Generational wealth passed down to offspring can bless them or cripple them. Lately, some high profile rich people say they’re not leaving it to their children, but giving their inheritance to charity. Are they virtue signaling to their audiences, or trying to protect the children from the hazards of unearned riches?
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10 replies on “Inheritance: More Wealthy People Say They’ll Leave it to Charity, Rather than to Their Kids”
Balance.
I think there is definitely something to making your kids TOO comfortable.
Leaving NOTHING is too harsh a requirement, I think. But if you can’t impart the deep down, deeply felt understanding of the value of money … well let’s put it this way. It’s REALLY hard to do whilst leaving them money they did not earn.
The very common sense Dennis Miller at suggestion he not leave his money to his children ‘ Who should I leave it to – You?’
I inherited nothing but I’ve come to meet many people who grew up in very well off surroundings who then went on to do well in life, these are the ones we don’t hear about. Keep in mind the spoiled wasteful trust funder could be a TV trope done to death by scriptwriters like the crazy Vietnam vet , hypocrite priest and corrupt businessman
Let me put in a vote for both. My husband and I have always given to charities. Some are national and some are local. We know how they use money because we’ve made it our business to know. They are causes that we care deeply about and it pains us to think that they may be hampered in doing the work we want them to do ib we aren’t around to write a yearly check. Or help out when they might be hitting a hard patch, which can easily happen with small local charities. So, yes, we’re leaving money to the kids. But we also try to provide for the charities so they can keep doing what they’re doing.
While Bill was talking about waiting for an inheritance, the thought of the new King Charles of Great Britain came to mind – not sure why. And to his credit, and that of his two sons, they all were “required” to serve in their military. That service might have been relatively short, and somewhat “protected”, but still valid none the less. And they did that duty well and responsibly. But none of them have been “made” or charged or chartered to build a real (non-celebrity) business. A real profit and loss business, where the metrics are out front for all to see, that might also employ hundreds to thousands of people dependent upon that work being available via wise executive guidance. Given their various public and social functions, maybe they really are somewhat aware of the issues facing normal people, but of course cannot truly experience those issues themselves, given their wealth status.
Perhaps building a business is the better use of your money, creating and supporting many families beyond just your own? Not everyone has the mindset or drive to do that (maybe including me), but I suspect the view that you are more “secure” with a “steady” paycheck is a flawed outlook, while the more successful entrepreneurs believe their financial security rests within their own efforts and drive to benefit their customers in the marketplace while doing something they really love.
If you are approaching or over 70.5 years old, be sure you check out making qualified charitable distributions (QCD’s) from your traditional IRA’s as a method to reduce your taxes due from your required minimum distributions (RMD’s) (up to $100K per spouse). This approach also enhances your ability to make the charity donations that your prefer rather than what the government decides is the best use of your money.
Ben Franklin built up his printing and other businesses from age 17 to 42, and became independently wealthy thereafter. We managed to do something sort of similar via saving and investing our salaries, except it took to age 60/65. “Work for your money and then let your money work for you”.
We don’t really need our SS claim payments, and already have or will exceed in benefits what we paid into the system for SS and MC via payroll taxes (ignoring inflation). Given the national debt situation, we are also gifting most of the net from SS to our grandkids so they have the nest egg to pay for the increased taxes or their retirement in their elderhood.
But they may not really need it, given we, our children, and our grandchildren seem to have inherited some level of intelligence and scholastic ability, essentially from our grandparents (it had to come from somewhere). This has helped us, our daughter, and our grandchildren become successful enough. But no one really knows where the Commie push will end up, so only inherent human resources can truly be counted on, rather than mere money. That is the best gift to give your decedents.
A few paragraphs from what has come to be called “Francisco’s Money Speech” in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” might be useful here:
“…money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.
“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek.
“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit.
“… money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich–will not remain rich for long.
“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth–the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it.”
Hey Zo? You nailed it this time. What I said in my previous comment on the prior episode was meant as constructive criticism so please take it that way. I’m not and never will say that you shouldn’t ever talk about Faith. I’m just saying that’s not ALL you should ever talk about because I can’t speak for anyone else but I want to hear what Alfonzo Rachel has to say too. Scriptural interpretations and applications are fine and dandy but you’re a smart man with a very good working knowledge of how to apply those tenets to real life. Tenets you clearly understand very well. That’s what I’m interested in and this episode shows you have that in you without preaching a sermon.
Well done. Keep up the good work.
The formula for not creating obnoxious, entitled, puerile trust fund babies is in the rearing not the inheriting. If you raise the kid properly this becomes a non-issue. In fact, if the kid is raised properly you won’t even know the kid is a trust fund baby unless you’re a part of the family that is in the know. Like for instance the estate executor.
I have circumstances like this in my family and the kid who will inherit a trust fund is a hardworking, enterprising young man who will already have done very well by the time he gets his inheritance.
As others here on the forum have said many times, the problem lies in the parenting.
So when you hear something like this episode covers there is one thing that you can be certain of. If a parent has so little regard for the integrity of his/her own offspring that they want to give away the fruits of all their labor to strangers … That tells you something about those parents.
It tells you that they were such horrible parents that the result of their parenting so appalls them that they do not want to contribute even more to make their offspring even worse than they already are.
This isn’t a virtue signal though I’m sure parents who are in this sort of situation like to view it as one. It’s an open confession to being an abject failure as a parent.
My Polish grandfather got off the boat at Ellis Island and was greeted in Detroit as a sub-human, too stupid because of his ethnicity to be hired. He changed his surname to Jackson and soon became a supervisor of a workforce of Italians painting the Ford Factory, Italians being just barely smart enough to hire. He was able to send my father to college and graduate school.
There are many similar stories, many much, much worse (see Thomas Sowell’s description of the plight of the Irish in America, a population whose level of education, health, and disease was far worse than the slaves of the 1840s), and I’m aware that Blacks and Asians have to do more than change a name to fit in (My grandfather still looked very Slavik.)
I find it stupid/sad/shallow when people make a derogatory comment about getting a head start in life when you are white and male, i.e. starting at the 20 yard line in the 100-yard dash, and think of it as something to be ashamed of. I proudly tell people that my kids started at the 85 yard line. And I am grateful to grandpa, in particular, even though I barely met him as an infant.
My kids will get the bulk of my estate, but most of it after I pass, although there are some charities I have in mind, mostly around the Arts. No telling how much $$$ I’ll need to survive Biden’s economic legacy.
I love the idea of personalizing charity, individualizing it so that the wealth makes a difference, rather than becoming part of an overall slush fund with no accountability and no recognizable benefit to either society in general or anyone in particular.
Just like so many other worthy concepts, the Left has perverted the word “charity” to become a euphemism for swampy grift.