How much money you should leave your children
Second only to shopping for a headstone, determining your children’s inheritance is about as macabre a task as they come. But it’s one that’s important to get right.
While everyone’s situation and circumstances are different, when it comes to this topic it’s interesting to cast your mind to the words billionaire investor Warren Buffett offered, in a 1986 interview with Fortune magazine.
Mr Buffet said the perfect amount to leave to your children was, “Enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.”
This is an opinion echoed by one of Mr Buffet’s billionaire counterparts, business magnate and investor Bill Gates, who famously told the Daily Mail in 2011 that he and his wife Melinda would only be giving their children “a miniscule portion” of their estimated $81 billion fortune, saying, “It will mean they have to find their own way.”
While we agree it’s one thing for a billionaire to talk about limiting the size of their children’s inheritance, it’s still something that might be worth considering.
In an opinion piece published on The Huffington Post, Family Business Office Founder and President Richard Watts offered this advice: “It is difficult to consider leaving only a modest amount of money to your children. Perhaps it is our last act of ‘tough love.’ But do not turn a blind eye to the reality that even modest amounts of money carelessly given can have unexpected and corrupting results. Money is like a narcotic, a little more is always welcome, and the last amount never quite fills your present need.”
What are your views on this matter? Do you believe you should limit the amount of money you leave your children? Or is it better to help them financially if you can? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Any advice contained in this communication is general advice only. None of the information provided is, or should be considered to be, personal financial advice.
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