Intergenerational wealth transfers (e.g., inheriting $)

[whitemerlot]

My parents are terrible with money and were not able to help out with any expenses after I turned 18 to the point of cutting me off of their health insurance. My mom didn’t work and my dad delivered bread to grocery stores. My husband’s parents were factory workers. I’m thankful that we went to state schools and rented a cheap apartment together when I was 18.

My MIL inherited some money 5 years ago from her brother and is spending it so fast. I’m afraid she will expect us to help her out financially since we are in a good financial position but we are careful with our money. I’m a teacher and we spend a lot of money on our kids but have a 1989 kitchen and drive our cars for 12-15 years.

[Susie]

My parents paid for most of my BS degree.  After that I was on my own.

I do anticipate that I will receive an inheritance someday, but we're not planning for it or hoping it comes any time soon.  Since we're planning for self sufficiency, it's likely that we'll pass my inheritance from my dad on down to my kids, essentially skipping me.

[ellipses84]

[mention]neeps [/mention] That is how my DH grew up. Homeless and in foster care at times. He was very determined to get out of the cycle of poverty working since he was 12 years old and joining the military for GI Bill money to finish college.

I was working poor but didn’t realize it. I thought my lower middle class friends were rich! I think we both overcompensate to give our kids everything we didn’t have but we’ve had a lot of setbacks in our adult lives and if we’d known better we may have chosen better paying careers (they seemed like they be good pay when we decided on them).

[brooke77]

Is there a negative help answer? 🤣 I helped my mom financially as soon as I could work and supported her financially through her death. She died and I paid about $20K for her funeral/burial. I’ve been basically estranged from my dad my whole life and will not receive any inheritance from him.

We have a very high HHI, but are “low” for overall net worth. It’s a work in progress and I’m so proud of the life I will be able to provide for DS.

[twinmomma]

The only meaningful financial help I received from my family was when I got divorced. My parents gave me the money to pay for my lawyer (about $6k) because I didn't have a dime to my name, everything was joint accounts, and I didn't know what to do when my ex up and left. I graduated college with student loans, scrimped and saved with exH to buy a tiny house that I lived in until last year when my new H and I bought our own house. The only reason we were able to afford our new house is because my now MIL gifted us a down payment amount as a loan. She and FIL were from an immigrant families and worked extremely hard to set their kids up for success. She actually talks a lot about how she has made a lot of decisions financially to create generational wealth for her kids, grandkids, etc. I'm lucky that I benefit from that via my H since my family doesn't have that kind of wealth. It blows my mind constantly to hear H and his family discuss finances since it is so far from what I grew up with.

[SusanBAnthony]

My H had his undergrad loans paid off by his grandparents. There is a story about needing to give away their money because of nursing home cost but it makes little sense to me because of the look back period. Regardless that was impactful to him both in getting the loans paid off and because I'm mercenary and would never have kept dating him if he'd had a bunch of debt!

My parents have been very supportive and I may eventually inherit money from my grandpa, but I haven't so far and I'm pretty sure it will be a small amount.

[midwestmama]

SusanBAnthony, my mom told my dad that she didn't want to marry him until he had his SL paid off! Although, they came from very different families - my mom's paternal grandparents paid for her college and gave her money to buy a car after college (my mom and her brother were the only grandkids, and I think this set of great-grandparents did well financially but didn't live extravagantly) and my dad had to pay for everything on his own. My dad asked his parents for a small loan to pay for the last semester of his undergrad degree, and they told him to sell his car. (But then years later with their younger kids, my grandparents paid for everything. They definitely had favorites.)

[mlkgls]

No wealth transfers here! My family was solidly working class, but I feel like I’ve benefited in other ways. My scholarship essentially paid for undergrad, a frugal upbringing ensured that I’ve always lived below my means, and my mom was able to start saving aggressively for retirement in the last 20 years of her work life. I thought I would be financially responsible for taking care of them as they aged so I started saving fairly aggressively out of school, even when I made practically nothing. 

My 11yo is a really smart kid, but I doubt he’ll achieve the same type of scholarship and we’ll be on the hook for at least a portion. We’re better prepared to help financially with school, but I’ve also started laying the groundwork of going where he/we can afford. 

[awkwardpenguin]

I grew up very middle class. There was not a lot of money for extras, but I benefited immensely from my parents putting in the legwork to get me financial aid for college. They borrowed to pay for their part of the expected family contribution (about $18k over 4 years) and I took out loans and worked for my part and graduated with $27k in student loans. The rest was paid for by grants from filling out the FAFSA and CSS Profile.

My mom received about a $5k inheritance in her 30s and that is basically why my parents were able to buy a home. That brought a lot of stability we might not have had otherwise.

So even though the total amount of transferred wealth in my family was low, it has been a huge benefit that a lot of people don't have.

[dochas]

My husband inherited the house he grew up in so that was a huge leg up in life. I did not have any help from parents with college but being poor was a help because there were Pell grants and really low got loan rates with deferred interest. When I had to leave to work full time I worked at companies with tuition reimbursement. It would be a bit easier on people if you had some chance at working your way through college again.

[aspentosh]

My mom paid for my college which was amazing considering how poor we were when I was in grade school. And later she gave us $10k to pay for a wedding/use for house downpayment or save as we wish.

H got nothing from his family and never will. They were even poorer than me so generational wealth wasn't a thing.

[atarianna]

My H and I have not had help from parents for school or life. We could possibly benefit from inheritance(s) in the future, but have not yet. My grandma did leave me a small Roth IRA after her passing, but I didn’t claim it and allowed my dad to have it to help with some business losses he had.

We probably could have asked our families for help, but fortunately have never needed to.

[Roc A Bee]

I have benefited, yes. My dad paid for my BA (while I lived at home for free until 22ish). He also gave me $10k for a house down payment. This allowed me to buy my first house in 2009, a foreclosure. I sold in 2019 and was cut a $90,000 check. I’ve since bought another house that was 4x the price of my first house. I don’t think I could have done it without that $10k.

[expectantsteelerfan]

I haven't benefited at all, but my dh had his parents pay for a big portion of his undergrad. It's easy for me to take that for granted considering we financed his medical education ourselves and that overshadows the paltry amount of student loans he had from undergrad at a state school, but looking back, it was definitely a benefit.

They've also gifted us regular small amounts of money (like $2,000ish) as 'gifts' to all their children at Christmas in the more recent years. Dh and his siblings had a heart to heart with them and asked them to stop, and they have. What I don't understand is why they felt the need to gift us money at the stage we were at and not earlier in our lives. I'm not close enough to them to ask, but when dh and I first got married and he was in Med. school and I was teaching and also in school, we were BARELY getting by, and it was similar when we had our 1st child. Like, we could barely afford a crib for ds and got almost ALL his toys/clothes/furniture used for cheap or free, and we were just doing our best to make life work. I do know they were as financially able to help us then as they are now, so not sure why they waited until dh was an attending and making actual doctor money before giving us random money that would have been life changing when we were starting out. I truly don't know if they had a belief that we needed to 'make it on our own' or if there is some circumstance I'm not aware of, or if they just didn't think of it or didn't have any idea how much we were struggling. But we did always have them as a safety net.

[definitelyO]

I was going to put haven't benefited in a meaningful way - but not sure how meaningful is defined. I paid for my college education and loans. DH and I paid for our wedding and honeymoon (we received a $1,000 gift from parents).

My aunt co-signed on my first house - but no outright funds - so this was meaningful but not sure it meets the definition above.

But changed my answer to received an inheritance - my dad recently passed and with life insurance and cash under the mattress my brother and I each received $150,000.

EDIT - the above is for me.

DH had a different situation:

DH had college paid for by parents and inheritance from grandparents.  and that $ bought his first car.
His parents sold him their mountain house at a significant discount and it's now worth 5x what he paid.

[Velar Fricative]

No wealth transfers from my parents as there was no wealth to speak of. And there still isn't.

We were prepared to put down the 10% that we saved up on our first co-op apartment in 2006, and everything was going swimmingly until we somehow got screwed over by the bank and the seller and the day of the closing, they changed their minds and demanded 20%. I still do not understand exactly what happened but it was ridiculous. DH's parents told us they'd give us the additional 10% we needed as an interest-free loan, which we took and subsequently paid back in full. If not for that, we wouldn't have been able to build equity on that apartment for the 8 years we lived there, which became very helpful when we sold it and bought our current house in 2014, which in hindsight was a pretty good time to buy this house.

That's the only thing they "covered" for DH, but we're fine with that. They've been very good with their money and it's nice knowing they'd have to live until basically 150 years old each to burn through what they have during retirement.

[chpmnk1015]

Feb 13, 2024 11:19:24 GMT -5 expectantsteelerfan said:

I haven't benefited at all, but my dh had his parents pay for a big portion of his undergrad. It's easy for me to take that for granted considering we financed his medical education ourselves and that overshadows the paltry amount of student loans he had from undergrad at a state school, but looking back, it was definitely a benefit.

They've also gifted us regular small amounts of money (like $2,000ish) as 'gifts' to all their children at Christmas in the more recent years. Dh and his siblings had a heart to heart with them and asked them to stop, and they have. What I don't understand is why they felt the need to gift us money at the stage we were at and not earlier in our lives. I'm not close enough to them to ask, but when dh and I first got married and he was in Med. school and I was teaching and also in school, we were BARELY getting by, and it was similar when we had our 1st child. Like, we could barely afford a crib for ds and got almost ALL his toys/clothes/furniture used for cheap or free, and we were just doing our best to make life work. I do know they were as financially able to help us then as they are now, so not sure why they waited until dh was an attending and making actual doctor money before giving us random money that would have been life changing when we were starting out. I truly don't know if they had a belief that we needed to 'make it on our own' or if there is some circumstance I'm not aware of, or if they just didn't think of it or didn't have any idea how much we were struggling. But we did always have them as a safety net.

it may be the situation they are in now vs before.  I know people were able to start gifting their kids more as they became retirement years and certain investments they had to start withdrawing from each year.   my pseudo-second mom  (neighbor who was like another mother to me) got to an age she did they with her nephews.. she had no kids, the nephews were in their 60s at that point, but she would give them cash each year because she didnt have a need for it all.