My wife and I have failed this part of our life the last two years. We've had a lot of personal change in our life with job changes, health crap, and a major move so I had to redirect funds elsewhere to buffer us for all of that change.

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• What are the best strategies for giving? (stacking contributions, donor advised funds of appreciated assets, etc.)

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Regarding this bullet, I can't recommend the Fidelity Charitable Giving platform enough if you primarily give to individual charities. I'm not sure if other financial platforms have a similar feature, but this lets you centralize all of your giving into one spot greatly simplifying the entire process.

Instead of tracking all of the individual giving you do, you just have to track the money you transfer to FCG. You can then research and give to pretty much any legitimate charity that exists through the FCG platform.

as a Single wage earner towards the high end of the salary range the "standard deduction" has always been much better than itemizing charitable giving.

I don't even track my donations anymore.

We have never really targeted the 10%, my wife has at times. We do not contribute to any of the national, name-brand charitable organizations (Red Cross, etc). Our contributions are largely to our church which has a large budget for community outreach and an active men's group (one thing we do is build wheelchair ramps for people who have the need, storm repairs, etc.).

We participate in funding the purchase of coats for schoolkids and other supplies every year.

We used to contribute to an organization that provided things for (way too young) single moms. Typically the baby daddy is not involved or very young himself and often the girl's parents have disowned her so she is pretty much on her own support wise. This organization required them to attend parenting classes and such and in turn provided the things needed for a baby and a mom. The entity is no longer around, though I wish it was.

We do spur of the moment things, like when I found out about a 15 year old girl with an infant and the dad of the baby just abandoned them. She couldn't drive, the city was about to turn off her power, she had no food. So a coworker (who knew about this situation) and I went to buy a shopping cart of food and supplies and arranged for the power not to be turned off. Never met the girl but have learned her situation has improved a great deal.

When our school's athletic booster club has camps for various sports, we will provide scholarship money for those in charge to use to pay for the cost of some kid that could benefit from the camp, or has friends going, but who cannot afford to attend. Always makes me smile when they tell me the final head count of who they gave a scholarship to so that I can drop off a check.

I have donated to a somewhat national organization called History Flight. They are involved in locating our military dead who are still missing and identifying those they find. I have witnessed their work on Tarawa and found them to be an amazing group of people.

As to why we do it, well first and foremost my wife is an amazing and generous person. Always preparing meals for older folks or sick folks. As for me, I feel that we have been extremely blessed in our lives and though we somewhat struggled early in life, we no longer do. I think it is the right thing to do, to help people who need help, sharing what you have with those in need. We are not heroes nor do we seek recognition for what we do, and there are many in our community who do the same or more than we do.

I donate to an NIL fund so we can give an 18 year old a couple hundred thousand dollars to sit on the bench and then transfer somewhere.

We give 10% to our church, but it's not even from tax year to tax year. We also save like $100-150 a month into a "blessings" savings account we use to help people with little things (buying dinner for someone in need, make a rent payment for someone, fix someone's car, etc) - this one has been the most fun. And each of us has a charity donation we make to something we care about.

Our giving has grown beyond our tithe as our financial means have grown. We have a plan to continue to grow it and be able to give more into retirement. We'd like to increase our "blessings" fund and be more creative with it in the future.

The only real tax strategy we use is deduction bunching - Basically alternating between the standard deduction and itemizing by paying property taxes every other tax year (Jan 1& Dec 31 within same calendar year) and a bigger pot of charitable giving in those same periods.

Giving does give us a lot of joy and it's a very faith-driven act. I don't buy into the idea that we give to receive a blessing. That said, we feel like God has been very faithful to us and we're blessed beyond what we could have hoped for, both financially and beyond.

I give because I think it's the right thing to do to help others. My dad said God doesn't give to everyone, he gives to some and has them help others. And I'm fortunate enough that I'm doing pretty good.

I don't give as much as I probably should. I don't exactly keep track, but it's not enough to itemize. Trying to save up to buy a house. So hopefully I'll be able to boost donations later.

I don't really have any fixed organizations I donate too. It's always changing. I just verify on charity navigator. I do tend to give to Doctors without Borders and have started giving to World Central Kitchen more frequently. I usually keep an eye out for matching campaigns and will make several small donations a year. Also give to faith based organizations that help the needy that get a good percentage to the cause.

I think I sometimes just forget to give, and then suddenly realize it has been a few months since I've given, and I'll go looking. And like I mentioned above, saving for a house, so not giving as much as I probably should at the moment.

But this thread has motivated me to give some more before the end of the year.