My inlaws don’t even send my kids birthday cards or gofts…never have. The notion that they would contribute to college was beyond ridiculous…oh…and they could have. Not my money…not my business.
My FIL once told me that he plans on leaving no inheritance behind, but wants to spend all his money before he dies. The immediate thought that popped into my head was, “what if you spend it all and you’re still alive?”. Ooops. I didn’t say it of course but it seems wise to spend as if you’re going to leave behind a small inheritance at least, because you might need that as a cushion yourself.
My MIL’s parents paid for my FIL’s med school (meaning their son-in-law) but that was 50-60 years ago. That was quite generous.
I plan on disbursing $x to our kids at certain milestones but on my/H’s timetable - and not cutting into our needs and lifestyle. We have discussed setting up education funds for eventual grandchildren.
I hope to live on my pension, SS and earnings on my investments, and leave the principal to my kids. That’s the goal, anyway.
My husband’s grandparents did this. They liked to ‘give with a warm hand’ (their expression).
Now my MIL is choosing to follow in her parent’s example and we occasionall get a ‘warm hand inheritance’ check from her.
When my husband’s grandparents died, my MIL, an only child, received a large inheritance, which she decided to use to pay for college for her 8 grandchildren. (There is no maximum amount, gift-tax-wise, for tuition paid directly to the school, and for our kids, who were younger, they set up 529s.) It was a wonderful gift to her children, and knowing college was paid for we were able to focus on retirement savings for ourselves. I plan to do the same for my children, although she has set up 529s for her 9 great grandchildren, none of those belong to our branch of the family!
We would like to help with wedding and future Gkids ed expenses, to the extent we can, as well as family trips. Will see how that goes.
It wasn’t always the case, but today, if your estate is above the exclusion limit of $5mm-ish, it probably makes a lot of sense to take advantage of the 14k/recipient/year exemption. Otherwise, when you die, the federal govt will take 40% of those 14k chunks that you failed to remove annually from your estate through gifting. That’s avoided completely by gifting them ahead of time.
Obviously it depends on your age and whether you’re likely to need the money, but from an estate tax minimization standpoint, it should be considered.
Exclusion is $10,860,000 for a Married Couple.
Unless something dramatically changes…I’m not going to worry about that $5 million exclusion!
There is so much money that can be put in a Roth IRA every year, etc. Let’s just say a person gives $5,500 every year (the maximum yearly Roth IRA contribution) to the people in their will. Basically that money is then double invested.
How do you figure it is double invested? That makes no sense.
Haha, I’m with you thumper. No worry about leaving each of my 3 kids more than 5 million.
Twenty-five years ago, when my parents sold “the house” to move to a retirement community, they gave each of their four children $5,000. They also gave H and I $5,000 when we bought our first house. I thought that was sooo generous.
This thread is making me think that maybe H and I should be giving money to each kid each year. At least contributing to a retirement account. We did pay for their private school tuitions and they are debt free.
Of course it makes sense. Each person can only contribute up to $5,500 each year in a Roth IRA.
Let me try to explain it further. Let’s say for example a grandparent decided to give each of her three grandchildren starting at 18 years old $5,500 each year to fully fund their Roth IRA (obviously they have to be working- but that’s besides the point). Let’s say the grandparent dies 10 year later. Instead of the money sitting in the the grandparent’s account for 10 years, the money was invested in the Roth IRA for 10 years. If the grandparent waited until she died to give the money, that money would have lost 10 years of being invested in a Roth IRA.
Money given while we are alive is called a gift, not an inheritance. Unless you want to go all Prodigal Son and demand your inheritance today so that you can go blow it all on dissolute living.
As one friend used to say, “If you’re givin’ while you’re livin’ then you’re knowin’ where it’s goin’.” He was talking about philanthropy when he said that, and he gave a lot.
MomofJandL: Nobody here is talking about demanding an inheritance.
Not true. I just did, in making a distinction between a gift and an inheritance. You can disagree with my distinction, but it works for me.
Thread is being closed. OP was a returned, banned member and is banned again.