Pay It Forward - Name A Charity As One of Your IRA or 401(k) Beneficiaries

My mother was a frugal woman. That’s not surprising. She was born in the depths of the Great Depression, to first generation Americans, people whose lives were governed by a fierce yearning for security. Mom dropped out of high school, but she inherited her parents’ talent for making a penny do the work of a dime. When she died last March, she left a small estate, a portion of which was held in a well-diversified IRA.

Because of the rules that govern inherited IRAs, we kids had the choice of paying taxes on all the money at once or paying taxes on small annual distributions spread out over our lifetimes. For me, the choice was simple—leave the nest egg to grow and pay a small amount of tax each year.

What was also simple was choosing a beneficiary for the account. 

Mom struggled to make ends meet. When she was laid up after knee surgery, we survived on disability insurance, the school hot lunch program, and help from relatives. When she couldn’t afford a car, we walked. When out-sized bills came due, Mom made draperies. Her second shift happened in the dining room, at night and on weekends, on the portable sewing machine she’d given me for Christmas.  

Who helps people like Mom? Who connects people to basic services like food pantries and infant health care? Who saves struggling families hundreds or thousands of dollars through the Earned Income Tax Credit? Who provides supportive, one-stop centers where people get credit counseling, improve job skills, and build assets?  United Way Bay Area. 

Mom sent a son and two daughters to college, bought a house in late middle age, and avoided being a financial drain on her children in retirement. That last thing was important to her—in fact, it was far more important to her than it was to us. Naming United Way Bay Area as the beneficiary of the inherited IRA is how I help my mother give back--tax free! Now that she’s finished worrying about the catastrophes that tomorrow might bring, I think she’d be pleased to invest in other families living on the edge. I know I am. 

Whether you are making estate plans for the first time or re-evaluating, I hope you’ll join me, Kenneth Edlin, Peter Noon, Barbara Joan Deepe, and many others. Together, we guarantee that United Way Bay Area will always be here to help. For more information on making UWBA a part of your life’s legacy, please contact Neil Muller (nmuller@uwba.org). He’s looking forward to hearing from you, as am I.  From simple bequests to sophisticated charitable annuities, we have lots to offer.

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For details on leaving retirement assets to charity see: https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/philanthropy/donating-retirement-assets-to-charity.shtml

Eulogy for Joan Hayes Conklin 1934 - 2018

My mother, Joan, was born at midsummer in 1934, the only child of two first generation Irish-Americans, Catherine Murray and John Hayes. She lived through turbulent, troubled, and halcyon times--and she was a true daughter of those times.

Things long considered immutable and unchanging: Marriage until death do you part, a woman's place is in the home and only in the home, an expectation that you will live the life your parents lived--all those assumptions fell apart during my mother's lifetime. Each of those revolutions was reflected in her life.

A teenage bride, she brought three children into the world, saw her first marriage end, and entered the work world before she turned twenty-five. Much as she loved us, her desire to live, to experience, to love and to be
loved kept her searching for more.

Balancing was among her greatest skills. Balancing the family books, balancing the needs of her children with her own, balancing her conviction that life was to be lived against her deep desire to be a dutiful daughter living within the narrow confines of her parents' world--she was always balancing.

The needs of her children made her brave beyond her own imagining. So many times, I heard her say, "I don't know where I got the courage to do that." She took us through hard times, armed with nothing more than a joke. She had a novel way of dressing up a story. With it, she kept us from dwelling on hardships.

No car? Not a problem. She'd say, "We'll all walk to the grocery store together and buy just enough to fill four bags. That way, each of us can carry one.

As we walked down the short cut path between the houses, we'd string out behind her, each moving at our own pace. To cover the need to slow down a bit so Maureen, the littlest, could catch up, she once put her bag down, turned around, and watched us coming after her. "Don't we look like a mother duck and her ducklings on their way to the pond! Shall we turn left on Woodland and go for a swim?" Of course, we didn't; but she lightened the mood and gave everyone a chance to catch their breath.

A talented seamstress, she made both of  my prom dresses. The were one-of-a-kind creations that we never could have afforded on her secretary's salary. What I didn't know--what she kept to herself as she sewed on the dining room table late into the night--was that we couldn't afford to buy an off-the-rack dress. I felt like Cinderella...and I felt sorry for the poor girls whose mothers didn't sew.

Mom was her own woman, one created in the crucible of the war, its aftermath, and the social upheaval of the sixties and seventies. Yet, she never stopped being the child of her very traditional parents. It pained her deeply that following her own path created was what sometimes a bitter division between them. I think that is a large part of the reason she loved the painting called The Madonna of the Streets and identified with Mary Magdalene. Like the Madonna, she sheltered her children from the storm. Like Mary Magdalene, she poured out what she held dear at the feet of her beloved.

The kind of storybook romance she longed for eluded her for most of her life--but she never gave up hope and she never stopped trying. Finally, in 1978, she met Don Conklin. In him she found her prince--and, I like to think, in her he found his princess.

Their marriage wasn't perfect. But their thirty years together were among the  happiest in her life--and, I would like to think, in his. They loved each other for what they were, they accepted each other's imperfections, and they stretched to be there for one another when the chips were down.

As I wrote to my brother, Kevin, on Monday, "I imagine Don with his hand outstretched, waiting to welcome her to the after-life." Although it will be very sad to lay her in the ground in a little while, I will be comforted that she is lying next to Don. She has been lonely for him these last ten years. I like to think of her smiling up at him now, as she takes his hand.