Ultra high net worth and how much to leave to kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At minimum: pay for college & graduate school, wedding & a starter home in full.

This.

Remainder to go into education trust into perpetuity for any descendants’ education/further education, plus $1m “gift” to all children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren on their 21st bday (until it runs out).

We have similar NW (mid 40s) and this is how we set it up.

Hope you have a good team. Our accountant and lawyers and bankers are in valuable for this kind of stuff. We use Morgan Stanley private wealth and have a fantastic lawyer & accountant.

This. Also make the trust available for medical treatments in case of any SN grandkids and beyond.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Leaving them money to try to control them probably won’t work and neither will not leaving them money to try to control them.

Just do what you want with the money and your kids will turn out how they turn out tbh.

The bigger question you need to deal with is how much if any money you will give them while you’re alive and sitting there with all this money.

That’s so obviously more important than what happens when you die that I think you’re a troll.

Most with that wealth start giving when alive simply to minimize taxes. Might as well start saving in 529 for future grandkids once the kids are married/planning to have grands. Just keep the kid's 529 open and invest yearly even before the grands arrive.

NP - not high net worth but on board with this sentiment. My parents became very well off post-retirement and I'd be happy if they would pass their wealth on to my kids, since I'm old enough to be comfortable and don't really need a windfall now. It's too early for you, OP, but I would say the real goal should be setting your kids up to be debt-free in their 20s and their kids to be well looked after.

DP. The issue we struggle with is if you gives kids too much money when they're young (20s), you can have a failure to launch. I had a friend like that. Trust funder, and every year he came up with some new wacky idea for a business that of course failed because you don't hustle when you don't need to. I just Googled him -- looks like his latest venture is some organic healing patch or some nonsense.

The best we came up with on advice from our financial planner is their college + expenses are fully paid for, then they get lump sums every 5-10 years, but I'm still not happy with that. Will they become lazy if they know the next tranche is 3 years away so why work towards anything in the meantime? Our kids are young enough where I can't really predict personality-wise how it will shake out.

I know lots of people with family money and trust funds and plenty of them launched. Some didn't. About the same averages of the general population.

+1. This idea that there are tons of rich people with kids who "don't launch" because of too much wealth is overblown. Not launching has nothing to do with family wealth.

+1.

I think many rich people are rich because they have eccentric personalities and then took bigger risk than the average person would.

These personalities can result in utter dysfunction if the perfect opportunity does not present itself. So their children might be disasters. The money did not cause this. The kids would have been disasters even if they were poor. They inherited " crazy" genes from their parents.

Or they can have eccentric personalities and be accepted because they are rich. The same person without family wealth would just be a nut

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dh and I are extremely fortunate and currently have a net worth in the upper 30s, all self made, although our parents provided some help for college such that we were able to borrow just the federal student loan max for our state schools. We are in our mid 40s.

We have 3 kids currently in middle school. We do not believe in generational wealth. I’m inclined to provide them whatever they need to finish school (wherever they want to go and for as high a degree as they want, inclusive of room board and incidentals). DH would like to leave them something more but not the majority of our wealth. We have another $12M in life insurance so if we died tomorrow each would inherit roughly $17M.

If we died before they graduate college we would keep everything the same until they graduate and then they would receive their inheritance.

The question is how much to leave them each after education expenses and living costs through college in todays dollars?

Our current thoughts are one or some combination of the below:

1) $1M each
2) a family trust for education so that future generations don’t have to worry about college costs (this would obviously benefit our kids).
3) the max that we can leave not subject to estate taxes without playing gifting of partial interest games. We recognize that this figure can change. We are sorta indifferent if the number stays the same or reverts as current scheduled.

Everything above what we leave them we will donate.

Thoughts?

$1M?! Peanuts!

Bill Gates supposedly is leaving $10M to each of his kids but that's just BS. His daughter already owns an estate in NY and just bought a $40M apartment in NYC and go knows what else. All said and done she'll be worth $1 Bil at least when Bill is dead and gone. If your $1M thinking was inspired by people like Bill's false statements, please change.

I'd structure things as follows:
1. Money enough for any level of any education they want
2. Money for their first home
3. Money for their wedding
4. Some cash
5. A trust that gives them enough money to live a good life but not enough that they don't have to work
6. Money in their kids' 529. You could just invest in their 529s and let it grow so when they have kids, they can move it to their kids' names.
7. About 20% to charity. Try to give when you are still around so you see the benefit.

We are nowhere near as wealthy as you but except for 2 & 5, we will be able to do the other things.

Bill has also paid for his 3 kids’ private k-12, elite private colleges (Stanford & UChicago) and Jennifer’s med school/MPH education.

Of course! When there was swooning talk in the media about how he was going to leave them 'only' $10m, I thought he was an idiot. Not one after all. That's just for PR. In reality, each kid will end up with at least $1B through various means.

In reality, if everything is paid for until you are out of grad school, and you have at least one $10M+ home fully paid for and wedding fully paid for, $10M is more than enough to live off of very nicely. Fact is, he is requiring his kids to get education and do something with their lives (ie. they are not just tik-tok-ers and traveling the world). They can't just sit by idly and collect money. All 3 will be making excellent money thru their careers before he drops the purse strings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't call 50M an ultra high net worth. Which is what makes me inclined to think this isn't a real poster. Ultra high is multiple hundreds of millions into the billions. People with 50M know this.

Second, very, very, very few genuinely wealthy people genuinely don't believe in generational wealth. They may talk it but in reality they will leave their children very comfortably off. Generational wealth is only a modern buzzword that's no more than a few years old, preying on liberal white guilt in the DEI age.

17M per child (I'm assuming this is post tax) is unquestionably a nice sum of money. But it's not ultra high net worth. It will allow each child to own a nice 2-3M house plus another 2-3M summer house and the rest tied up in investments generating a nice income for what will be generously comfortable, affluent life. But you're not owning private jets or buying a 10M summer house on Nantucket or living in Kalorama.

If you are real, in reality what will happen is you'll help each kid get launched, buy their first house, pay for the grandkids' education, and when the time comes, each kid inherits 10M while the rest is donated. It's not that complicated. See your financial planners.

UHNW is defined as over $30M, so yes $50M is UHNW

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had no generational wealth. Three kids. One did not launch. It’s not always about the money. Again, you’re not going to die until they are well into adulthood.

And if you do, you can put plans into place so kid cannot get access if they "don't launch". Typically you distribute funds at key ages, or for key events. I would not give full access until age 35 for multi millions. But would put plans in place to access for education, medical, first home, etc before then. We have put this all in place for our estate, should something happen to us before kids are 35.

And not launching often has nothing to do with the parents---one of 3 kids, 2 of us are successful, responsible adults. The other did launch, but is terrible at financial management and always feels the issues are everyone else's fault, not recognizing that they have made terrible choices along the way and cannot define "need vs want" very well for a career that typically pays less. Yet we all 3 grew up in the same household, Poor/lower income all of our lives, so we know how to live frugally and still have all "needs" provided for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Leaving them money to try to control them probably won’t work and neither will not leaving them money to try to control them.

Just do what you want with the money and your kids will turn out how they turn out tbh.

The bigger question you need to deal with is how much if any money you will give them while you’re alive and sitting there with all this money.

That’s so obviously more important than what happens when you die that I think you’re a troll.

Most with that wealth start giving when alive simply to minimize taxes. Might as well start saving in 529 for future grandkids once the kids are married/planning to have grands. Just keep the kid's 529 open and invest yearly even before the grands arrive.

NP - not high net worth but on board with this sentiment. My parents became very well off post-retirement and I'd be happy if they would pass their wealth on to my kids, since I'm old enough to be comfortable and don't really need a windfall now. It's too early for you, OP, but I would say the real goal should be setting your kids up to be debt-free in their 20s and their kids to be well looked after.

DP. The issue we struggle with is if you gives kids too much money when they're young (20s), you can have a failure to launch. I had a friend like that. Trust funder, and every year he came up with some new wacky idea for a business that of course failed because you don't hustle when you don't need to. I just Googled him -- looks like his latest venture is some organic healing patch or some nonsense.

The best we came up with on advice from our financial planner is their college + expenses are fully paid for, then they get lump sums every 5-10 years, but I'm still not happy with that. Will they become lazy if they know the next tranche is 3 years away so why work towards anything in the meantime? Our kids are young enough where I can't really predict personality-wise how it will shake out.

I know lots of people with family money and trust funds and plenty of them launched. Some didn't. About the same averages of the general population.

+1. This idea that there are tons of rich people with kids who "don't launch" because of too much wealth is overblown. Not launching has nothing to do with family wealth.

+1000

Most rich kids do launch. Most parents do not raise their kids to just sit around and do nothing and college from the family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Leave it to your kids. Unless you die prematurely they'll be in their 40s-60s when they get it. It's a nice amount of money for them to be comfortable off the interest but it's not like they'll be buying yachts and houses in Aspen etc.

I recommend gifting some of it to the kids while still alive, so you can see the benefits. If you raised your kids right, they won't be entitled brats. But the benefits of help with downpayment, saving for retirement when they are young will go far for setting them up to be successful

[Anonymous]

Being similarly situated it never occurred to us to not pass our wealth on to our child. Charities are the contingent beneficiaries if our child fails to survive us, but otherwise we see no reason to not let our heir benefit from our wealth. If he chooses, he can make charitable gifts with some of what he inherits, but the money will be there to ensure his support and comfort no matter what the future brings. Taking a punitive approach of withholding most of what you have to instead benefit strangers seems pointless and likely to engender lifelong resentment and confusion.

[Anonymous]

I'd create a family trust. One of my friends has one. It was created in the early 1900s by a female ancestor for all female descendants. It provides money that is used for college and I believe my friend also used it so she could take time off when she had babies. Hers is the neatest I've encountered because it's only females.

Create a family trust that gives money for college, grad school, money on the birth of a child, money upon marriage, downpayment help etc. The bulk of the money is reinvested forever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every generation should aim to raise/provide for the next generation such that the next one is more successful and lives a more comfortable life. Leave most of your money to your kids. You don't want to be that a-hole, selfish parent/grandparent that shafted their family by gaving away all their money just so they can feel good.

Gross. There is a limit to how much pampering a person should reasonably expect.

Each generation should rise up against the aristocracy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every generation should aim to raise/provide for the next generation such that the next one is more successful and lives a more comfortable life. Leave most of your money to your kids. You don't want to be that a-hole, selfish parent/grandparent that shafted their family by gaving away all their money just so they can feel good.

Gross. There is a limit to how much pampering a person should reasonably expect.

Each generation should rise up against the aristocracy.

Spoken like a Poor. I bet you'd change your tune the minute you win the lottery!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd create a family trust. One of my friends has one. It was created in the early 1900s by a female ancestor for all female descendants. It provides money that is used for college and I believe my friend also used it so she could take time off when she had babies. Hers is the neatest I've encountered because it's only females.

Create a family trust that gives money for college, grad school, money on the birth of a child, money upon marriage, downpayment help etc. The bulk of the money is reinvested forever.

So Progressive back then!

[Anonymous]

This thread reminds me that most people on DCUM are entitled brats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At minimum: pay for college & graduate school, wedding & a starter home in full.

This.

Remainder to go into education trust into perpetuity for any descendants’ education/further education, plus $1m “gift” to all children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren on their 21st bday (until it runs out).

We have similar NW (mid 40s) and this is how we set it up.

Hope you have a good team. Our accountant and lawyers and bankers are in valuable for this kind of stuff. We use Morgan Stanley private wealth and have a fantastic lawyer & accountant.

This. Also make the trust available for medical treatments in case of any SN grandkids and beyond.

Agree with this.

[Anonymous]

So funny that 7:53 called me a development drone.

I make about $80k a year at age 60+.

Nice though.

The most fun we had was creating a clause in our documents for how our money should be divided if we and our kids died in one accident. We each chose a project related to our college/university experiences. But it is unlikely those schools will ever see that money.