Congratulations! Your financial obligations have been met. Education loans are paid off. Your retirement fund is growing, but probably not as fast as you would like. You’ve done everything right — reduced your debt and saved a bit for retirement. And now you have discretionary funds.
You’ve been reading about what other donors are doing for Franklin & Marshall College, and you would love to play a larger role. Thank you! You rightfully ask yourself, "Can I increase my support for F&M and plan effectively for retirement?" F&M has good news for you; now you can do both.
More F&M supporters are choosing to coordinate their philanthropy and retirement planning with a Franklin & Marshall FLEXIBLE START-DATE GIFT ANNUITY. Here’s how it works. You make your gift now to establish the annuity and receive an immediate income-tax deduction for a portion of the gift. You can wait as long as you want to start receiving payments from the annuity — even years into the future. The longer you wait to begin receiving these payments, the higher the payments will be. You might even consider establishing multiple flexible start-date gift annuities. You can receive the payments from some of them in the near future while allowing the payments from others to grow until you need the income. The beauty of this gift is that you are in complete control of when payments begin.
The minimum gift amount for an F&M flexible start-date gift annuity is $10,000. Cash and appreciated securities are welcome funding assets.
A helpful example:
You fund a flexible start-date gift annuity when you are 60, naming yourself as the sole annuitant. If you elect to start payments when you reach 65, your annuity rate will be 5.5 percent, which is fixed for life. If you wait for payments just five years longer, until age 70, your annuity rate will be 7.0 percent, also fixed for life. A substantial portion of your annuity payments will be tax-free for a period of time.
Of course, some of these numbers may change slightly depending on precisely when the gift is made.
Perhaps you are already retired. The flexible start-date gift annuity can work well for you, too. If you can postpone your receipt of the annuity income for as little as one year, this is a great way to increase your income when needed in the future -- and to support your favorite initiative at F&M.
You’ve arrived at this stage of your financial planning by “getting it right.” Consider continuing to get it right with a Franklin & Marshall flexible start-date gift annuity.
Click here for more information on annuities and to check our gift calculator to see what annuity payments you could expect. And please give our office a call if you would like to speak with someone about this opportunity.