Bad Times Make Good Gifting Opportunities

In my October 13 Post, I discussed how this is an opportune time to make gifts to family members because of reduced stock values. The same could also be said for real estate and perhaps closely held businesses.

Recent articles from two leading newspapers follow these same lines. In an October 18th Wall Street Journal article, captioned "Why Now Is the Time to Help Your Heirs," the Journal mentions several techniques to make generational transfers, including GRATs (which I have written about in the past), gift and sales to Intentionally Defective Trusts, and family loans. These go hand in hand with the Family Partnership concept that I wrote about last week. In the charitable arena, the Journal also mentioned Charitable Lead Annuity Trusts.

The second article was an October 16th New York Times piece by Warren Buffett in which he urged investors to continue to buy American stocks and take advantage of buying opportunities. As Buffett says, "be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." As Buffett's October 16th article states: yes the financial world is a mess, but it also presents opportunities in the long term for generational transfers.