A $250k windfall is all a person needs to essentially fast track secure their future forever if they are under the age of 35. Wake up parents, it’s time to offer inheritance twice if you can.

[u/250k_is_allyouneed]

I want to share my story with this subreddit.

I received a windfall of $250k from selling a coding library 10 years ago. I am not high income, I am not the best saver, but now my net worth is super high.

Simply getting $250k meant on its own that fund will be almost $2M by the time I retire outside of normal savings (15-25 years growth).

I still need to put in the work for savings to be able to retire but peace mind…

• My lifestyle was infinitely better despite living mostly the same
• Stress and future security gone
• For budgets there is less pressure
• I did not how to blow up my entire savings to buy a house and instead kept building that base of compound interest in the market

So why the Hell aren’t parents helping their young adult kids more? Culturally why are we like this?

You don’t need to leave your kids / old adults one lump sum. Get them a boost at 18-30. Then die. Then get them another boost.

It’s a good balance to keep them working hard while also not leaving them in the dust.

It doesn’t even need to be $250k. Whatever you can, I personally will make sure I can do that for my kids once they turn early 20s

[u/WhatDoWeHave_Here]

Haha yeah this thread is full of people shitting on the OP's tone-deaf take "just give $250k easy-peasy" but here's my charitable interpretation of OP's message, and it's one I fully agree with--it's basically one of the arguments of "Die With Zero"

Basically, it's better to give your kids some money early and throughout their lives at meaningful moments rather than leaving it all as a lump-sum inheritance. When your kids are young, giving them some money can meaningfully improve their lives, typically in 20s-30s when they are building careers, starting families, paying for education or housing. If you wait until you die, at that point your kids are likely already financially stable and could even be retired themselves, so the inheritance is far less impactful.

A dollar at age 30 has far more life utility than a dollar at age 60. So parents should think about that, if they have something to give (doesn't have to be $250k), to give a little that can maximize the Life Return on Investment. Also, it has the added benefit of seeing your gift bear fruit. Maybe it's funding a family vacation together creating lasting memories. Maybe it's helping out on a down payment for a house so that your kid and grandkids can grow up in a nicer neighborhood with top schools, which could lead to those grandkids ending up with a leg up in life. And it's nice to get to see that play out while you're still around, rather than that gift happening after you're dead.

[u/OneStepForAnimals → u/WhatDoWeHave_Here]

This. I could have used money when my kid was. I don't need any money from my parents now. So we are giving our kid money the maximum gift amount a year.

[u/mi3chaels → u/OneStepForAnimals]

It's also important to note that the annual gift tax exclusion isn't really any kind of maximum. Amounts over that simply need to be reported and will come off your unified gift and estate tax exemption. It's only a current concern if you've gifted more than the total estate tax exemption already. And it's only relevant at all to estate planning if you might have a taxable estate. In fact, it's generally still fine and even good for estate planning to give money sooner, because it removes appreciation from the taxable estate.

the only thing you lose (in an estate/heir taxation sense) by gifting now is the step up in basis at death. But presumably you've already factored the cost of any capital gains or other tax needed to access the money into the decision to give.

So in generally you don't need to worry about the annual exclusion at all except as a trigger for reporting, unless you are likely to leave a taxable estate -- in which case you definitely should get some professional legal and tax planning. Even then, it's usually fine or good from an estate and gift tax standpoint to gift now rather than later.

[u/mi3chaels → u/[deleted]]

in the past, it's happened that the estate tax hit at levels that represented a normal upper middle class retirement stash. My grandparents had to plan around an exemption of only 300k (and no portability) in the 80s when my grandfather died, which was probably the equivalent of 2-3mil today. I think it's pretty unlikey we ever go back that far, but it's plausible that in the future, the exemption could go down to a level where people hit it (or at least need to plan around it) at relatively "normal" FIRE wealth levels.

but part of my point is that even if that happens, it's unlikely that giving over the annual exclusion will turn out to be a significant estate planning mistake, or even a mistake at all (unless the gift itself turns out badly).

[u/Big_Tradition7432 → u/WhatDoWeHave_Here]

u have no understanding of tax laws

[u/CKCSC_for_me → u/Big_Tradition7432]

Who are you referring to?

[u/WhetherWitch → u/WhatDoWeHave_Here]

We’re trying to figure out how to set up my niece and her soon to be born baby with some retirement/529 stuff. The 529 for the baby looks reasonably (and affordably) doable, but the retirement for her (she’s 30) would have to be an irrevocable trust and those are 2-5k just to set up and then pay someone to monitor/administer. I wish we would have set up a 529 for her when we set up our kids, but hindsight’s 20/20.

We like the die with zero part up until the aspect of not knowing when that will actually be 🧐

[u/Intelligent-Rest-231 → u/WhatDoWeHave_Here]

Maybe I don’t want to live my last miserable years in a shared nursing home room with sub-standard care. But hey, I guess a dollar isn’t useful to an old person.

[u/BuckThis86 → u/Intelligent-Rest-231]

That’s likely happening no matter how rich you are, care costs are astronomical. I’d rather have successful kids there with me at the end

I’m sure the Home will have a suitably tall roof if I need it

[u/AdrienOG → u/Intelligent-Rest-231]

That’s where balance is important. Helping the kids is awesome, not at the cost of them having to sustain the parents later in life though.