5 tips on when to skip the charitable donation option at the checkout and when to donate

Self-checkouts aren't the only things becoming more and more common for shoppers. Now the option to donate money as shoppers pay at the checkout has become a common occurrence, but should you use the opportunity to share the wealth? On the latest episode of PennyWise, host Nat Cardona is joined by NerdWallet's Sara Rathner who weighs in on when it's a good idea to skip the charitable donation at the checkout and when it might be a good idea.

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About this program

Nat Cardona is host of Pennywise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chrionicle.  Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. 

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created automatically and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies.

Welcome to Pennywise, a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona. 

When it comes to supporting a charity, it doesn't get much more easy than donating at that card reader in the checkout line. But depending on your motivations and your financial situation, it might not be the best approach, really. NerdWallet Travel and credit card expert Sara Rathner joins us to help you decide whether you should give to charity on your next shopping trip or you're checking out a cash register at any given store.

And oftentimes you'll be greeted with that little donation. QUESTION Would you like to donate $1 or $3, $5 to whatever charity? So today we're focusing on if you should skip or give to a donation, whatever it may be. So let's just go right into it. We're going to play a little game of skip a bit. So let's say you want to have a significant impact and you want to give maybe a little bit more than a dollar.

When you head into Walgreens, what's your suggestion there? Should you skip the cash register then or give at that time?

In that case, skip the cash register and donate directly to the cause, either the one that's being offered to you at the register or another cause that's really meaningful to you?

And kind of what I just mentioned, a lot of times those questions that you'll be greeted with at the cash register are, Hey, do you want to make a small donation? So if that suits you, is this the time to give or a time to skip?

Yes. And it could suit you for a couple of reasons. One, you're giving budget might be a little bit low this year if you've had a tough year financially, but you still want to give money to causes, it could be meaningful for you and impactful to give a couple dollars here and there to different causes as you shop for the holidays, or if it just makes you feel good to spread your donation dollars around to a number of different causes rather than concentrate them all in one place, then in that case, giving at the register could be not just a useful way to do that, but also a convenient way to do that because it's something you can do while you're already completing other tasks in your life.

Okay. And this is maybe trying to get one of those tasks off your list, talking about tax breaks. So if you're hoping for an easy task, break. My guess is probably skip in this.

Year for a couple of reasons. First of all, in order to get a tax deduction for charitable donations, one, you'd actually need to itemize your deductions, which many taxpayers don't do. Many opt to take the standard deduction. So if you take the standard deduction, you're don't count on your charitable donations being a tax deduction you can still give, of course, is just not something that you're going to have to submit proof of when you do your taxes later on in a couple of months.

You also need to make sure that the charity in question is recognized by the IRS so that you could get that itemized deduction for it. And so you'll want to look into that before you give. And then the third thing is you need to be able to provide proof in the form of some sort of receipt that you've made this charitable deduction.

And so if you're spreading your charitable dollars around across multiple retailers at these, you want to keep receipts of everything so that if you do itemize your tax deductions, you'll have receipts available to provide proof of that. And that's just a little bit of an administrative lift. But honestly, so is itemizing your deduction. So if you're already doing all that extra work, then then you'll want this to count to.

Serve as all just go full in.

Yes.

So speaking of your budget, times are tough for a lot of Americans out there. You I'm going to cut a scene here. So you're at any given store and the person working at the cash register asks you, you said, would you