Jim Van Houten

A Life With Significance Jim Van Houten

A Life with Significance is a book that focuses on unique ways that people have left a legacy through charitable planned giving programs. Most people want to know that after they die, their lives meant something to other people besides their families. Whether rich or poor, this book provides easy to understand examples of how donors have used life insurance, stocks, or real estate to make sizeable gifts at death and in most cases provide substantial tax benefits while they are alive.

Charitable planned giving ways of giving include outright gifts at death, charitable remainder trusts that leave a gift to charity upon death while providing an income for life, and charitable lead trusts that provide charity with income for a set number of years and then returns the principal to the donor after the set number of years expire.

The purpose of the book is to stimulate the reader's interest in leaving a legacy. Hopefully the book will generate the desire for more information on a particular subject now or sometime in the future. Charities like to use the book to open further discussions about charitable planned giving.