Age: 60

Mary is self-employed and is a very successful real estate agent and loves what she does. Mary also takes the lead on investing and has been managing her own portfolio for several years. She would like to work another 5 years before she retires.

Mary’s deceased husband, Paul, worked as an executive with the same company for 25 years. He had significant stock options that she inherited.

Mary is passionate about several charities and loves to give her time and money to support them.

Her goals

• She would like to retire in the next 5 years
• She would like to give more money to charity and her time when she retires
• She does not have kids and would like to give assets to charity when she dies

Her concerns

• Mary would like to take the management of her portfolio off her plate, it has become overwhelming while approaching retirement
• Mary feels like she does not have the knowledge to properly manage the taxes well in her portfolio
• She has been writing checks to charity but wonders if there is a better way to contribute
• She worries she has too much concentration in company stock

Our solution

We set up a plan to take over the management of the accounts to free Mary up to focus more on her career.

Working together with her tax professional, we ran a detailed tax analysis to find the investments that had the most tax drag. We recommended to sell out of the least tax-efficient investments and with the least amount of tax impact to reposition into better stocks with better long-term growth potential that are more tax-efficient.

We set up a donor-advised charitable fund and made suggestions on gifting stocks with the most gains so she could give to the charities she cares about while also lowering her taxes. This account was set up with her chosen charities designated to receive her assets simply and easily upon her death without needing to go through probate or work through an attorney.

We set up a goal on how much to take in capital gains each year and a 7-year plan to sell out and diversify Paul’s company stock.

Mary feels more educated on how we are helping her manage her taxes and charitable giving strategies. She feels relief that Evergreen took the investment load off her shoulders to free up more of her time and can now focus on a brighter path forward for the things she is most interested in. She also has confidence knowing that her assets will go to the charities of her choice when she dies.