Halal Money Matters Podcast

Episode 15 – End of Year Strategies

NOTE: This podcast episode was created for a US-based audience and may not be applicable to all audiences and situations.

[music intro]

MONEM SALAM: Welcome to Halal Money Matters, brought to you by Saturna Capital. I'm Monem Salam.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: And I'm Christopher Patton.

MONEM SALAM: I really like to interview people but every once in a while, it’s nice to just sit and talk to you.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: It is. It's been a long time since just the two of us sat down and had a conversation.

MONEM SALAM: It's been even longer since we've actually seen each other.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: I know. That's... I was thinking about that earlier, that we're about to hit the end of the year and this full calendar year, we have not recorded in person together once. And I think about a year ago, I said something like, “Oh, I can feel it in the air. We're going to see each other soon.” But, you know, this time, I mean it. I'm sure that I'm right this time. Soon, we're going to be together recording.

MONEM SALAM: It's going to happen. Yeah, it's going to happen. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know where we're coming up on the end of the year and it's, you know, a lot of holiday time and those type of things. So, I thought what we could do is kind of just have a laid-back chat about, you know, just the holidays in general and maybe what people should be thinking about when it comes to, obviously, their investing. But I think it's an important subject and...

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Is this where you're going to stop me from spending too much money over the holidays? Echoes Yeah. Actually, what.

MONEM SALAM: Actually, yes!

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Because I would fully welcome that.

MONEM SALAM: That’s exactly what I was going to do.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: I could see it in your face. This is an intervention.

MONEM SALAM: I have like three points I was going to tell everybody. Stop everything you're doing, you know, go hide in a corner somewhere, take all your money that you were going to spend and invest it.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Oh, okay. My daughter will be very happy to hear that.

MONEM SALAM: There you go. No presents. 

[laughter]

MONEM SALAM: I don't know if you've had read the stories or not, but this is probably going to be one of the most expensive holidays we've had in a very long time.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: I was just reading something about that for Thanksgiving and the cost of food and Turkey inching upward.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, we've totally begun to realize how dependent we are. You know, like even if we're eating turkey, that might be coming from another country rather than from, you know, down the road or those type of things and the supply chain really has caused a little bit of disruption, and that's where the where the prices are beginning to come up.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: What's your Thanksgiving go-to?

MONEM SALAM: So, we have what's called a “cousinsgiving,” all of the cousins in our family try to get together. One sponsors the event. So, this year at my sister's place. And so last year obviously was canceled. So yeah, it's really fun. And to be honest with you, you know, I try to work out really, really heavy in the morning.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Sure.

MONEM SALAM: Right. And then watch football and eat. No, that's my that's my big thing because I'm from Dallas. I'm a Cowboys fan.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That's true!

MONEM SALAM: America's team.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Oh yeah.

MONEM SALAM: You know, it's not only about the Thanksgiving part of it. It's also, you know, during the holidays, Christmas and New Year's and that type of thing. And typically, during those times, you know, I'm actually attending conferences and we obviously don't want to celebrate Christmas, but it is a holiday time, but like this year, I think after two years or so, they're actually going to have a physical conference in Chicago.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah.

MONEM SALAM: We're hoping there's going be a lot of people.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: And that's usually right when Christmas is happening.

MONEM SALAM: Literally on Christmas. 

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah, you get the pick of the venues and everything.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, exactly. Nobody wants to go to a conference except for the Muslims, you know, but it's fun. I get to see my old friends and, you know, catch up on the year. I really do enjoy it.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Good, good.

MONEM SALAM: So, let's go back a little bit. And obviously, we're not going to be talking about the fact that you shouldn't do anything for the holidays. That would be a little bit too much, but I think there are ways to give gifts which are much more long lasting than, you know, things that might not last. So, for example, you know, on the low end of the pole is going to be like, you know, what's the in-craze right now? It's probably going to be bid up on eBay or Amazon and stuff like that, and you're going to pay an arm and leg for something your kids are going to do maybe for a month or two. And that's it.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Sure, sure.

MONEM SALAM: It’s interesting, on one of the episodes, if you remember a while back, we had Dr. Mirza. Yaqub Mirza on.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah.

MONEM SALAM: And you know, one of the really cool things that he kind of gave me the idea of doing is he actually gives shares in the Amana Funds. Not necessarily his kids, but definitely his grandkids and those type of things.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah. Great stocking stuffer.

MONEM SALAM: He obviously gives them a regular gift also, I'm sure. But it is something that... I thought that was kind of a novel idea.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Thoughtful gift giving.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: My daughter is six years old, and ever since she was old enough to kind of understand the concept of giving... As one of her holiday gifts, I have her choose one or two causes or nonprofits to give to as one of her gifts. And of course, she doesn't have them off the top of her head, so it's usually kind of a decision tree. “Well, do you want to go people, environment, climate, animals, food?” And it's been interesting to see her every year kind of get it a little more. And last year half of it went to Australian wildfire recovery and the other half went to like a clean water fund somewhere.

MONEM SALAM: And it's also interesting to see what they're passionate about.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Mmhmm.

MONEM SALAM: You know, and I think I've said this in previous episodes, well, like for my kids, what I tried to do was every time I gave them some money and now, they started to work, I was like, you know, divide it into thirds, right? On third you invest, one third you give away to charity, one third you keep for yourself, and you know, my kids... it's interesting to see what charities they choose. And it kind of gives you an idea of what they really are concerned about or passionate about, you know, those type of things. So, it's a learning experience. It was a learning experience for me as well.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Well, it is the end of the year. So, what are our financial obligations or things we should be thinking about as the year draws to a close?

MONEM SALAM: There are some important things to think about as the end of the year comes.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Before we get into this list, I want to know what was your favorite Halal Money Matters episode of 2021?

MONEM SALAM: Oh, I think for me, hands-down it was the economics of Ramadan.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That was a great episode.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah. Well, I just, you know, it was just fascinating to see just the different nuances of different Muslim cultures around the world. And you know, when you sometimes you think that, oh, this is not really going to happen because of Ramadan and really the opposite ends up happening. Food inflation, for example.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: I would go with the behavioral finance episode, which was, I think, right around the same time and just learning more about the psychology. What's being studied? Where is this field going? What's going on in the investor's mind?

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, well I'll be honest with you. When somebody recommended the idea... it wasn't like my idea. I don't think it was yours, either. Somebody else had recommended it. And I'm like, “What? Why would we want to talk about that?” And then as we got into it, I was like, “Whoa, actually, this is a pretty interesting topic.” And for those of you that are going to go back and listen to it, I really like I still, in my head, one of the last comments that he made. And so, I'm not going to give it away, but I still sometimes think about the idea of what's called gharar in Islam. And his comment that he made on that, it really, really was to me, an eye-opening topic.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Well, go back and listen to both of these and all of the episodes, really.

MONEM SALAM: But not only that, you're going to hit the like button.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: The subscribe button. See, we’re promoting the podcast. It's great.

MONEM SALAM: Exactly.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: All right. Now, we can get into the fun part of the episode, which is the money matters.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah. So, you know, I think we should do is just go back and forth. So, we'll play this as a tennis match. I'll give you one and then you can explain it and then you give me one, and I'll explain it. How’s that?

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That sounds great.

MONEM SALAM: All right. Let's do it. OK, so number one is to review your year and look at your investments and see if there's any adjustments to be made.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Right. So, there could be a few things going on here. When you look back at your year, did you have major life events? You want to look at your career? Did you get a raise this year? And then also just being one year closer to your goals, whatever they are, whether it's retirement or your child's education, any one of these things could potentially precipitate some type of tweak in how you're allocated or how you're making contributions. And you can always be thinking about it. So, it doesn't have to be at the end of the year. But some people find that at the end of the year is kind of a natural time to reflect on these things, making sure that you are keeping track of what you're doing and that you're on track to reach your goals in your various types of qualified accounts that you hopefully have.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, I mean, in a 401(k) and those type of things, it's, you know, some people only put enough money for the company match, but really, you know, you can do more. So, a lot of times people don't realize that. And if you are lucky enough, I'd say lucky because I'm going to do this next year, if you're lucky enough to turn 50.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Oh boy.

MONEM SALAM: Oh yeah, I don't even remind me. So, I just reminded myself and I already feel old.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: “Monem turns 50” sounds like an episode title.

MONEM SALAM: Exactly.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: I’m going to make a note of that.

MONEM SALAM: So yeah, you can increase your contributions to what is, I think, another $6,000. So, you can, rather than putting $19,500, you can go all the way up to $25,500 for between, let's say you're 50 and you're 62 and a half when you maybe think about stopping it. Now that's a pretty significant extra money that you can put in if you really wanted to do that.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah. And if you when you first set up your retirement account, set it to 50 bucks because you were just getting started in your career and you left it there forever. That's not really taking advantage of the kind of the trajectory of your career. So just make sure you're keeping an eye on that and keeping up with whatever changes you may have in your income.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah. And you know, the other thing, Chris, that, you know, as a Muslim, we should be thinking about is really taking a look at your 401(k), for example. I mean, I know we're specifically focusing on 401(k), but this is an asset allocation for all of your different accounts, but specifically for the 401(k), you know, maybe as things slow down during the holidays, it might be a good idea to look at your 401(k) and see if there's a way for you to make it more halal.  And typically, what a lot of Muslims do is they look for a brokerage option within the 401(k). And if they don't have it, they go talk to their HR and try to, you know, get them to do it. So that's, I think, at the minimum, people should do that because again, it's a great way for you to be able to make your investments halal. 

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah Well, next one on the list. Funny enough, we kind of just jumped into it is taking a look at your various qualified accounts. I sort of stepped on this one, but I'm sure there's more we can add here.

MONEM SALAM: Oh, yeah, there's always more. I think, you know, on that one, again, it's very similar to what we talked about earlier, which is just a review of your all of your accounts. Just make sure, number one, is that if you are contributing to, for example, an IRA rather than a 401(k) or something, that you're maximizing the contribution.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Right. Right.

MONEM SALAM: You know, you can do it also for your spouse as well. And if you're in the right income tax bracket, then you can also do a Roth IRA, right? If you're not in there, you can do a to a Roth IRA. So, there are other options to look at and to be able to put money away to maximize that type of savings for you.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: And technically on a lot of these accounts, you have until April of next year to make contributions, but it might be a good idea to not wait until then because once you get into next year, you could be working on next year.

MONEM SALAM: That's true. And then this gives us an opportunity to talk about it twice: in this episode and then later on, when we talk about a New Year's one, we'll just remind you again that you have until April 15 to be able to put that money away for last year. So, you know, but besides an IRA or ESA, there's also what's called a health savings account. Now this is something you know, not everybody kind of has access to. And let's just start there.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That's true.

MONEM SALAM: But if you do have a high deductible health insurance policy, then you are able to put away money into a health savings account. Now, some people call this the triple tax benefit. You want to get into that a bit, Chris? Do you know what the triple tax benefit is?

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah. I think we should get into it. So, the contributions are pre-tax, much like a 401(k), if that's the way you're doing it. Then, the growth in the account is also tax-free. So, there's your second one. And then, if you're withdrawing it for qualified medical expenses, that's also going to be tax-free. So, there's your three tax advantages right there, whereas with maybe a traditional 401(k), you're going to get taxed either upfront or when you take it out. With a health savings account, if you're using the money for health-related expenses—which is a pretty wide range of qualified reasons to use it—then you get that triple tax advantage.

MONEM SALAM: You know, some people think, “Oh my God, I don't want to do a high deductible because I have so many expenses that I have, medical-wise.”

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Sure.

MONEM SALAM: And yes, legitimately enough, there are people who might not want to do it. But when I did the analysis, you know, I was surprised at, you know, how many people could actually benefit from an HSA because you know, you do still have a deductible, meaning that after you get to that level, you know, the regular kind of insurance kicks in. And if you're putting away, let's say, $7,500 per year because that's what you're allowed for a family HSA, it still makes it very beneficial for you.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: So, with a high deductible plan, you're not left holding the bag entirely. It's absolutely worth looking into and learning more about.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, I mean, kind of just off the top of my head. I think if you're healthy, if you're young, if you're a doctor, and a family plan is basically somewhere where you don't think you will be spending that much money on one on health care, that's the right plan. All of those things were medical related except for the doctor one. Do you know why I mentioned the doctor? It's all because of contacts. You can go to your friends and get free treatment and never have to spend any money.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: I don’t have that advantage, sadly. Sounds good, though. Is it too late for me, Monem? To go back to medical school?

MONEM SALAM: It's never too late. Never too late. Well, one last thing that I did want to mention and that is that, you know, IRAs and 401(k)s actually have beneficiary designations. And so, you do want to review those, maybe not once a year, but if there has been a major life changing experience for you, you know, whether it be a divorce or another child or, you know, whatever it is, it's important to be able to go back and review it. And now it's a good time to be able to fill in the blanks. So, the next one we want to talk about is, you know, if you're a business owner, right? What type of things you could possibly do, you know, to do before the end of the year?

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: So, I'm not a business owner, but what might be some ways, if I was, to think about retaining employees and attracting top talent? What types of things might I offer that I could start thinking about this time of year? You know, those things that people suggest you do. Maybe you never got around to it. Maybe it's finally time to do it.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, I mean, you know, the very simple one is... Thank God, you had a very profitable year. You can think about maybe a bonus for the end of the year. That is obviously an expensable item, right? That keeps people happy and that type of thing. But really, more for the long term, the biggest one is starting a retirement plan for your employees.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Just now, we were talking about it from the employee side... the plan that you've been offered by your employer. You want to take advantage of that. Now we're saying if you're the employer, make sure you're taking advantage by offering a plan like this.

MONEM SALAM: Absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, there's multiple different benefits and most people say, you know, they equate “employer plan” to 401(k) but there are other the ones that are out there. So, for example, if you go to our website...

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Saturna.com.

MONEM SALAM: ...then you can look at all the different types of employer plans that are available. So, like a Simple plan, there's a SEP plan. SEP. There's a 401(k). So, there's not only one size fits all. Some are beneficial for one versus another. That's probably too much for this podcast to talk about but it is something to be able to look into, and sometimes, you know, you want to match your employees, sometimes you don't. All of those things are flexible enough, but definitely offering that. And one of the things that's important—it’s happening more and more—is that more states are slowly coming up with mandates for actually having these plans. E ither you’re doing it yourself or the state is forcing you to do it, so might as well get ahead of it and do it so that you have the choice rather than the state telling you to do it.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah. Do you want to be rushing at the last minute and end up with the plan you don't really want just because you're avoiding it? Maybe it's time to take a look.

MONEM SALAM: Exactly.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: All right. And we've got one coming up here. I would like for you to kind of get into this one for my benefit: tax loss harvesting.

MONEM SALAM: Right. So, you know, and this this applies to long-term investors and short-term investors. So, as you know, the government taxes capital gains. If you have a short-term capital gain, it's in the high twenties, and if you have a long-term capital gain it’s the high teens. And so, what you can do is if you did have a realized capital gain, meaning you sold something in the year for a gain, you can offset that with a loss. So, what a lot of money managers do—and we do this at Saturna as well—is that they will kind of offset any gains, the realized gains, with maybe selling something that's at a loss in the portfolio and then 31 days later, buy it back if they so choose. And then what that does is that offsets your capital gains with a capital loss. Now, importantly enough, you know, remember earlier in the year when there was this whole frenzy about GameStop and AMC and a lot of people made so much money. Well, you know, if they got involved and they sold it in the same year—some people did it after one day—but the same was same year. I mean, they're... 30% of that, it's going to go straight into taxes.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Mmhmm.

MONEM SALAM: Right? And so most people don't even realize that they're like, “Whoa, I made $100,000,” but technically it’s actually $70,000. You know, that type of thing. So, this is a good way that if you had some losses from the other trade that you did, that probably didn't work out as well.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: This hypothetical person...

MONEM SALAM: Right? Then you can actually do that. So that's one way to do it. And if you have all losses and no gains, then you can, at least for next year, the losses carry forward, but you can also take $3,000 of the losses and deducted from your income. So, this is called tax loss harvesting, and it's a great strategy to be able to use.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: So, let's say I'm your average investor. Sounds great. I don't know how to do that. What are my options?

MONEM SALAM: That's a great question. So, I mean, definitely...maybe you can talk to an advisor and have them review your portfolio and be able to determine if you're doing it yourself. Maybe you can just hire somebody for a small fee, and they'll take a look at the portfolio. Sometimes we're in the position, you know, thank God, that we don't have any losses in our portfolio, and everything has gone up and we don't have any tax loss harvesting to do, which is great, you know, and then be happy to pay the taxes because you made money that year.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON:  I'm with you on that.

MONEM SALAM: So, I mean, the next one is regarding, you know, very similar to that, maybe a little bit similar to the tax loss harvesting strategy is really and we talked about in the very beginning we talking about the end of the year strategy, which is, you know, gift giving and really talking about it from a from a from an investment perspective, philanthropy, maybe even thinking about a donor advised fund or known as a DAF. But can you tell us a little about that?

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Well, when you think about philanthropy, maybe you had a great year, and your amount of taxable income is way up here. And maybe you want to, like, bring that down a little. You know, giving either to nonprofits or through a DAF—we can talk more about donor advised funds—is a great way to kind of manage that through strategic giving, we would say, potentially.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah. I mean, you know, like the last decade, Chris, has been a great decade for a lot of people, and a lot of people have a lot of... whether it was through a company, stock and employee plan, whether they invested in the company that's done really well over the past decade, they have a lot of capital gains embedded within their portfolio. And one of the things that I know, you know... my real job is not doing a podcast this, it's actually doing a portfolio.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That's what you think.

MONEM SALAM: So, you know, for our clients, what we tell them is like, you know, if you're going to give money at the end of the year or even throughout the year anyway, right? One strategy you can use... let’s kind of give an example. So, let's supposing you are a person who gave $10,000 in cash to your favorite charity every year, right? What you can do is take a take a look at one of the stocks that you have a large gain in and give $10,000 worth of the stock to a charity and then replenish that with $10,000 of your cash into the portfolio. And what that does is it automatically raises your cost basis up to a level where you don't have to do it. Now, what's the advantage of that? It’s that when you sell it, you have to pay your own capital gains and then you can give it to the charity. If you directly donate it to the charity, then there's no capital gains tax and because the charity is nontaxable, they don't pay tax or capital gains tax as well. So, it's a really great strategy to use to do that, and especially when we're talking about zakat or anything like that, just using this strategy is really great.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Donating a stock is something that I never thought about until this past year, learning more about it.  I think maybe a lot of people, they are just used to the mindset you described, which is, OK, you want to donate? You donate the cash. But it doesn't have to be that way. In some cases, it's more advantageous not to do it that way.

MONEM SALAM: Absolutely. And a lot of cases it isn't. And one thing that you have to keep in mind is obviously the charity that you want to give to, like if it's a mosque or something that they do have to have a brokerage account.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Sure.

MONEM SALAM: But this is a great way for you to encourage them to do it because, you know, like, for example, if you normally give them $10,000 and you know, ended up, you know, just giving it and you had long term gains and you just gave them the stock, that's $1,800 in capital gains savings you're going to get just for doing that. And that's different for different people. Obviously, you have your own taxes, and you have to file your own reports. And we're just being general here.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Sure, sure. And we kind of sort of touched on the donor advised fund or a DAF. It's a fund that you can make your contributions to that, then, your philanthropic donations come out of the fund and the money is basically coming out of your hands into a place where it can be managed.

MONEM SALAM: So, so one thing is that I mean, this is a really large topic, but I did want to mention Chris that we actually on our website have a webinar that gets into this a lot more specifically about exactly what a DAF is and how do you do it? But very, very simple is that a donor advised fund is an actual charitable organization. And once you put your money in there, then you get the taxable deduction for donating to a charity. But the advantage of that is you don't have to decide right away where that, eventually, that money will go. So, for example, you're coming up on the end of the year, you're like, “Oh my God. I didn't realize I was supposed to do this. I don't even know what charities to give it to.” Open up a DAF account, put the money there, and then next year or in the next two to three years, you can figure out where you want to be able to give that money. It's a great way, also, if you're, you know, for example, you're working for a company, they go IPO and now you have this huge capital gains bill to worry about. That might be another reason why you would want to think about putting it into and worry about it later, what you really want to do with it and how you want to be able to do that. Right?

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Because the DAF itself is the charitable organization and the money is coming away from you, it's there. When it's in the DAF, it can be invested and grow further. And it's, I don't know, I kind of think of it as sort of like a holding pen.

MONEM SALAM: And you can, into the DAF, you can donate stock, you can donate mutual fund shares. So, it's not only cash, so then that know makes it... you can actually afford for those some DAFs that are able to do it, you could even do, like, pieces of art or, you know, those type of things as well.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That’s cool.

MONEM SALAM: And it doesn't have to be something that's liquid, so it just depends on the DAF. But the other part of this, which is since we're talking about philanthropy, is, you know, again, the end of the year, right? You're going to be with family, you know, and I t's really important time to be able to maybe have a conversation with them about... God has blessed you with some money, some wealth, right? How do you want to be able to leave a legacy behind? And it's a good conversation to have with your family to say, “You know what? I do want to donate to charity,” because know, you probably know this, Chris, but for a Muslim up to one third of their assets when they when they pass away can go to a charity. And so, if you do that, you can possibly even build a legacy for the next 100, 200, 300 years. And so really talking to your family about it and really coming up with a strategy of, you know, what causes you feel passionate about and where you want to give and how long you want to give for all of those things become a topic of conversation. Not to be morbid about it, but it's a great way to be able to discuss charitable giving with your family.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah, this is not the first time this topic has come up on this show, and I'm sure it won't be the last, as we try to encourage people to have these conversations that may be difficult. It may seem unpleasant, but it's important. We did a whole episode about estate planning, as you said, not to be morbid. You know, this is this is a part of life that we need to address.

MONEM SALAM: But that was a great segue way into the wills and trusts part of this.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Exactly.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And for a Muslim, you know, it's an obligation. We have to have a will. The Prophet Muhammad said that, you know, if you have any assets whatsoever, you shouldn't go two nights without having something written that says what's going to happen to them after you pass away. So, it's very important for us to do that. So really, you know, again, you know, sitting down and this is this is a conversation you have with your lawyer, right, who can help you draft it. But there's also a conversation you have with your family. And to be able to say, “You know this, this is how I'm going to be dividing my estate up, and this is why I'm doing it this way. And this is how I want you to help in in making a smooth transition.” Obviously, you're not going to be around, so you don't know what's going to happen after you pass away. But having those conversations in advance might actually save a lot of heartache for the for the surviving people.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah, and this is the kind of thing where people might make it a goal at the beginning of the year. This is the year I finally address that, you know, making that plan. And now here we are. And you think, “Well, the year just flew by. I didn't get to it.” Don't let that happen again, if you can. You still have time. Now's the time.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah. And you know, some people, you know, when you think about wills and trusts, you think of wealth. But what it really has, also, you know, what happens to your children, who takes care of them? You know, if you and your spouse pass away. Especially if you already have a wealth, then great, great job. But then again, if you had a life changing event, you know, you got a divorce, you had a new child. You know, your parents passed away. Something happened that you need... just review it. You might not need to change it, but it's a good idea just to be able to review it and to figure out it is still in that place that you left it right. But have it somewhere where people can access it, obviously, because an inaccessible will is not going to do anybody any good, right?

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Right. Yeah. Let your family know. You mentioned, you know, people, they won't be around to see what happens. But I would encourage you to think about how not having a plan could affect your family in ways that you already listed. And let that spur you to action.

MONEM SALAM: Yeah, absolutely. So, we've covered like six topics in a pretty good short amount of time. I think it's just things to think about before the end of the year, and it might have long term benefits for you.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Well, I look forward to speaking with you again in the coming year. 

MONEM SALAM: And hopefully you've listened to every single episode you've loved, every single episode.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: That sounds great.

MONEM SALAM: So, definitely subscribe. But also leave a comment. I mean, we would love to hear from you not only about how, what, how this helped you, but also other future episodes that that we need to do. And we're always looking for ideas.

CHRISTOPHER PATTON: Yeah. If you want to hear any of the episodes that we mentioned that you haven't maybe: the Economic Impact of Ramadan, Behavioral Finance, Estate Planning. These are all available on Saturna.com, our website or on iTunes. Subscribe. Leave review. Let us know if there's something you want to hear. Share with your friends. Thank you for listening.

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DISCLOSURES (read by Christopher Patton):

Please consider an investment's objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. To obtain this and other important information about the Amana Funds in a current prospectus or summary prospectus, please visit www.amanafunds.com or call toll free 1-800-728-8762. Please read the prospectus or summary prospectus carefully before investing. The Amana Funds are distributed by Saturna Brokerage Services, member FINRA and SIPC, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saturna Capital, the investment adviser to the Amana Funds.

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