Year-end financial planning can make a major difference, and there is still time to act. On this episode of Metcalf Money Moment, Jeb, Ethan and Eric revisit key moves to make before December 31, including maximizing 401(k) contributions, reviewing taxes, considering Roth conversions, harvesting losses, and completing required minimum distributions. They also discuss HSAs, qualified charitable distributions, donor-advised funds, beneficiary reviews, insurance, and engaging your tax preparer early.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

✅ Why September and October are ideal times to review your income, taxes, retirement contributions, and financial changes before year-end deadlines.

✅ How Roth conversions, tax-loss harvesting, and portfolio reviews can factor into year-end tax planning and why your current income level matters.

✅ Why you should review 401(k) and HSA contributions before December 31, understand RMD requirements, and consider qualified charitable distributions if you are eligible.

✅ How donor-advised funds, beneficiary reviews, insurance reviews, and early communication with your tax preparer can help you prepare for the year ahead.

Tune into the Metcalf Money Moment podcast for expert insights on wealth management and retirement planning! Join Jeb, Ethan, and Eric for practical Estate Planning strategies that you can implement to unlock financial clarity and confidence. Listen now to inspire your financial journey!

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Why September and October are the time to start year-end financial planning

04:06 Roth conversions and tax-loss harvesting as year-end tax strategies

09:05 Maximizing 401(k) contributions and making the most of your HSA

14:55 Qualified charitable distributions and donor-advised funds

17:36 Reviewing beneficiaries, trusts, insurance, and other financial housekeeping

20:15 Why you should engage your tax preparer before the new year

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

💎 Don’t wait until December to start your year-end financial checklist. Reviewing your income, taxes, retirement contributions, and financial changes earlier gives you more time to act before deadlines and processing cutoffs.

💎 A Roth conversion may be worth evaluating during a lower-income year, while tax-loss harvesting can help offset income or capital gains in taxable investment accounts.

💎 Retirement accounts, HSAs, RMDs, charitable giving, beneficiaries, trusts, and insurance policies all deserve a year-end review to make sure your financial plan still reflects your current situation.

DISCLAIMER:

This information is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized tax or legal advice. We recommend discussing your particular situation with a qualified tax or legal advisor.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Metcalf Partners - Website

Jeb Graham - LinkedIn

Ethan Hutcheson - LinkedIn

Eric Wymore - LinkedIn

Welcome to Metcalf Money Moment, the podcast. Unlock financial clarity and confidence with expert insights to achieve your goals.Hosted by Jeb Graham, Ethan Hutchison, and Eric Wymore. Each episode offers decades of combined expertise in wealth management, retirement planning, and more. Join us for practical strategies to inspire your financial journey. Now, your hosts.

Welcome to Metcalf Money Moment, the podcast. My name's Jeb Graham, here with Ethan Hutchison and Eric Wymore. How we doing, guys?

Doing great.

Doing great.

Doing great. It's, uh, and we're on the f- the tail end of the year here. We're not quite to Q4, but, uh, we're getting there. And, um, you know, one of the things we did back in January, and we do this every year, well, I guess every year since we've been podcasting, is, is do a podcast about, you know, things that you can do now, uh, to prepare for the end of the year. And the deal is, we did that in January, and now here we're coming up on Q4. Uh, and some people have probably done some of those things. Some people haven't. There's still time.You know, you've got three months left in the year. So, um, a couple of things that we kind of wanted to go through today. Uh, y- obviously, when you're, when you're thinking about your financial life, there's cer- certain things that you can do up until you file your taxes next year, and there are certain things that need to be done by December 31st of this year. And, uh, a couple of stats here is the average employer 401match today, now, is 4.7% of employees' pay, right? So, you have time between now and the end of the year if you have not maximized, uh, the amount that you can get out of your employer as far as their, their, uh, their match to your 401, now's the time that you can actually start working on that. Another thing is if you forget to take your RMD. You know, our job as financial advisors is to help people make sure that they take their RMDs. Unfortunately, there's people that have accounts spread out all over the place that have to go out there and, and physically take an RMD out of each one of them. If you don't take your RMD by December 31st, you're gonna have to pay a 25% tax and penalty, uh, on that RMD.So, I guess the point is, is, is right now we're coming into Q4, and it's a great time, uh, to start thinking about everything that needs to be done by year-end. Uh, and December 28th is not the time to think about it. And as you get into, like, I would even say November and December, what's gonna happen is by that time your CPA is probably gonna be busy, your financial advisor, hopefully us, uh, is gonna be busy, and there's gonna be a lot of people with a lot of requests. Uh, custodians have processing deadlines, so if you're trying to do a QCD, you're trying to do an RMD, you're trying to do... give money to charity, they have processing deadlines because of all the requests that come in at the end of the year. Uh, and you simply might not have enough, uh, time to, to actually get done what you need to get done. And so, I would also say in September and October are great times to start looking at year-end and asking, number one, "Has anything changed in my financial life? Is there anything I can do between now and the end of the year because of a certain change that's happened? Uh, what does my income look like this year?" This is a good time to do projections because you've got three-fourths of your year's income, uh, and maybe you have a better idea of what your bonus is gonna be or what your company's gonna actually make this year and what that income tax picture looks like.

Um, you know, you can also look at, you're gonna have a good idea of what kind of capital gains and losses you might have, uh, to report for this year, and maybe what's gonna happen between now and the end of the year, uh, that you can plan for. Obviously, have I maximized my retirement accounts and everything that's available to me? Uh, are there tax, tax planning or charitable giving opportunities that you could be considering between now and the end of the year? Uh, and these are all things that might need to happen by December 31st.So, I think this is just a good time of year for us to go back and revisit what we already talked about in January so that you can kind of do a checkup for yourself as to where you're at with these things and what can be done between now and the end of the year. So, obviously one of the big ones, and the biggest thing probably that most of our clients plan for, is taxes. Uh, so Eric, let's talk about, about taxes and things people can do between now and the year-end.

Y- yeah, absolutely. You hit it on the head. That is definitely one of the things that, you know, our conversations more and more with clients are just centered around taxes and, and how to, you know, how, how to mitigate them or how to just play the tax game, so to speak. And, and you mentioned earlier, yeah, year-end is a perfect time to evaluate, you know, some of those income levels that you've made.And with that in mind, you're, you're looking at to see if it makes sense to do a Roth conversion. Um, so Roth conversion, and I'll get to that here in a second, what it is, but basically for those of you that, that, you know, i- if you've gone through September, you've gone through, you know, again, three-quarters of the year, you kind of have a general idea of what your income's gonna be. Certainly if you're a W2 employee, you got a really good idea. If you're a retiree and you haven't started RMDs yet, or even better, maybe you're a retiree that hasn't started Social Security yet, you know, a Roth conversion is definitely something you might want to consider. Um, you know, someone that retired during the year is another person that's really a good, uh, candidate for Roth conversions 'cause their income is a lot less, uh, than what is, you know, than what is, what it's been traditionally. Um, someone that's experienced, you know, kind of an unusually low income year, maybe you're a sales or commission or, you know, for whatever particular reason, it's just your, your income level is down. That's a great opportunity to look at a Roth conversion. Um, or someone who just expects their tax rates or taxable income to be higher. You know, we got a lot of clients that have pensions, um, you know, that they're gonna receive, and sometimes they'll be, you know, their income in retirement might even be higher than what it is, uh, while they're working, or very similar. Um, so those are, those candid- those are really good candidates for a Roth conversion, or if you're just young, you know. Uh, but anyway, you know, basically what a Roth conversion is, you're moving money from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. You're gonna take that That, uh, distribution out of your traditional A- IRA, and you're gonna convert it over to your Roth. And so you will have an ordinary income, uh, bump up during that tax year. But the nice thing is, is with a Roth IRA, is all the... You're gonna, you know, have all the tax-free growth, and you get, you know, qualified withdrawals over time or at, at, in the future where you're not paying any taxes on it. So you're just taking the tax bill now when you're at maybe a lower tax bracket, uh, than you will be in the future. Um, so it's a great opportunity to take a look at that, uh, during those years. Again, if c- if you had a couple of those, maybe this... You know, maybe income's a little bit different, or you just retired or getting ready to retire and you haven't started RMDs or started Social Security, definitely opportunities for a Roth conversion.

Um, I think another thing that we look at a lot, and we actually do this throughout the course of the year, but that's harvesting losses. And we've talked about this concept quite a bit. But basically, if you have a taxable investment account, so an investment account that's maybe titled in the name of a trust or jona- joint account with you and your spouse or even an individual account, over the course of the year, sometimes some of the investments that are made have a loss. And so what we'll do is we'll harvest that loss, meaning we will sell that position and then immediately buy something similar to it, so you stay invested. We're not timing the market, but we're just gonna harvest the loss and then reinvest it. And then what that happens is now we have a tax loss, okay? And that tax loss, we can do a couple of different things with it. One, you can actually offset some of your income up to $3,000 on your tax return each year, uh, or you can use that to offset future, offset capital gains. And we'll do that a lot of times where we have a position that's done really well, and we need to kind of reduce it because it's getting to be a larger position in the portfolio. So in order to do so, we'll harvest some of those gains, and then we'll take some of the losses that we've had in a portfolio and offset that gain. So we do that, you know... It's a great time to make sure if you haven't done it, to do it before the end of the year, but typically, we'll do that on a monthly basis, uh, here in our portfolio.So always, always a good time to clean up your portfolio, uh, do any kind of other rebalances that you need to do. That's a great time to do here as we get towards the end of the year. You know, certainly exit investments that you no longer want. Um, all great ideas to kind of just do a general portfolio review. Um, and we do that quite, quite a bit. But I think, you know, we talked a little bit about taxes. Now we're gonna kind of talk a little bit about, or Ethan's gonna share how to kind of avoid some of those taxes, and so we're not having to pay that big bill.

That's right. Yeah. So if, if you're on, you know, a fixed salary and you set your 401contributions up at the beginning of the year. Let's say in 2025, you set your contributions up to hit the max for that 2025 tax year was 23,500. So you, you make it through January to December, you hit your match or your max, excuse me, 23,500, and then your year resets January 1. Well, January 1, the IRS, uh, upgraded their max contribution to a 401from 23,500 to 24,500, so a whole $1,000. So if your salary remains stagnant and you, you didn't change your contribution rate, you're only gonna get 23,500 in from January to December in 2026 when you could be eligible for additional $1,000. So I always say at the beginning of the year, January or so, like we talked about, you know, nine months ago, h- what do we need to do to, to set up our contributions to, to get them close to the max for your 401? So if you haven't done that yet, now's a good time to, to go back, look at your salary, and kind of adjust your contribution so that you're gonna hit that 24,500 max for the, for the 2026 tax year.If you're on variable compensation, you've got bonus structure, uh, some sort of distributions or commissions, that's also a good time right now to kind of check where you're at for the year and make sure your 401is set up to where you're gonna get that full 24,500 in there. Now, it's a little bit different from a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA because you have up until, um, the tax year, the tax filing deadline, April 15th to 27, to make those contributions for the 2026 tax year. As far as employer plans are concerned, so SEPs... Or sorry, SIMPLE IRAs, 401s, and 403s, you've got to do that in the trailing 12-month calendar year. So between January 1 and December 31st, you've got to get those contributions in. So make sure that depending on your pay schedule, if your goal is to maximize that particular account, that you've set it up to where you're gonna be able to hit that max by December 31st. Beautiful part about 401s, you don't need to wait until early enrollment to adjust your contribution rate. That's a common misconception that we hear. You can adjust your 401contribution rate a- at any point in time during the year. You do not need to wait for open enrollment. So if you're listening to this, now's a good time to go ahead and check. Maybe you're at 18,000 so far this year of contributions. You've got a little bit of headroom there. You're only going to hit 22,000. Just make a quick adjustment on your contribution percentage to kind of get you up there. Um, it's a really good time to look at your health savings account contributions as well. So if you're part of a high deductible health plan, you have an HSA attached to that, getting as much money into that HSA for future healthcare expenses is, is paramount to the success or the purpose of that HSA.

So if you're going to Walgreens to buy a prescription and it's a $30 prescription, just use your, your, your, your credit card or your debit card for that and try to keep your HSA balance intact for future expenses like LASIK or a surgery or some, some expense you want to do before retirement that an HSA can, can qualify for. So use those HSAs strategically, but again, make sure you're maxing those out for the future so you can get that triple tax exemption as far as the HSA is concerned Uh, a big one and a, and an ironic one, I just got off the phone with a client earlier today, uh, about required minimum distributions, making sure that you're hitting those RMDs with your pre-tax dollars if you are in the RMD stage.So depending on your birthday, it's gonna be age 73 or 75, that's gonna be your first year of your required minimum distribution. Make sure you're, like Jeb alluded to earlier, make sure you're talking to your advisor, letting them know of maybe assets you have outside. A particular case that stands, stands in, in my head is, um, an individual just retired in February of this year, didn't really mention much to me about outside assets, discovered there was a small 401out there that we need to, to take into account when we're calculating that required minimum distribution. So making sure you're consolidating, bringing accounts together, or just be aware of outside accounts I think is very important with RMD, because the, the 25% penalty that Jeb mentioned is, is not a fun penalty that you have to pay.Um, back on the maximizing retirement accounts, one point that I, I forgot to mention, uh, this goes to the HSA as well. When it comes to maximizing or putting money into a re- a retirement account, it's a terrible saying and it doesn't make much sense, but I say it all the time. Every year that you go by that you don't max that out is one year that you go by that you can't max it out again. So you can't go back and say, "Hey, I didn't max out my 401in 2022. I want to do that." The ship's sailed. You can't do that, so make sure you're really being cognizant of that and, and trying to get that max in there if that's something that you want to do.Um, looking ahead at qualified charitable distributions, so QCDs that Jeb mentioned earlier as well, if you're charitably inclined, uh, and you, you maybe have a, a, a, a church or a cause or a 501[c][3] that you want to donate to, a great way to do that is a QCD if you qualify. So rather than just cutting a check from your checking account, sending it to the church or the institution that you're trying to donate to, you can use your... You can offset your income by using a qualified charitable distribution and offset your RMD that can virtually null and void that particular distribution on an income tax return. So if you've got a $5,000 RMD, you want to donate $2,000 to the church, you can donate that $2,000 straight out of your IRA, and now your RMD's only about $3,000. So it's a unique way to, to push some of those funds over to a, a, a cause, you know, that might be important to you guys.

So looking ahead, and I won't dig, dig too deep into that because Jeb's got, you know, some charitable giving and stuff that he wants to talk about, but Jeb, what are some things... I, I would say less financial things that you can talk about, more housekeeping things, uh, to remember.

Yeah, yeah. Obviously that's something that's kind of a... You talked about 401plans, Ethan, and that being kind of a use it or lose it, right? You've got till December 31st. It's use it or lose it.Well, it's kind of the same thing with charitable giving with one exception that I'm gonna go over here in a minute, but I do want to re- reiterate, uh, just the QCDs, right? QCD, qualified charitable distribution. When you think about charitable distributions, it's the most tax beneficial, uh, charitable contribution you can do. So we have clients that... And by the way, we have clients that have come in, have had IRA RMDs for a few years before they actually met us, and they've been literally just cutting checks out of their checking account to charities, not realizing that they could do a qualified charitable distribution. And we tell them that they could do that, and they, and their eyes light up like, "Oh my gosh, I've been paying taxes on this money that I've been taking out of my IRA every year, and I could have literally been sending that directly to, um, to a charity and it would have been, you know, a much bigger tax benefit than I got." And a lot of times when people, because of, because the standard deduction is higher than it used to be, uh, a lot of times people that are actually just making a charitable distribution don't get that much of a tax benefit out of it because it might fall underneath their, uh, standard deduction and they might not get a, an additional benefit out of that.So there's a couple of things that you can do about that as well, and one of those is what's called a donor-advised fund. Now, with donor-advised funds, they do, you can do something that's called stacking, okay? And what that would be is... And a do- To, to give you I guess a little bit of background, and we did do a podcast on this and you can always find it on YouTube or Spotify just on charitable giving. Um, but what a donor-advised fund is, is if you go to a community foundation, a great one that we have here in Kansas City is the Kansas City... or the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, and you can set up what's called a donor-advised fund. And what that is, it, it's a fund that's built for you to give money to charities. The difference between giving it directly to a charity and to your donor-advised fund is that once you give it to the donor-advised fund, you get to take the deduction in the year that you give it to the donor-advised fund, but then you get to choose when you send it to the charity.So you might give, g- make a big contribution this year, let it grow for a few years, or make multiple contributions and then give it all at one time to a charity. But it gives you full flexibility about when you're gonna give it to that charity. And so when we talk about stacking, let's say that you are, you know, you don't, uh, usually get a lot of deductions because your standard deduction's higher. Typically what somebody can do is if they wanted to give money to a charity over the next four years, they could give it all to their donor-advised fund in one year.

So instead of giving five different $20,000 donations, they can give one $100,000 donation to their donor-advised fund this year. The money grows, and then they can incrementally give that out to the charity. And guess what? Now they get this big tax deduction in the year that maybe they need that tax deduction.So, so I guess th- the bottom line is with charitable giving, if you're thinking about doing that, make sure you talk to your financial advisor first and think about what is gonna be, and your accountant, and think about what's gonna be the most beneficial, uh, way to do that. So, um, you know, I would say that where, where charitable giving can really come into play are years that you have an unusually high income year. You know, if you give a big contribution to a donor-advised fund, that's gonna help a lot. Uh, if you sell a business, you know, and you're gonna have a tax liability in that way. You get a larger bonus than what you typically do, uh, or if you have a year with any other sort of, uh, unusually large capital gains, those are great years to think about using a charitable deduction as a way to offset that. So, uh, I would say, too, just some other housekeep- keeping items as you're coming up toward the end of the year. Always a good time... I would say it's always a good time, doesn't have to be the end of the year, beginning of the year, middle of the year, it's always a good time to think about your beneficiaries. Review your beneficiaries and make sure, uh, that they are who you want them to be. That could be on your IRA, your 401, your life insurance, your annuities, any other accounts with a TOD. If you have a trust, make sure that it still says what you want it to say. I will say now, here at our office, we now have the ability to do a restatement of trust, to do a brand-new trust at a fraction of the cost of what people have probably paid in the past to do that through estate planning attorneys. So, um, so something to think about. And then also think about has anything changed this year? Have I gotten married? Have I gotten divorced? Have I had a new child? Have I had a death in the family that's gonna, you know, yield an inheritance, and do I have a new, um, you know, beneficiary IRA that I need to take an RMD out of? Uh, any changes in other family relationships? Those, those are all things, um, you know, that I think make a lot of sense to, to, to think about this, this time of year. Uh, as well as, you know, your insurance policies. September is Insurance, uh, Awareness Month- Life Insurance Awareness Month. We did actually do a podcast on that recently, but, uh, always, you know, think about your life insurance. Is it still doing what you want it to do? Is it the right type of policy? Should you review the policy? So, you know, all those things, uh, between now and year-end, and if there's anything, you know, we can do as your advisor to help you with those, uh, you know, now's a great time to give us a call and talk about those things. So, um, does... You know, anything else that we need to add here?

Yeah. I, I think, I think I'd add that, you know, the tax preparers get pretty busy, right? There's just... During that, that first part of the year. So, you know, gathering up all of your s- your, of your tax, tax return stuff, you know, at the beginning of the year and then just going to try to find a tax preparer is not gonna work.Uh, you need to start... You know, we obviously have some really great relationships with tax preparers, so but now is the time to... If you're going to change or change to a different tax preparer, now is the time to, to engage. Uh, it's, you know, if you, if you wait till next year, it's gonna be too late.

That's right. And we, we, we've experienced that the last few years-

Mm-hmm

... where, where we had clients that want, uh, to change accountants, and they talk to us about it in January, February, and we kind of have to scramble because they get full. Like, you know, they have a capacity.Most of these CPAs have a g- a general capacity, and a lot of them get full before they used to, which is kinda interesting, so.

Yep.

Well, awesome. Well, this has been productive, and, uh, if you have any questions, certainly let us know. And this is Metcalfe Money Moment signing off.

Thanks for tuning in to Metcalfe Money Moment, the podcast. We hope today's episode provided valuable insights to help you unlock financial clarity, confidence, and peace of mind.For more expert advice and resources, visit metcalfepartners.com. Until next time, make every money moment count.

Jib Graham, Ethan Hutchison, and Eric Wymore are registered representatives with, and securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA SIPC. Investment advice offered through WCG Wealth Advisors, a registered investment advisor.WCG Wealth Advisors and Metcalfe Partners Wealth Management is a are separate entity, entities from LPL Financial. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision.All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.