Inherited Wealth, Good or Bad?

With Your level of maturity I seriously hope that no one will listen to what You say.

 

Right on....

I would argue but I hear the bell ringing and I dont want to be late for class....Im hoping to get an education and one day be successful like you !

Peace out !

 

Mate, why are you attacking him? Because he disagrees with you?
I personally don't think annunaki is right, but I found his arguments profound and well thought through. No signs of jealousy, just a different philosophy of life.

By resorting to personal attacks you only put your own level of maturity into question.

 

I agree.......

There is no wrong or right here. People are free to do what they feel is best. I'm just hoping to understand a bit more about different peoples' philosophy... Though sometime I think that their reasoning might not be what they are stating and I wonder if they are being honest with themselves.

 

That might be directed at me. And I read your posts and respect what you have to say so Ill address it.. Im all about polite discussion and always willing to consider that my opinion may be wrong. I think we've all changed on opinions at one time or another.

So heres my perspective in a more personal format.

First let me say Im not jealous. I was at one point in my life...when I was a young adult and didnt know where my next meal was coming from or if I was going to have a roof over my head next month and I saw that other kids (I was bused into the nice part of town) had this Golden Safety Net under them so that even if they did nothing they would always have food or a place to live...of course I was jealous. I think thats normal.

Instead of wallowing in it I focused it into drive and tenacity. Im pretty well known and successful in my industry and money is a non-issue in my life. I dont have hundreds of millions but I could retire tomorrow at 39 if I so chose. So theres nothing to be jealous about.

Im sure there exist some people out there that had the Golden Safety Net and did turn out to be well rounded good people. But I havent met them. Thats not to say everyone I know (and I live in Los Angeles so I know a lot) that has inherited, or stands to inherit lots of cash, is a loser that has severe personality problems. Some are pretty down to earth but the personality flaws that inherited wealth lead to DO come out at times and its ugly.

let me again say Im not against inheritance and helping your children. Im against 'instant wealth'. Leaving your child enough to put down on a modest home if they were not successful enough to acquire one on their own is fine in my eyes. Leaving your child millions is not.. again MVHO.

let me also say that if and when I have kids Im positive I will want to spoil them and give them all the advantages I never had...but I hope that I will remember just how important the struggles of my formative years were in making me the person I am today.

At the end of the day I think if my background growing up poor taints my view of the situation the same must be said for those that grew up with the Golden Safety Net. Perhaps neither can see the situation clearly.

Edit: I think in the well to do social circles these kids problems will never surface , mostly because everyone around them will be the same and no one will see anything wrong with their behaviour. It is likely the personality flaws created by Instant Wealth/Golden Safety Net will only surface when and if these kids have to deal with 'common man' and/or mundane life.

 

I did not attack any1. I replied to:

"Originally Posted by anunakki View Post
ROTFLMAO

Thank you for your opinion !"

That is an unmature reply that adds 0 to this thread. Please read all posts before commenting.

 

I did! The thing is, accusing someone like annunaki of jealousy is absurd and I am sure most people will agree here. So, his reaction was not the best but understandable in a way.

Anyways it doesn't matter. As Letsjet said this thread has been great and very insightful so far (if only the P&R thread were the same ), I just don't want to see it go down in flames

Peace

 

I did not mean to flame anyone. I expressed a feeling I got after reading annunaki´s posts. Maybe I was wrong. I still think he´s answer to me was stupid though. However I hope he read my first post and got another view on the subject.

 

Your post

I felt it was ignorant and in very poor taste. No one on this thread had directed anything negative towards anyone personally except you.

My reply

Intentionally sarcastic to make light of your ignorant post.

You were wrong...no hard feelings I dont take internet debates personally.

id like to move on to the discussion at hand and let this go.

 

Jerry,

First, let me say that my statement was not directed towards you at all. In fact it was more a broad statement directed at people that are not on this board..... Just a generalization.

Your life experiences make your position very understandable. I do think, to a large degree, we are a product of our experiences. I think it is astute of you to recognize the jealousy you might have had growing up. The question is, and not specifically directed at you, how do you not resent your children for having it easier? Because, although I used to believe that parents made these inheritance decisions (Not giving much to the children) based on the child's greater good, I now have been privy to some real conversations that lead me to believe they would rather just not help their children much...... simply from jealousy, competitiveness or control......

In many posts, people say that they believe if they had an expectation of inheritance they wouldn't work as hard or maybe it would influence their behavior. I wonder if because they have no expectation of inheritance there opinion is that no one else should have it either.

 

No sweat.

My answer to your question is I dont think I would resent my children for having it easier because they wouldnt have it MUCH easier. My gift to them would be a roof over their head and food on the table while they were in school. Thats something not everyone has.

It could be argued I would do that out of 'jealousy, competitiveness or control' but I think I feel the way i do because of 'character'. Its whats missing in so many people and I think struggling and firsthand knowledge of the value of a dollar is what builds it.

I have a younger sister that I probably treat the same way I would my own children. Shes struggling. Shes always broke..falling behind on payments. She used to call me all the time for money...At first I gave it to her because I hated to see her in a bad situation. It didnt take long to realize that she was becoming comfortable with the knowledge that her big brother could always bail her out of any situation. I noticed an attitude change simply by her knowing that financial security was there. So I stopped helping her. She was evicted from her apt. She was couch hopping for awhile. her car got repoed. She 'hated ' me for a while.

That was a couple years ago...she found her own footing when she realized she was REALLY on her own.

Of course if I felt things were getting TOO out of control I would have stepped in to help her...but she didnt know that.

So i guess I would say if someone is going to gift a large inheritance on a child IMHO the child should be told they arent getting it. Get rid of that safety net and let them conquer the world on their own. Then when they are already successful in their 40s or so and you pass away they get the surprise inheritance. By that time they should be able to handle it.

Hey just my $.02

 

I've had intimate discussions with several people who are worth 9-10 figures on this matter - all of them self-made, which I do believe is relevant to the conversation. Every one of them that I have talked to (I certainly won't speak to your experiences and I am not doubting you) is coming from a position of love. They love their children. They want to help their children live out fulfilling lives. But they also know what sudden wealth can do to people (I agree with Jerry on that front - I've seen it firsthand many times). So they try to balance the two. How can they help their children succeed in life without potentially crippling them with a huge inheritance? For these people, however, 'succeeding' in life doesn't mean sitting around doing nothing. It means being a productive member of society and working hard. They don't want their kids to live off mom and dad's teat for the rest of their lives, they want them to go make a name for themselves in whichever career they choose.

I use the term cripple because I think that's what a huge amount of money like that can do to some who inherit it. It can suck the ambition right out of them. For others, it won't affect them negatively at all. They'll keep on working hard to get where they want to go. But I don't think you can really know which one it will be until it's too late. I've seen kids in the same family have very different reactions to wealth, so it's not even a parenting issue, IMO. Parenting is certainly part of it, but it's not all of it.

 

What I find striking in that thought process that money will cripple them. Does anyone think they will use the money to expand their family wealth to pass on to their own children? There is a saying that the first million is the hardest. Why keep having your offspring recreate that start? Why don't these people you have intimate discussions with picture their children going from 1x to 5x? Once again, I want to be clear that we are talking about adult children. My father is almost seventy and his mom is still alive. Would she donate her wealth to charity because she's afraid my dad is going to squander it?

 

Again, it´s about common sense and how you raise your children. The way You live and act WILL have a major influence on your children. Money or not. Simple as that. I have seen the opposite as well but it´s not that common.

 

It's not that it will cripple them, it's that it can. And you won't know which one it is until it's too late (well, you'll never know but that's a different topic). And I want to be clear that we're not necessarily talking about adult kids. In fact, in most cases we are not (I am not, anyway). When people do their estate planning, you have to look at it from a 'what happens if I die today' perspective. So in a lot of cases, we're talking about people in their 40s and 50s who have built a great fortune with young children. And when they're setting up their estate, they often don't want to give huge sums of money to young children. I agree the perspective changes when the children get older and it becomes easier to see how the children will turn out. You can always modify your estate as you go, but you need to plan as if you're going to die tomorrow because that's how everything will be paid out if you do. And farther down the road, you might change your mind. You might decide to leave it all to them. Estate planning is a fluid process. It evolves over time.

BTW, in families where we're talking about hundreds of millions of wealth, the amount tossed around as going to the kids is usually $5-10 million each. Yes, it's a nice sum. But not enough to live the life of luxury for the rest of their lives. But it's enough to buy them a nice house and get them a leg up on everyone else in the game of life. There is usually gifting that goes on during life as well, but that's on a much smaller scale. So it's not like these kids will be starting from ground zero. Far from it. But they won't be able to live their parent's lifestyle on that amount (vacation homes, yachts, private jets, etc). If they want their parent's lifestyle, they have to earn it themselves.

At the end of the day, as you have said before, there is no right or wrong answer. But I still contend that people want what is best for their children. The things they do are done out of love, not jealousy or spite.

I will also qualify my comments that they are relevant moreso to the very wealthy (say $30-50 million and up) than to amounts below that.

 

There it is in a nutshell. There is the exception where a bad kid will come out of a good home, but that is often a case of brain disfunction in the child as much as any other external influance. And thank God we have the kids that are able to break out of a the cycle of a bad home, unfortunately they too are the exception.

One needs to set things up for the child should you die tomorrow, and it is best for it to be a stagered inheritance. But beyond an education, a parent that lives to see the major mile stones in a child's life shouldn't be leaving much until the day they are pushing daisys. Help for the first home, the best wedding a daughter wants that you can afford are really all the bonuses a kid really needs.

 

I think inherited wealth is good so long as the kids are made aware of the value of money and should be guided on its use.

 

My parents never spend a dime and do nothing but poor mouth it. I know that they are secure but I'm glad. I believe that if my dad had a Ferrari sitting in the drive way, it would eliminate any motivation I had to go out and get it myself.

I've seen people who have received inheritances from their parents and kept working their asses off in school to become successful on their own. I've seen people get insurance money who said they'd invest it and blew it all on heroin.

But then again, haven't we all?