Building Generosity That Lasts Generations With Gretchen Duda

Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the You Can’t Take it With You show, where we feature stories around generosity designed to inspire and encourage others to do meaningful things in their communities. Now here’s your host, Jim Dunlop.

Jim Dunlop: 00:17

Hi, Jim Dunlop here, a wealth advisor and host of the show, where I sit down with people who get it when it comes to generosity. I’m excited to have guests who can give us stories on generosity, to not only inspire our listeners, but to give practical ideas on ways we can give. We are featuring a series of episodes where the guests are teammates of mine at Advent Partners. Today’s guest is Gretchen Duda. Past guests include Peter Greer, Jim Langley, and Phil Cubeta.

But before we get to Gretchen, I want to share that this episode is brought to you by Advent Partners. Ready for good. Advent is a financial planning team dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey. At Advent Partners, we’re ready for good. Our bold ten year vision is to help clients donate $100 million dollars to transform lives through generosity and planning. United by generosity, relationship excellence, authenticity, and fun. We empower meaningful lives and lasting community impact. To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit. Readyforgood.com.

And now, Gretchen. Gretchen is a financial advisor and a certified financial planner practitioner with Advent Partners, where she has been part of the team for eight years. Originally from West Virginia, she has made central PA her home for the past 15 years. She lives in Annville with her husband Brian, a funeral director. The fact that she believes colors her personality in a unique way. She’s a dog mom to four and enjoys spending time with those she loves. Gretchen. Welcome.

Gretchen Duda: 01:41

Thank you Jim. I’m happy to be here.

Jim Dunlop: 01:44

So before we get into it, could you start by giving our listeners a little autobiography of Gretchen?

Gretchen Duda: 01:53

Sure. So, born and raised in West Virginia. I am a proud West Virginian, a fact that I get teased for a lot, but that’s okay. I live in Danville. I’ve found Advent the kind of by accident, I started my career as an elementary ed teacher.

I taught in Maryland for a couple of years and then got married in 2010 and moved to PA and had a hard time finding a teaching job. So I did some subbing and taught pre-K for a little while, and then I got into banking and then decided around 2017 that that needed to change and found, well, we were thriving at that point. And it’s actually a really funny story. My sister and I were in Honduras on a mission trip, and I, we were standing in line and there was a group in front of us that had on the Live Generously t shirts. If you’re a Thrivent person, You know what those are.

And I was like, oh, wow. Like Thrivent financial. And they’ve got a group of people here like, what’s that all about? So we go on our trip, we come back home and I kind of forgot about it.

And then I found myself looking for a job. And I was actually in Danville driving through town. And there was a Thrivent rep’s office there. And that reminded me I saw the sign and I was like, oh, I need to look into that. And then I found Jamie French, your co-owner and business partner.

And that’s the end of the story. So yeah, that’s no.

Jim Dunlop: 03:30

It’s just the, it’s just the beginning of the story.

Gretchen Duda: 03:32

It’s the beginning of the story.

Jim Dunlop: 03:35

So what did you want to be when you grew up?

Gretchen Duda: 03:38

A veterinarian? I was through my very my formative years. It was all about animals. You know, I don’t know if you’re familiar with. I think it’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Elvira. Then she hugs the animals and she said, I love you and I love you forever. That was me, if you can picture that. That was me as a child. I was I was blessed to grow up out in the country of West Virginia.

And people are like, oh, well, you don’t have an accent. And I don’t because I’m from the northern panhandle of West Virginia, north of the Mason-Dixon line. We do not have accents up there. So I’m sorry to disappoint everybody on that. But we I grew up with hunting.

We had hunting beagles. And, you know, hunting is how you pronounce that word. It’s not hunting. It’s hunting. But we hunted rabbits with them.

And so the beagles, I mean, we had 5 or 6 at a time and they all, they lived outside in a very nice pen with very nice dog houses. You know, back in the 90s when dogs lived outside. My four do not live outside currently, but I was just, I was a, I was an animal person and so had many, many dogs through out my life. Cats and all that. And so I wanted to be a veterinarian.

So we were lucky to be friends with our vet. And he let me shadow, I think in like middle school or high school. And he was letting me shadow some surgeries. And as soon as he made that incision, I just about hit the ground. And I was like, okay, this is not for me.

I just want to snuggle and love and hug. I don’t, I don’t need to be their doctor.

Jim Dunlop: 05:23

Gotcha. So we’ll get into finance instead.

Gretchen Duda: 05:27

Well, no, actually. I then that’s when crime scene investigation. If you remember the original crime scene investigation, Gil Grissom was one of the main characters. I was obsessed and I was going to go into forensic science and I was like, oh, well, you know, I’m a hunter. I’m familiar with guns and ammunition, so I’ll go into ballistics like that. I just thought that would be so cool.

So I actually started college as a chemistry major thinking that, oh, I will then go, you know, I’ll get my chemistry degree, then I’ll go into forensics and, you know, I’ll live this really glamorous life as a ballistics investigator or something like that. And then I started organic chemistry. And I don’t know if you’ve ever taken organic chemistry, but it’s really hard.

Jim Dunlop: 06:14

I understand that.

Gretchen Duda: 06:17

Like. It’s a freshman in college, I was like, I am not working this hard. So I went to our career counseling at school. And, you know, we did a couple personality tests and they were like, you’re really everything pointed to teaching. And I was like, all right, that sounds good. Let’s do that.

And so I got my teaching degree. I got into a full time teaching job right out of school, which I was very lucky to get. And about my second year, I was like, there is absolutely no way I will do this for the next 30 years. So I, but I, so I did it for five and that was plenty. And then yeah, I mean, getting into baking was kind of a, it was a necessity and like, it was something that I, I thought would be easy enough with my, my background and my not easy enough.

It’s not like I was like, oh, what’s the easiest job I can have out there? But yeah, that’s, that’s how I got there.

Jim Dunlop: 07:20

So I want to, I want to think a little bit about this with you. Tell me about your generosity origin story and what drives your personal generosity.

Gretchen Duda: 07:32

Yeah. So my parents were generous people to begin with. They we were always volunteering, you know, as kids. We were very involved in our church growing up, you know, helping others food drives, clothes drives, you know, all of that. It was when I was in middle school, my parents.

So we were we were in the United Methodist Church, and they had a mission in southern West Virginia called McDowell missions. And my parents got involved. They took a group of adults from church, and they went down and spent a week in the summer and did home repair. And they came back just energized and fulfilled. And we have a lot at the time, we had a lot of skilled laborers in our church congregation.

My father is a contractor. We had an electrician, a plumber, like we had. We had everybody. And so my mom and dad and other adults in the church decided to take a group of the youth. And so that was my first experience on a quote unquote, mission trip.

And we went down to McDowell for years after that. And the, you know, we always went down doing home repair, and we were able to do more detailed projects because of the group of people that we had with us. And just the the people in that area are they have very little to what we would compare to, you know, having it all quote unquote, or, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, you could say, but they were they were joyful and they were they were so happy that we were there and they were so proud of what they had. And they would work right along with us. And so it instilled in me, yes, a desire to help others, but also a generosity of spirit, a of opening your heart to, to people being open to sitting and listening to their stories.

There’s one guy that I will never forget. His name was Grady and he, we worked on his home. We replaced his roof and talk about an accent, a super, super southern accent. And he was telling this story and he mentioned Cathead biscuits. And we were like, I’m sorry, what?

He’s like, yeah, cathead biscuits. The biscuits the size of a cat’s head.

Jim Dunlop: 10:07

Like, wait a minute. What?

Gretchen Duda: 10:08

And so you say a cat head biscuit to anyone in my family or my church. And we all just we all remember gravy. So that’s where it started. And then from there, my dad got involved with a group called Pro Papa Missions, who did Mission International mission trips to Honduras, and he went down a couple of times and we raised money and we go down and build houses for people, concrete houses for people who live in this little town of Morocco. And it floods every year.

It floods. And, you know, a lot of their homes are mud or wood and their homes are just not sturdy. So anyways, one Christmas I think it was 2010. You know, dad was talking about his trip and my sister Amanda and I, we were like, well, we want to go. And he’s like, alright, well, I’ll pay for you to go.

And we’re like, okay, great. So our first trip was in 2011. And again, the, the people, we don’t speak their language, although we try, you know, we, we do our best with our broken Spanish and, but the, the people were just phenomenal. And the children, they just grab your heart and they hold on and they don’t let go. I’m still in touch with a family that we helped down there.

I’ve paid for her children to go to school because at this point, that’s all I can do, right? Like, so when I talk about generosity of spirit, you know, time, talents and money, and, you know, I, I can’t hop on a plane and get down there and help them every year, you know, every six months. So I do what I can. But anyways, they were just the hour. We went to Honduras about five times and our sixth trip we was actually pre Covid.

It was in March of 2020, was supposed to be our last trip and we never went because, you know, Covid, but we, I, I’m still in touch with the family and yeah, so that’s yeah.

Jim Dunlop: 12:03

Was so you had said that you were, it was one of these trips that you were on that you saw that original Live Generously shirt from Thrivent.

Gretchen Duda: 12:14

Yeah. It was one of those Honduras trips. Yep.

Jim Dunlop: 12:17

Pretty, pretty cool.

Gretchen Duda: 12:20

Yeah. And it would have been Seventeen’s trip because 17 was the year that I came to came to Jamie and private. So yeah.

Jim Dunlop: 12:28

Very good.

Gretchen Duda: 12:29

So that’s crazy.

Jim Dunlop: 12:30

Thinking about your work at Advent and obviously do a lot of work with our clients on financial planning. Tell me where generosity fits in and how those conversations go for you and your clients.

Gretchen Duda: 12:45

Yeah. So first, for me, my goal in meeting clients is the building of the relationship. And so it’s, it’s, again, it’s that it’s that openness. It’s the invitation to share, to be vulnerable, to understand where our clients are coming from, what their goals are. And, you know, we in, we tend to work with generous people both in, in spirit and in their money, in their finances.

So sitting down with a client, you know, a lot of times clients want to be generous and, but they don’t maybe know how they know that, oh, I can be generous by giving money. And there’s, there’s ways that we can help them do that and save on their taxes or, you know, and, and people don’t realize that sometimes those things can go hand in hand. And, you know, I, I hear Jamie and some of the other advisors say all the time, like, we don’t want you to be generous for the tax break, right? That’s not the goal of generosity. It’s a bonus.

And, you know, just having those open conversations, inviting clients to say, you know, this is really what I want to do. If I could, if I could do this, then I would be, you know, that would just make me so happy. So helping our clients do those things and also using strategies to help them be wise with their money. Because, you know, I’ve, I’ve said this thing, I, I help a lot of widows in our office. A lot of my clients are widows and, and when, when you sit around the table after the death of a loved one, when you sit around the table and everyone’s there and you know, you know, we were talking about where the money is going.

The IRS has a seat at that table. And most people don’t realize that. Right. You don’t think of that. And so and the so the visual that I say to my clients is, is like, how much money do you want going to the seat that the IRS is sitting in and away from you or your kids or a charity that you that’s dear to you.

And then when you say that they’re like. Oh, okay, that sounds good.

Jim Dunlop: 15:05

So yeah. So what’s if you don’t mind sharing, Gretchen, what’s the strategy that you’ve liked specifically to use with clients that has helped perhaps lessen the amount that they’re giving in taxes and increase the amount that they can be generous with?

Gretchen Duda: 15:24

Yeah, I. Love the donor advised fund for a couple reasons. One, it’s, it, it, it takes money that you have now. And you. You donate it to the the donor advised fund and you say, okay, this is money that I’m going to be charitable with. I’m going to help others with.

And at the same time, you get a tax break for that. And so, you know, we work with a lot of clients who are disciplined savers and disciplined investors. And when you’ve been invested for a long period of time, hopefully you have gain, right. And we know that gain is taxable. So, you know, we can we in the, as you know, in the biz, we call it harvesting gains, right?

So we can, we can offset the, the recognition of those gains with a contribution to a donor advised fund. Okay. So that’s great. So that’s like, that’s the finance tax saving part of it. But the other thing that I really like about the donor advised fund is that it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to end, you know, so a client, you can oh, what’s it called, a successor custodian or successor advisor.

You know, for clients who want to leave a legacy of generosity, the donor advised fund can be a way to say, okay, hey, when I’m gone, I want my children or my grandchildren to be advisors of this fund. And, you know, they’re going to get together every year and decide where some of this money is going and they’re going to give it away. And it’s going to, you know, inspire that legacy of generosity. So I really, I really enjoy that. You know, the tax breaks are great, but it’s about the generosity that we can instill into future generations as well.

Jim Dunlop: 17:15

I, you’ve reminded me of a story that I’ve shared with a few of our clients because I know you’ve been in the room. I have a friend that has a donor advised fund with one of the major institutions. And, you know, you can get these a lot of investment companies offer them in one form or another. But this particular company that that I’m referring to has a charitable app that fits in alongside of their donor advised fund, and so they can be out and talking to somebody that’s really involved with X, Y, Z organization. And they have tremendous instant joy of pulling out their phone, logging into their charitable app, and just sending money to that charity right there that it allows for spontaneous generosity.

You know, I know I want to do good things with these, this money. I haven’t quite figured out all of that yet. And so that’s, it’s a great tool for that.

Gretchen Duda: 18:05

Yeah. And I love, I love that phrase spontaneous generosity. And because that’s like you saying that story gives me chills. I’m like, oh yeah. Like that’s, that’s what really excites me is when clients have the means, you know, they come in and they sit with us.

And what’s their first concern when typically when clients meet with us, can I retire? Right? Do I have enough?

Jim Dunlop: 18:29

I have enough, do I have enough?

Gretchen Duda: 18:30

Do I have enough money? and it is so rewarding to be able to come to them and say, yeah, you have enough money, you’re likely going to have money left over. So what do you want to do with it? And it’s a lot of fun to lead clients to the, to the self realization that, oh, I want to give this away while I’m alive, not when I die. And that’s one of the really fun things is to see clients is to be able to go to clients and say, hey, like you have enough money to live to 94, 96, right?

Because we, we plan into your 90s, you know, you’re, you’re likely going to have money left over. So how do you want to bless people now? How do you how do you want to see it? You know, my personally, like my grandmother, who I was extremely close to, she passed away and she had a small life insurance policy that went to her four grandkids. And I was grateful for the money.

Right. But like, I’d rather have my grandma. Of course, you know, we always. You always want the person, not the money. And I just now doing what I do now, it’s like, oh, wow.

It would have been so much fun for her to see what we did with the money. Like my husband and I, we bought our first dog with with that money. And now she might not have really approved of that. But you know, it, it brought me joy. So it would have brought grandma joy.

So it’s like, you know, helping clients realize that you can you can be confident in your retirement and be generous at the same time. Like that’s just, that’s why I do what I do.

Jim Dunlop: 20:08

Yeah, I love it. And, you know, I want to go back to this generosity of spirit concept that you talked about a little bit ago. And I think sometimes people it’s very easy when you have more than enough money to be generous, right? Absolutely. However, I would argue it’s easy to be generous all the time and it just doesn’t have to be money.

Can you can you talk a little bit more about ideas around ways that you can be of generous spirit? And I’m just I’ll pick on you just briefly. You can’t drive by an animal rescue without getting a dog and bringing it home, I think.

Gretchen Duda: 20:43

But well, if I want to stay in my marriage, I have to which I do. I, you know, I, I’d like to stay married, but. Yes.

Jim Dunlop: 20:54

And that’s a generous spirit.

Gretchen Duda: 20:56

That is generous. Spirit, isn’t it? My dear husband. Shout out to Brian. He is living with me and our four dogs, three of which are under the age of one. So he he’s a trooper and he gave in to me on dog number four.

We we hadn’t planned on dog number four, but it was an accident. It was more of a. I would I don’t want to say that I, he he, he just gave in because I wouldn’t let it go. And so shout out to you Brian. Thank you trippers a delight.

So anyways yeah so generosity of spirit. You know I not every like you said not everyone has money but we can still be generous. And generosity is not just about money. You know, it’s about, you know, spending time with people helping when we can, recognizing a need and looking inward and saying, okay, how can I, how can I help this need? You know, one of the animal rescues that we have a history with Esperanza in Mechanicsburg, you know, they, they walk their dogs three days, three days, three times a day, you know, so they need dog walkers.

So time, talents and, and money. And that might be biblical. I, I, it feels biblical, right? It feels very much like Jesus would be okay with that, that he would say, you know, we, we are to be generous of spirit in the way, in the way that we love each other, in the way that we take care of each other. You know, just because I might not have money to donate to my neighbor doesn’t mean that I can’t help my neighbor.

So it’s, it’s always in the back of my mind. And I wouldn’t even say sometimes that it’s a conscious decision. You know, it’s just sometimes it’s just the way that you interact with people. Are you, you know, what’s your tone like? Are you smiling?

Are you, are you, are you kind of walking around the world open and, you know, trying to exude love and generosity and kindness? So that’s kind of how I think of it.

Jim Dunlop: 23:08

As we I really appreciate that. And I like this, I like this idea a great deal. One of the, the themes that keeps emerging on this podcast is, is, is also the, the ripple effect of, of generosity of. And it might be I help you today, and that encourages you to turn around and help somebody else tomorrow and so on. And there’s lots of different ways generosity can can magnify itself and create ripples.

So I, I really like that, that thought process. What’s, what is a if, if, if I can ask, you know, think about, is there a client that or a time where you can think of you helped turn on the light bulb for somebody who wanted to be generous but couldn’t figure out how or wasn’t sure if they had enough. And tell me a little bit about how that would have gone.

Gretchen Duda: 24:07

Well, yeah. I mean, it’s I don’t have a, it’s it’s happened multiple times. I mean, it’s happened just to be able to say, you know, you know, for example, clients who are who are retired, who are over 70.5. Okay, so we’re talking about older clients, not excuse me, we are talking about clients who are over 70.5. Not that doesn’t necessarily make you old.

But, you know, qualified charitable distributions can happen at 70.5. And that means.

Jim Dunlop: 24:43

So tell our listeners what that is.

Gretchen Duda: 24:45

I was going to. So so listeners, here’s your education piece. I’m going to get into my I’m gonna put my teacher hat on. A qualified charitable distribution is a distribution from your IRA that goes directly to a charity that then does not count as income on your tax return. So we can get taxable money out of a taxable account without paying taxes.

And that’s that’s how we like to do it. So a, you know, clients who are giving out of their cash flow, you know, if they’re giving, I’m just going to pick a number 500, or $500 a month to a charity or various charities. You know, we can start taking that money from the IRA and that the $500 goes back into your cash flow, which is really nice, right? We always want to free up cash flow. And then also, we can still be generous and not have the the tax implications of taking from an IRA.

So that’s always a really fun one for, for me to, to teach clients because it’s like, oh, hey, like we can do this. And then, you know, you can potentially give more from your IRA if you’re doing charitable distributions from your IRA. Maybe you can do a little more. And that’s, that’s always fun.

Jim Dunlop: 26:05

Cool. So, so I, I have, I have a final question for you, but before I get to that, I want to let our listeners know where they can find Gretchen. She is can be found at adventpartners.com. She is on LinkedIn, so please connect with her if you’d like. So Gretchen, if you could share some advice or wisdom on a billboard somewhere and reach a lot of people, what would your message be?

Gretchen Duda: 26:34

That’s a lovely question. My message would be this be kind because you do not know what someone is going through. I like it. Yeah. I, as you know, in a couple years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I went through treatment and I am now standing a year out from treatment and healthy and in remission, which is all very, very wonderful.

What that one of the things that it brought to light for me was you do not know what someone is going through. You know, even when I was going through treatment. Yeah, I lost my hair, but otherwise I looked I, you know, to look at me. I didn’t look ill. And but yet I had this huge thing that I was wrestling and struggling and trying to work through.

And it really opened my eyes to say that, you know, I, I get mad at the person who’s driving really slow on the road, right? Well, maybe there’s a reason, you know, and kind of this idea of assuming the best in people really like that is the message that I would send, you know, the the world is on fire. There are there are fires everywhere. And you do not know how big the fire is that somebody else is fighting. And so it is our job to be a source of water, to be a source of.

Caring and and just overall joy for these people, for, for, for everyone. And so yeah, that’s, that’s the message that I really want people to hear is that does you need to be kind just because we are all going through something and just because we don’t know doesn’t mean that it’s not there. So that would be my message. And that would be it would need to be a really big billboard because that was a lot of words.

Jim Dunlop: 28:43

I think it’s okay. Be kind. You don’t know what someone else is going through.

Gretchen Duda: 28:48

Yeah. Be kind. You do not know.

Jim Dunlop: 28:50

All right. Well, Gretchen, thank you so much for sharing with us today. It’s been a delight and I really appreciate you being here.

Gretchen Duda: 28:58

Well, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Outro: 29:03

Thanks for joining us. To hear stories of generosity that remind us that you can’t take it with you. Visit our site at canttakeitwithyou.com for more details on today’s episode and to subscribe to future shows.

Disclosure: 29:21

Neither today’s guests nor their company are affiliated with or endorsed by Thrivent Advisor Network. The views expressed in this presentation by the guest are their own and not necessarily those of Thrivent or its affiliates.

Thrivent Advisor Network and its advisory persons do not provide legal, accounting or tax advice. Consult your attorney or tax professional. Advisory persons of Thrivent Advisor Network provide advisory services under a “doing business as” name or may have their own legal business entities. However, advisory services are engaged exclusively through Thrivent Advisor Network LLC, a registered investment advisor. Advent Partners and Thrivent Advisor Network, LLC are not affiliated companies. 

Information in this message is intended for our recipients only. Please visit our website AdventPartnersFP.com for important disclosures. Securities offered through Thrivent Investment Management Incorporated member FINRA and SIPC, a subsidiary of Thrivent, the marketing name for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. Please visit thrivent.com/disclosures. Thrivent Investment Management, Inc. and Advent Partners are not affiliated companies.