what we were like at 18 versus what we were like at potentially 30. And so, you know, I think that's really important. And what I like that you talked about is flexibility because I just had a tweet last week talking a little bit about flexibility and liquidity. Like those are the two lenses that I think I look for first in financial planning because after working with people on both sides, I can tell you the people that have liquidity and they have flexibility enjoy their financial lives a lot more than people, regardless of their net worth, that lack flexibility and lack liquidity.
- [02:43]
B
Absolutely. When I was at Commonwealth, one of one of the big questions we get from advisors was, you know, we want to give this money to our children right now. So you know, we think we're going to gift it into a UTMA account, a uniform Transfer to Minors act account, and that's a completed gift to that minor. It's forever their money. And you know, this gets into that lack of flexibility that we're talking about because a lot of times the way that the conversation would go is do you really want to do that? You realize that once they reach that age determination, which is usually 21, that's their money. There's nothing you can do about it. If you have a little bit of lead time, we can talk about ways to plan, but that's going to be their money. And you don't know what, what stage of life they're going to be at, whether they're mature, what they're going to put the money towards. And so just just so critical. And a lot of times those conversations would go just, just open a separate bank account and kind of have a mental accounting that it's theirs. Treat it like it's a UTMA account, don't necessarily touch it. But you always know that you can change your mind and there's no legal requirement to give them the money.
- [03:52]
A
Yeah. And hopefully it's an investment account, not a savings account or check your account. Like that's actually something I see a lot of times with families, they like set up a high yield savings account and they're just like, you know, giving money to these kids earmarked for them. But at the end of the day, right, like you don't really want to put 18 years of cash in a high yield savings account. Like you, you know, this is long term money and you're putting it in a short term vehicle. But I do want to stay on the UTMA side of things because what I really want to hit on here is some of the accounts and some of the ways to really set up your kids. And I think UTMA account is one of the accounts that the average person you talk to I think really veers towards. And it's actually one, I think I steer people away from the most. And the reason why I steer away from the most is for one the main reason that you said, right, like do you really want to give this to kids at 18 or 21, right. Like theoretically they could turn 18, they could have a few hundred thousand dollars and you could do whatever you want with. And most times at 18 you're not going to make the right decisions. I do think that the lower you are on the income and net worth range, maybe the less you'll want to use an UTMA account. I think for some people that are well above that and they're doing 529s plus utmas, etc. That's okay. But when you are, when you're only really able to do one thing right and you're picking between the types of accounts, UTMA for me falls last on the list. Because the other side of it too is what happens if the parents financial situation changes. Right. And so I think a lot of parents are like, it doesn't matter where I'm at, this is for my kids, I earmarked it from them. And it's really easy to say that when you're in a good situation. But if, let's say you have a lawsuit, right, and you lose a decent amount of assets or you lose your job or you know, health conditions put you out of work, you kind of want to be able to use some of the money that you have. You are kind of stuck there. Your kids could choose to go to cheaper school, they could, you know, they have a lot more time to build assets and plan for their financial life and you don't. And if it's in that account, there isn't really much that you can do because it's irreversible once you put it in there, right?
- [05:53]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, you touched on 529s and some people think like, maybe I want to stay away from that. What if they don't want to go to college? It's still a much more flexible planning vehicle because you got the tax deferred growth, the tax free distributions if it's used for qualified educational expenses. And you know, you're the flexibility that you are still the owner of that account. So you can change the beneficiary if you want. There's also you know, some estate tax benefit to it because you know you can do that super funding where you can do up to five years worth of gifting into that 529 up front. And you know, the law has been evolving that there's more and more qualified educational expenses now to a certain extent there's student loans, you know, certain other kind of things like the 529 to Roth you can now do. So if someone has unused funds, you can still get it out of there up to a certain extent. So yeah, utmas, when you're making that decision, unless it's something like the child's had a personal injury award or something that is truly their money, it's probably not the best choice to make. Usually you want to go towards some of those more flexible options or a.
- [07:10]
A
Child actor or like somehow they're generating income. But I've seen people like, oh well the Emma account is great because you can lock in long term capital gains and not pay any tax because the kiddie tax and it's like, well the threshold there is really low before you put too much in capital gains that you start to hit the parents tax bracket. And in general the average person is not tax loss harvesting and tax gain harvesting in their own accounts, let alone their children's smaller account. So I don't really see that as much of a benefit. So for me, on the utmost side, I think there are some use cases that make sense if you want to do like potentially college plus more gifting. I think that's a situation that can work pretty well. But I think the downsides for me, you know, push me out of that. But I hear a lot of people say, and even we were actually talking about this pre this, this episode of well, I don't really know if I want to use a 529 because I don't know if my I want my kids to go to college or if they don't really want to. I think for me, part of my belief is if college doesn't really exist in the way that it does today, they'll probably make some special rules around how you can distribute for different things. Like if just doesn't exist. It's like what happens if you all this money in HSA and all of a sudden we have like government provided health care. They're probably not gonna penalize you for that is my assumption. Maybe they will, but I think 529s, anytime you have more than one kid makes them more beneficial. Right? Because you're like, well what if my kid doesn't go to college. Well, okay, first kid goes to military, great. You can pass it on to the second or the third or hey, first one gets a scholarship or first one doesn't really go. You have the flexibility of changing beneficiaries, right? That, that's one of the most powerful ones. And like you said, you still have the $35,000 lifetime maximum to a Roth IRA, which, imagine your kids graduate, they go get a job, they didn't go to college. And for the first five years right now they can do whatever they need to do and you can fund their Roth IRA from it. Like that's about as powerful as it can be. But the thing I think people get caught up on 529 plans is they, they think it's about the deduction, right? They're like, oh my gosh, like my state doesn't have a deduction, I don't want to use it. But if you look at most states and you put in, you know, 10 grand, you're getting a $500 deduction. That isn't a needle mover for most people, but you know, it is a needle mover. When college cost 300 grand, you put in $150,000 and it's worth 300 and you're a high income person. $150,000 of, you know, capital gains that are avoided if, if you're in California, you got 20% long term capital gains, you got net investment tax, you got another 13% state, you just saved $50,000 on taxes by using the 529. And so I think the really big focus here is avoiding capital gains is one of the biggest tax planning moves that you can make.
- [09:49]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know, worst case, you know, you're going to pay some taxes, you know, it's still going to have a ton of benefits. And if you get to the point where they didn't go to college, you don't know what to do with it. You could also just transfer them the account and then let them decide whether.
- [10:05]
A
They want to or stay for grandkids is another common one. But I think, you know, when we talk about like, well, what is the worst case, right, let's say you don't want to do the Roth conversion or it's really a contribution, they say, but you know, if you give it to your kids and they pay income taxes and a 10% penalty on the growth, a lot of times that's actually going to be lower than just pure capital gains of state fed and net investment tax for A high income parent. And so when I look through the lens of most of my clients in the 37% tax bracket, I'm like, this is a better vehicle for so many reasons. A lot of flexibility. Most states you can use 10,000 a year of private school. If you want to send them to private high school, you know, there's things for trade school. I mean, honestly, I think it's one of the better accounts out there.
- [10:48]
B
Absolutely, yeah. Such a, such a great estate planning tool.
- [10:52]
A
Totally, totally. And I think, you know, a lot of my clients do super funding just because it's like either they have a big liquidity event, you, income goes up a ton and maybe they're like, hey, I'm five years of my business doing this. Well, before something happens, let's use all this extra income. So I think super funding is just one of these awesome tools where if you wanted to do that into an up account or something else, I mean, you're pretty limited, right, because you're going to use some of that estate exemption. And not that we never want to use it, but if there's ways to not use it and keep it open, you know, we're going to be pretty happy with it. Okay, so we talked up my account, we talked 529s. I think in general, the other one that I see pretty often is just a taxable account in the parent's name. And a lot of times for me, I like this one better. I understand that, you know, capital gains taxes and I understand that down the line, if you want to give that to them, you might have to use some of your exemption. But you know, if we go back to the beginning where we talked about flexibility and we talked about liquidity, this is a better vehicle because if you need the money, it's available for you. Two, if you don't want to give it to them at 18 or 21, you don't have to. If you choose that, you end up not wanting to give it to them because you disinherit them, or, you know, all of the bad issues that nobody wants to think about happening happens, you still have the ability to keep that account and manage it how you want.
- [12:10]
B
Absolutely, yeah. And it's just, it's just so important if you take that route, just make sure that you're looking at, you know, what's, how am I planning with this account? Am I going to fund it to my revocable trust? Am I going to put a toddler designation on it? So you just make sure that it's going to reach where you intended to reach. If, if you're intending it to be kind of like a UTMA account, but without all the restrictions. But I agree, it's. It's usually a really great route to take. And you know, if, if it's in a revocable trust or in their estate, it's going to get a step up a basis on that too.
- [12:44]
A
True, true. So let's kind of stay on that, actually. Like, what do you see as the benefits of trust versus, you know, tod?
- [12:53]
B
So, you know, it's kind of six one way, half dozen the other. When it comes to probate avoidance. Right. They're both going to avoid probate. So whether it goes through a TOD or you put it in trust, it's not going to go through probate. You've accomplished that. The other areas are a little bit more nuanced on to whether you want to put it into the trust during your lifetime versus beneficiary designation. And the big thing you usually comes down to is incapacity. So if you were to become incapacitated during lifetime, if it's in a trust, that means the trustee steps in and is managing the property. If it's in the investment account, it needs to go through a power of attorney, which is not as ideal. It's. It's sometimes a little bit more difficult to get banks to accept powers of attorney. There's sometimes restrictions on them, so that can be a little bit more smooth. The other thing is you got to be careful that if you have a trust set up that does tax planning and you don't have the account flow through the trust to be able to do that, maybe marital trust or disclaimer credit shelter trust planning, you might be bypassing the trust. Now, if you have the TOD to the trust, that'll accomplish that. But these are the things you want to be thinking about when you're deciding how to fund your trust and what to do with your beneficiary designations.
- [14:12]
A
Yeah, really good points. Okay, let's talk about maybe some other ways to help, you know, your children out. And so I think, you know, we talked about Muz taught 529s, we talked about taxable accounts in your name. But I think there's just regular gifting is kind of the next area that I would go. And so, you know, I think those two areas that we all know are the most, you know, the most advantageous. You can give a ton of money on a yearly basis without using the exemption is health costs and school. And so I think if we look through the lens of, you know, some of the lower net worth or lower income people, you know, they're not really trying to give on top of what they did. Right. But if you think about it through this lens and you have a lot of money, it might be more beneficial to use an UTMA or a taxable account than a 529 if then you want to end up basically paying for school. I guess you have the other option of you could pay for school and give them the 529 plan and then they could still choose to do the Roth conversion and then withdraw it and you kind of gave them a ton of benefits. But what else comes to mind for you?
- [15:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, and you know, when you're talking about gifting, if they pay directly for school, that's one of those things that is completely off the radar for gift taxes. So when you do the super funding to the 529, you have to report that on a gift tax return and you're using up your annual exemption. At least if you gift directly by paying the tuition directly to the school, you're not using any of that. Same thing with medical bills. So. So that, that can be powerful when those expenses come up to pay them directly. I think the other thing to think about when you're talking about leaving assets to children, and I recently wrote an article about this, is making sure that you're looking at what stage they are in their life, what their income situation is against each other. Right. Because if you have one child that's a really high income earner and let's say they're living in California and then you have another one who doesn't make a ton of money and they live in Florida with no state income tax and you leave them an IRA, you know, let's say 50, 51's going to get slammed with taxes while the other one won't pay as much. Where that's something to look at where they would actually both benefit if you looked at the total wealth you're giving and you look at what income situation they're at and try to maximize the after tax value that you're giving to them.
- [16:27]
A
Yeah, I think we're teasing another episode that we're going to do of why estate planning should happen through generations versus just one plus. But I think that's a really good point. Right. Because in that situation you might give taxable assets to the higher income one and an IRA to the other one versus like, let's just split every account equally. But it also as the parent might be a big reason to say, actually I should be spending down my IRA now knowing that my kids are in a very high income bracket because of the fact that that's gonna help them more. I'm in a lower bracket, I can fill up lower brackets and live off of that versus hand off to them and then pay more taxes. Right. Like at the end of the day, the goal of you and your family and your generation, how do we pay the least amount of taxes over all of our generation's lifetime? And that's, I think, the most important thing to think about on the estate tax side.
- [17:14]
B
Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.
- [17:16]
A
Okay. So I think maybe some of the last ones that I can think about is, you know, just helping in different times of life. Right. So I think, you know, this is paying off some student loans, which, you know, if they've done some of the other things, they probably don't have student loans. It could be helping with a house. Right. So maybe that's a down payment. It could be helping on a wedding. Like, you know, these are some common ones. But I think the one that people don't think about is just like parents and family being the bank. And, you know, the AFR rates are always quite a bit lower than a general mortgage or what a bank is going to pass on. And so, you know, if you have a lot of money and you're saying, you know, I want to help my kids, a really great way to do it is be the bank on a mortgage or help loan them the amount for a down payment. Because if they can borrow at, you know, I'd have to go look. But I'm guessing it's probably low fours. It was, you know, really, really low in 2020-2022. But you maybe now help your kids don't have to get 20% down. They can borrow at a really low rate. Depending on how much it is, you can actually forgive it using some of the yearly amount. I mean, it just gives a lot of benefits and it really helps kids because they're better off being helped in their 20s and 30s than getting money in their 60s when most parents end up passing away.
- [18:27]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. Very powerful tool. But you know, when you do the intra family loans, you just want to be really careful that you're following all the formalities that you're supposed to, that you have a written document, you're actually collecting that interest like you said, unless you're forgiving it and that you're charging the appropriate interest rate. Because to the extent that you don't charge that minimum interest rate. The IRS is actually going to deem it a gift. So even if they pay the money back, so really important to make sure that you're following all the formalities with that.
- [18:57]
A
Yeah. And I think really the only other things that we can think about here, and it almost goes hand in hand, is just like, really actually utilizing trust. Right. So I think as you utilize trust, you can set up trust for kids. I mean, you can do QSPs, stacking with trust. I mean, there's a lot that you can do there. I don't know if we really need to go into. It's really similar to any other person of how you can use, you know, different trusts, but obviously actually using your exemption, actually gifting things is another way to set up your kids. And one thing I want to highlight before we wrap up is you brought up a question that you used to get all the time of, like, well, I don't know about how much all the time is, but definitely more than I've heard it of. You know, parents potentially are doing this where they put houses into my accounts.
- [19:44]
B
Putting houses into accounts.
- [19:46]
A
Is that what you brought up earlier?
- [19:47]
B
Oh, no, no, no, no. So. So what I was saying is, is someone is about to turn 21. They don't want to give them the money, Right. So they've funded an UTMA, they're about to turn 21, and, you know, advisor calls and says this apparent can't give it to them. You know, it's going to be a disaster. They're going to blow the money. How do we avoid giving it to them? And at that point, you're in a tough situation because you don't have a lot of time. I mean, one thing that you can do is you can take money from the UTMA account to pay expenses for the child that maybe you otherwise would have paid out of personal expenses so that you can kind of, you know, take it from the UTMA account and maybe put an equal amount into a side account that is not in the UTMA so that, you know, to pay for summer camp or whatever kind of expenses you can do from an UTMA that you might have otherwise paid out of pocket to draw it down. You could put it into an Utma 529. But the, the, you know, it's really limited. It's really something that you should have thought about when you funded the account, what the implications of it were.
- [20:49]
A
Yeah, okay, that makes sense to me. I feel like we've hit on, you know, every area of this pretty well. I think at the end of the day, you know, if you're thinking about this, you have a lot of options. And you know, I don't think there's any right or wrong answer here. Like I might like 529s for a lot of people, but I think I'm looking through a lot of times the lens of pretty high income, you know, pretty high net worth people. And that actually might be, you know, less advantageous in certain times than using a traditional brokerage account. The parents name for people and the lower belt because of the flexibility it gets for the parents to be able to tap into that and only pay long term capital gains. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of tools here. There's a lot that can be done. Think about this with your tax financial team and your estate planning team and you know, at the end of the day you can switch, right? I think sometimes building you only use 529, you only use, you only use brokerage account in your name. And a lot of times with our clients will potentially do. Hey, we're going to try to cover 50% of college because you know, they want to cover any school school, but the odds that all their kids go to the most expensive private school is pretty low. So you can kind of mix and match these to fit the life of, you know, each individual person. So everybody, we appreciate you listening, please rate and subscribe and we'll see you back here in a couple weeks.