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If wanting to leave money behind consider buying a life policy and spend what you earned. Today there's more than enough information available for kids to build wealth of their own.
The only problem is wealth will take time to build.
That's one reason I told my sister to spend money and enjoy. With 10 nephews and nieces, even if she dies and leaves them a million from her estate, highly unlikely, it's only $100k each. Nice but not live changing amount. Same as $25K each.
I'd certainly find $100k life-changing!
One could easily pay off school loans, put a great down payment on property, or in some places, buy a home for cash Go back for a degree. If I got anything near $100k, I'd be retiring now instead of next year.
I realize the poster meant it hypothetically, but it's a lot of money.
One could easily pay off school loans, put a great down payment on property, or in some places, buy a home for cash Go back for a degree. If I got anything near $100k, I'd be retiring now instead of next year.
I realize the poster meant it hypothetically, but it's a lot of money.
Not the way I think of as life changing. Retire early, never have to work again. Buying a house is in a nice category. But of course it depends on the location. You can't even buy a mobile home for $100k cash around here. Perhaps a beach shack. We are not talking about Detroit.
"Spending it all now? Or maintain an estate to go to your heirs?"
Depends ON YOU, OP. What do you want to do?
MOH and I will inherit about $1.2m in inheritances in cash and investments, and about $300k in property+; assuming our remaining fathers {ages 83 and 89 this year} don't need to go through it for elder care that we can no longer give.
Guess what? We HAVE NO CHILDREN.
MOH and I have both been unlucky in our lives, I've been beaten down A LOT. So our estate is nowhere near where it could be.
So,,,, what to do, what to do.
We will largely keep it invested as it is, maybe change a few things, and we will use some for ourselves, being hopefully able to live on our incomes from 'our estate" and the interest/dividends of our inheritances and leave the principal alone.
We have very close friends, close enough to be called "family" and they have one adopted son {and three natural children} but the adopted son is the closest to us. MOH actually married him and his wife.They have 3 children, ages 7, 3, 1. No more kids for them, they are, uh have "taken care of that permanantly".
We will pay for their {"great nephews"} college education to the bachelor's level, and leave the proceeds of our estate as such:
25% to charitable PBS tv, the remaining 75% to be bestowed equally as 4 shares amongst : the son and wife, and each of the three children.
But DO we HAVE to leave it to anybody? NO. AND IF the son and wife aren't "able to help assist or take care of us in our elder years", then they may miss out on the estate!
WE COULD leave it and all new proceeds to the PBS TV stations but we will see how son and wife and "great nephews" handle our gifts.
it is OUR will to bestow gifts upon others that we so generously received.
so that is our plan,if YOU LIKE, OP, SPEND IT ALL. We've told our fathers to do so. THey hem and haw over every dollar spent! sometimes I tell my father: spend my inheritance and BUY IT!
YOU are so lucky to be able to do so for your children and maybe grandchildren.
Whatever I have left will go to my niece & nephew. So I will choose to spend it.
I have been thinking along similar lines recently. I have no children. My will makes gifts to several charities and leaves the rest to my sister, three years younger than I, who is a wonderful person but who does not actually need any money. Whatever money I leave to my sister would actually probably ultimately go to the benefit of my two nieces (her daughters). One niece is quite O.K. financially and otherwise and really does not need a substantial inheritance, while the other is a neer-do-well and still lives at home at age 32 sans job. I don't care for the latter one personally, quite apart from her failure to launch, so the thought of my money supporting her laziness is not a very good thought.
For the time being I plan to increase my charitable giving each year with the goal of there being less money left over upon my death. I turn 73 next month and I have a secure pension which is enough for me to live on in my customary style. Therefore, all my other assets are not really a key component of my thinking about the rest of my life. (Nursing home care? Bah, humbug. If I can't pay for it, dying in the gutter wouldn't be much worse.)
I have been thinking along similar lines recently. I have no children. My will makes gifts to several charities and leaves the rest to my sister, three years younger than I, who is a wonderful person but who does not actually need any money. Whatever money I leave to my sister would actually probably ultimately go to the benefit of my two nieces (her daughters). One niece is quite O.K. financially and otherwise and really does not need a substantial inheritance, while the other is a neer-do-well and still lives at home at age 32 sans job. I don't care for the latter one personally, quite apart from her failure to launch, so the thought of my money supporting her laziness is not a very good thought.
For the time being I plan to increase my charitable giving each year with the goal of there being less money left over upon my death. I turn 73 next month and I have a secure pension which is enough for me to live on in my customary style. Therefore, all my other assets are not really a key component of my thinking about the rest of my life. (Nursing home care? Bah, humbug. If I can't pay for it, dying in the gutter wouldn't be much worse.)
My sister asked one brother who has never married, if he minds his money will go to somebody he doesn't like or support, one of the 10 nephews and nieces, and he said he was ok with it.
I received nothing from either of my parents. As a previous poster said, my inheritance from my mother, who was dead broke, was no longer having to pay for her care. My father was well-off, but his second wife and her three kids from a previous marriage got everything. Luckily an aunt whose only child died young left me a substantial amount of money. I never touched it but instead invested it with the advice of a fee-based financial advisor and let it grow until I was ready to retire. DH received a small inheritance from his mother, less than one-third of what I received.
The inheritance has now nearly tripled and is more than enough to take care of our needs. We take a small amount from our investments every month just on principle, but the amount is not even close to 4%, or even 1%, and it's more than we need as our lifestyle is modest.
We have no children or other immediate family, so I feel instead of spending our money now we should save it for our future care. I am hoping to be able to look after DH on my own for as long as possible, and after he's gone I would like to move to a CCRC.
What's left will go to my niece and nephew. Neither is educated or sophisticated about money, and my nephew in particular is a spendthrift who still mooches off his mother in his mid-40s. So I will try to set things up so that they can't blow it all like their mother blew the $250,000 life insurance she got after my brother died. Because I don't believe that either of the will be good stewards of whatever money they get, I am not that concerned about how much I leave them. If their father (my brother) had lived, he would have received a portion of our aunt's estate, so I feel that in a way I owe it to his children.
Well, if one wants to be sure to never run out of money, one should spend as little as possible without incurring hardship. That flies in the face of the "logic" of the retire-in-style crowd. My own logic seems to echo that of Depression survivors. Maybe it's a generational difference since I am a bit younger than some here. I never got into the Yuppie thing or even wanted it ... that was something for people 10 years older than me. I've always had the mentality of an endless struggle, and, a healthy fear of future poverty.
My goal is to retire in style AND leave something substantial behind. All you have to do is have a professional income, save aggressively, have a little bit of luck in investing, and not let expenses get out of hand.
our plan covered up to 1500 a year . out of the first 25k for the implants it covered 476 dollars for an extraction lol ......
basically i only have implants at this point and insurance covers zero .
I've not seen a dental plan recently, with the exception of those being fully paid by the employer, that were worth it. $1500.00 a year max is really nothing, especially when you consider what is allowable. For those that don't know, that means your good dentist charges you, say, $500.00 for dental work, and the dental insurance company says they think this is above the usual customary care for this procedure. So they only allow the base cost to be lower, like $350.00. Then you get coverage based on that. So they throw you a bone and you have to still pay the deductible plus the missing $125.00 in this example.
I don't believe there is dental insurance that would cover things like $50K of implants.
It's interesting, because people always talk about the cost of medical insurance and medical costs. But if you go to the dentist like you should for regular cleanings, get x-rays and need some dental work, perhaps a crown along the way, that cost ends up being higher for you out-of-pocket than medical costs.
So before you think of leaving money to people just because they are family who never visit you and/or cause stress in your life, spend it on yourself first. I'm talking about dental work and anything else that brings joy to your life. Your whole life you worry about raising a family and taking care of others, and now you are retired to sit around and worry about what you are going to leave in your estate seems wrong. I'm not talking about people who have exceptions such as a relative who needs special care. I'm talking about those who didn't come to family functions because they made other plans, that you send them birthday wishes and never get the same in return. Those that you called to chat, never have time to speak to you, and never call you to ask how you are doing.
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