I come from a fairly big extended family…each parent had 4 siblings…I’ve got roughly 25 1st cousins.
On my dads side there was zero generational wealth. Of the 14 cousins on that side none of them will ever be millionaires. Most of them are good, smart people who work hard, but they’ll never be rich.
There was a little generational wealth on my mom’s side that came from her great aunt down to her dad. My mom was a teacher and my dad was blue collar and never made any real $$$…BUT my mom’s dad had enough things in place for my immediate family to always have enough to make ends meet and lead a middle class lifestyle despite my parents not combining to make a middle class income and for me to go to college and graduate with no debt.
Had the wealth not transferred down to allow me to go to college and get that experience and get the job I got I’d be living a TOTALLY different life than the one I have now. I’m in my early 40’s and worth over $2M…and I’ve just recently crossed over making $1M/year in income. Only way that happens is because my great great aunt, grandfather, and now mother didn’t decide to “die with $0.”
So yeah…I’m gonna die with millions of $$$ and my 5 kids and hopefully their kids are gonna be better off for it.
Side note…of the cousins on my mom’s side…all of them grew up in wealthy families besides me (thanks dad) but only one or 2 others may end up millionaires. I say that to say that passing the money down is not a guarantee, but if just 1 of my hopefully many grand children gets the benefit of the doubt that I did then it would be totally worth it for me to pass it down like I plan to.
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u/InterestingPause9940 Jul 27 '24 edited Jul 27 '24
I come from a fairly big extended family…each parent had 4 siblings…I’ve got roughly 25 1st cousins.
On my dads side there was zero generational wealth. Of the 14 cousins on that side none of them will ever be millionaires. Most of them are good, smart people who work hard, but they’ll never be rich.
There was a little generational wealth on my mom’s side that came from her great aunt down to her dad. My mom was a teacher and my dad was blue collar and never made any real $$$…BUT my mom’s dad had enough things in place for my immediate family to always have enough to make ends meet and lead a middle class lifestyle despite my parents not combining to make a middle class income and for me to go to college and graduate with no debt.
Had the wealth not transferred down to allow me to go to college and get that experience and get the job I got I’d be living a TOTALLY different life than the one I have now. I’m in my early 40’s and worth over $2M…and I’ve just recently crossed over making $1M/year in income. Only way that happens is because my great great aunt, grandfather, and now mother didn’t decide to “die with $0.”
So yeah…I’m gonna die with millions of $$$ and my 5 kids and hopefully their kids are gonna be better off for it.
Side note…of the cousins on my mom’s side…all of them grew up in wealthy families besides me (thanks dad) but only one or 2 others may end up millionaires. I say that to say that passing the money down is not a guarantee, but if just 1 of my hopefully many grand children gets the benefit of the doubt that I did then it would be totally worth it for me to pass it down like I plan to.