A 501(c)(3) is the ugly government tax chitty way of calling a collective effort of people, aka a "company," a charity. But it sounds way more edgy if you call it a number. With a letter. Then a number.
Double 0-7. Way cooler than "James." Right? Well, 501(c)(3) is the United States legal code number that created space for Federally tax exempt charities. And there are 29 flavors of charitable category that they address. The government is working hard to catch up to Baskin Robbins’ numbers, but they’re not there yet.
Specifically, some of those 29 flavors include: religious organizations, scientific, literary or educational charities, charities for amateur sports, testing for public safety, charities involving cruelty to children, women, and animals (yeah, these are, uh... anti-).
So why the special treatment? Well, if a 501(c)(3) follows the many strict rules to maintain its non-profit status, then donors giving money to it get to deduct that money right off the top when doing their taxes. Like… if a taxpayer is paying 40 percent marginal tax, and they donate a dollar, that dollar only cost them 60 cents to donate. The U.S. Government essentially underwrites charitable donations, at least to a point. And that’s a good thing. We need noblesse oblige charities in the world. They do good work. Well, most of them do...
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Finance: How to Stay Rich91 Views
finance a la shmoop. how do you stay rich after you get rich ? spend less than you
make. how's that sound yeah genius. well but pretty obvious and
easy to do if you earn enough money to do so, right? so if you're watching this [man sits down to eat]
video you're either rich or you plan to be, and you want to stay that way pretty
much forever until your doing you know the backstroke Six Feet Under.
well the way in which you got rich in the first place here matters a lot. for
many a long successful corporate career got them to the nice houses the
convertible Ferrari the private school for the kids the custom golf club set
and the wine collection. their wealth just accumulated slowly over time but
likely in two forms. in America most senior executives receive nice cash
salaries half a million a million a few million dollars a year. they live off
that pay and save some of it. but their real wealth usually comes from partial
ownership in the big corporations they run in the form of stock options. well at
the end of a career the options might have compounded for decades and be worth
tens of millions of dollars or more. typically the executives slowly sells [stock chart]
off those options in retirement and looks back on an awesome corporate life
optimizing the sale of soap or lawn fertilizer or car tires or whatever they
did to get rich in the first place. not a bad way to go if the corporate gig is
for you and you don't read about these people going bankrupt very often because
a well let's face it they're probably pretty boring. or at least their career
selling soap was, and B they got rich slowly accumulating wealth quietly
almost hidden to them and to their friends over long periods of time. they
were technically probably rich in their mid 40s or so and they just continued to
dance the dance that brought them to the party in the first place.
so that's the get rich slow plan and it is time-tested it works. but what about [people throw a party]
the get-rich-quick plan you're a 260-pound runner with a four point four
second forty. you can read so you were accepted to Alabama where you don't
graduate. you're drafted by the Jaguars and you get a
million dollar signing bonus. your buddies ask you hey pal what time is it
you look confused they say Ferrari time and ah here's
where our story gets sad. you forget a whole bunch of things mainly that it's
likely your NFL career will be short and when it's done you will likely have the
earning power of a high school football coach. like you know 50 60 grand a year
or something like that not terrible just not rich. oh and there's this other thing
called the taxes. that million dollar signing bonus was really nine hundred
fifty grand after agent lawyer fees travel and other stuff then he paid [equation pictured]
taxes of three hundred fifty grand and netted six hundred K in your pocket. but
you just went out and spent four hundred fifty grand buy that Ferrari so now you
have just one hundred fifty grand left in your pocket to buy that home how's
this shoebox look. so you wait hope your rookie seasons a hit and as you drive
around in your Ferrari you wonder if people will laugh at you if you happen
to flame out and you realize too quickly that if you go to sell the car in two
years that'll maybe bring you 200 grand. and yeah Ferraris depreciate fast. sad
story but way more interesting than the soap seller. in fact most NFL players
like eighty percent of them go fully bankrupt. which means that another ten to
fifteen percent of them end up just really really really not wealthy. how can
this be if they played in the NFL at least at one point wouldn't you have [pie chart]
considered them to be rich or at least rich ish? no but something bad clearly
happened here. well in almost every case at least one of three things happened.
they spent too much money spent on junk they didn't need or couldn't afford like
that Ferrari. B they invested their savings into restaurants or bars or
other things where the odds of success were vastly stacked against them winning.
or see they got divorced. yeah always a financial killer there. well want the to
long didn't listen version don't spend your money like you're gonna make your
current salary for the rest of your existence.
stuff happens enjoy life but protect yourself by holding on to enough savings
as should things take the ugly turn. invest wisely and all that and maybe see
a marriage counselor. if you want to know what it all boils down to, keep making
money yeah you never have enough because you know
what's gonna happen. that doesn't mean you need to pound the pavement selling[man goes through air port]
vacuum cleaners till you're 95 but you also shouldn't call it quits at 45
because you're finally a millionaire yeah a million bucks just ain't what it
used to be.
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