People often want to give money to others, either now or when they die. Whether you want to make financial gifts within your family or leave a charitable legacy to a cause that is close to your heart, we can help.

When it comes to making financial gifts, people often want to know more about:

• Using the many available tax allowances for gifts
• Setting up trusts for complex gifting, or for making a gift to someone unable to look after it themselves
• Passing on a pension as part of their estate planning
• Finding out how much money they can afford to give away without affecting their lifestyle or plans for later life.

It’s not uncommon to make financial gifts with certain conditions. Many people want their money to be used for a specific purpose, such as a grandchild’s wedding, or only accessed at a certain age. Others are keen to ensure their money stays within their family through the generations. Our experts can help to ensure your money ends up in the right hands and is used for the right reasons by setting up a trust.

• We often give people advice on making financial gifts as part of their wider estate planning
• Most financial gifts leave your estate after seven years, therefore reducing the size of your estate and potentially the inheritance tax bill you leave behind
• If you leave more than 10% of your estate to charity in your Will, the rate of inheritance tax charged on your estate will reduce from 40% to 36%

We help many clients with making charitable donations, either during their lifetimes or in their Wills. A simple way is to use Gift Aid to boost regular donations while reducing your tax liability. Another is to set up a charitable trust for larger or more long-term giving. Whatever you want to achieve with your charitable legacy, we can recommend the most effective way for you to donate.

If you are setting aside money for a future gift, such as a grandchild’s first house deposit, you may want to invest it. This could see the value of the money grow over time, although it is important to remember that the value of investments can fall as well as rise and you could end up with less than you originally invested. We can give you advice on how to invest the money or make all of the investment decisions for you.

Many people want to help others and know their kindness is making a difference but this can cause problems if you give away more than you can afford to. We can forecast your future finances using cashflow modelling and show you how much money you could give away.

To do this we will take into account your regular spending in later life alongside any specific plans, such as a holiday each year. We can also make other considerations such as the cost of later life care, a stock market fall or the death of a husband, wife or civil partner.