Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)

by Gene Christian, consultant for the Yearly Meeting Foundation

Monthly budgeting. Retirement planning. Stewardship. If you’re like me, you probably have spent many hours during your lifetime thinking about how to most effectively earn, save, and then give all that has been entrusted to you. It’s not an easy process and it’s certainly different for everyone!

God created this world—and everything in it—for his own pleasure. The Bible says that we are merely caretakers of the gifts and talents we have been given. So God has endowed us with certain abilities in order that we can earn and save money—and then ultimately return what we have accumulated to the one who owns the “cattle on a thousand hills.”
But how can we do that most effectively? We need the money we have saved to support us during our retirement years. We also may have educational expenses for loved ones, or costs associated with operating a business, and myriad other financial commitments we know God has called us to support.

So how can we be maximally effective stewards for the kingdom while at the same time honoring the commitments we may have to support our families as well?

For me, one of the best ways to think about stewardship is through estate planning. In fact, your estate plan will be your final act of stewardship on this earth—taking all that God has entrusted to you during life and distributing it to the people and causes you care about at death.

For those who are stewardship minded and have always wished they could do more for kingdom-building causes, one of the strategies we find most effective is what we call the “Give It Twice” estate plan. The concept is really quite simple. It works like this:
When you pass away, a trust account receives a portion, or all, of the value of your assets (your estate). Then, for a period of years, your loved ones receive an income stream from the trust. As a result, their inheritance is received in smaller amounts of money over several years, rather than a large, one-time sum all at once.

After the pre-determined number of years, the trust discontinues, and whatever remains is given outright to charitable causes. Often these “Give It Twice” trusts are set up to pay out to your loved ones about as much money as they earn each year. Therefore, when the trust’s term expires, roughly the same amount of money remains as when your estate funded it several years earlier.

So, if you’re willing to have your loved ones receive their inheritance in smaller amounts over several years (give it first to family), then you will be able to also support your favorite charitable causes when the trust expires (give it second to charity).

This is one example that has certainly gained popularity in recent years—particularly with those who are Christians. It’s just one strategy to consider as you think about taking all that God has entrusted to you during life, and ultimately turning it all back to him in death.

The Yearly Meeting Foundation has resource material and people to help you along the way. The free Estate Planning Resource Guide and the Estate Inventory Form are available here. For more information or to set up a no cost, no obligation consultation with Gene Christian, contact the yearly meeting office at (503) 538-9419.

SPOTLIGHT

We appreciated the broad guidance and helpful principles Gene gave us as we were preparing an update of our wills.  We had an idea how to help future Christian ministry and we wondered if it was practical and if it could be achieved.  He helped us think through our options of how to share our resources both with family and organizations we want to support. He helped us with details we had not known even to ask. Rather than feeling directed to pursue anyone else’s agenda, we felt enabled. We left our session ready to take the next step with our lawyer, with the confidence we had a plan that would accomplish our goals to be faithful with our estate.

Ron and Carolyn Stansell

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