Road trip leads to lifetime of giving to the animals

John and Janet Swanson first learned about Best Friends Animal Society years ago when they saw a sign for Best Friends Animal Sanctuary on a road trip. “Janet said, ‘Let’s stop in,’ and that’s how it all began,” John says.

The Swansons have donated to Best Friends through charitable gift annuities since 2015. Why a charitable gift annuity? John explains:

“When you are planning for retirement, you don’t know how long you are going to live or how much you are going to need to live on. That is a key unknown. But with annuities, that is taken care of. You know that A: you are going to have money to live on, and B: it is going to do good when you leave. It covers two bases.

“You can do an annuity commercially, but that means somebody else has their fingers in the pie. Why not do it with a charity? You get double. You get security, and you get the joy of knowing everything is taken care of.”

He continues, “With charitable gift annuities, you receive the security of a steady income while you’re alive and the joy of knowing that everything’s taken care of when you’re gone.” Plus, John says, “the rate of return and the tax implications are attractive.”

At the end of the day, “you can’t take it with you,” he says. “And you can do something good with the money while you’re alive. I can’t see any reason not to do it.”