Time to Plant Your Aggie Legacy

It’s never too early to plan for the future! Life’s circumstances constantly change, and estate planning is crucial at every stage in your life. Having an estate plan that clearly outlines what will happen with your personal assets after your lifetime is so important. By keeping your estate planning documents up to date as your life and family situations evolve, you are providing a valuable service to your family both now and in the future.

Our team offers a wonderful (and FREE) estate planning workbook that helps you organize your thoughts to make the most of your time when you are ready to meet with an estate planning attorney or other legal counsel. Download it below! 

I work in planned giving and am also a planned giving donor! Experiencing both sides, I can testify that planning a gift is very easy.

After discussing my financial goals with my advisors, I determined that my retirement account was the best giving avenue for me. 

From there, I simply updated my beneficiary designation and worked with a development officer to document what I wanted my gift to support at Texas A&M.   

Texas A&M is grateful for any support, no matter the size. However, there are various ways to incorporate estate giving into your plans.

Certain methods, like charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts, require a minimum because they can provide you with annual payments and tax advantages. Other vehicles—like gifts in wills and beneficiary designations—don’t require minimums and make it easy to significantly impact the Texas A&M area you hold dear. 

Planned gifts offer significant advantages to you and your family.

As Brian mentioned, depending on the type of gift, you can benefit from tax deductions, bypass capital gains or receive payments for yourself or your family, all while creating your legacy at Texas A&M to support an area you’re passionate about.

Also, most planned giving methods are revocable, which gives you and your family ultimate flexibility in your estate planning.

All planned gifts made to the Texas A&M Foundation can be designated to support your specific passions!

We have individuals who choose to create and fund named scholarships, graduate fellowships or faculty chairs, as well as those who support college or department programs or student organizations.

It’s up to you to decide how you would like your gift used; carrying out your wish is our priority. 

The Texas A&M Foundation takes pride in ensuring that your gift supports what you are most passionate about in Aggieland, and properly records your wishes through a few simple steps:  
 
1. You work with our team to determine where you would like your gift to be utilized.  

2. Our team drafts a gift agreement for you to review and sign. This document binds Texas A&M to use your gift as you choose and allows us the opportunity to properly thank you, including inviting you to become a Heritage Member. As a Heritage Member, you are invited to exclusive events and offered valuable resources that better connect you with Aggieland. 

3. If your gift is a bequest in a will or trust, we ask that you provide the pertinent page(s) of the will/trust.  
 
This process helps our team honor you and your unique Aggieland legacy! 

Flexibility is one of the many advantages of a planned gift.

Giving methods such as bequests or IRA/401(k) beneficiary designations are revocable, which means you can easily make changes to your gift in the future.

Not only can you update your gift amount, but you can also adjust the specific areas of Texas A&M you want to support to best reflect your passions.