Experts say baby boomers will give more than $50 trillion to their heirs. But for many, health care costs will claim the bulk of that wealth.
The story goes that baby boomers are going to give tens of trillions of dollars to their heirs over the next few decades.
The “generational wealth transfer” has become a media fascination, both for its eye-popping size and because it might help younger generations as they face doubts about their financial security.
That shift is already in the works, and will continue for a couple of decades. According to wealth management firm Cerulli Associates, some $53 trillion will be passed down from boomers to their Gen X, millennial and Gen Z heirs, as well as to charities. That includes both gifts during their lifetimes and inheritances afterward.
But the overwhelming cost of health care for older people means most people in those later generations won’t inherit much, even if their elders seem well-off today.
Well, if Gen X and Millennials wanted their own fortunes they should have planned ahead like boomers and been born back when a house cost $7,500.
/sarcasm
Lazy millennials can’t even be born on time.
Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and travel back in time.
Wait. What if these anonymous crypto whale accounts were created by future us shortly after we discovered time travel? We just don’t know we own them yet!
Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise. I better start learning about time travel
Great Scott!
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100% this. Gentle reminder that Jeff Bezos now has 187 billion dollars. Billion!!
“Let them eat cake,” Bezos calmly sighed before a stray bullet from a sniper drilled him in the forehead, kicking off what would be the bloodiest revolution in US history in the past century.
I’m GenX. I’ve spent my entire life watching the Boomers fuck things up, then having to wade through the debris they leave in their wake.
I’m not expecting that to change now.
GenX here as well. My mother died horribly of cancer when I was 13 and my father left about two weeks after her death and I was legally transferred to the State’s custody.
I’ve been told I’m “lucky” in that I’ll never have to shoulder my parent’s debt. So, you other people don’t know how lucky it was to be an orphan! But no really, a finical planner literally indicated to me that, THAT was a positive. And somehow that’s really colored my opinion on where we are as a society.
Thank you every piece of shit asshole that bucks against the idea of universal healthcare. Fuck you a billion times over. Price gouging out of control capitalist bullshit
Gen X here. I do not expect any inheritance at all.
And how much of this “fascination” with generational wealth transfer is actually companies salivating over potential profits?
Elder millenial here. I expect no inheritance from my mom or grandparents and no social security. I’m one of the lucky ones though. My dad died ten years ago and left me just enough to make a down payment on a house.
The moral of the story is, give your parents cigarettes and hope the cancer kills them quick before the bills can pile up.
Don’t believe the social security scare tactics. It’s always been a shell game. It isn’t some pile of money that runs out if we don’t pay into it. It is just another line item. Short of voting for it to die, it will be there.
I hope you’re right but we will see. It would really suck to pay into a system your whole life and never get what you were promised.
Ppl are ways to quick to vote against their own self-interests. Better to just plan it will be gone
They summoned a new inheritance tax over here, they sold it to us in the shape of: to get more taxes from the rich.
But those idiots don’t run around giving away money, they hand out businesses and stocks to their family or other assets.
So who are once again ending up paying even more money? Hmm? Yeah that’s right, if my dad manages to have some money left the goddamn tax criminals will gobble that up even though i probably need it to pay for his funeral.
Only 1 in every 500 Americans is affected by the inheritance tax.
Hmm? Yeah that’s right, if my dad manages to have some money left the goddamn tax criminals will gobble that up even though i probably need it to pay for his funeral.
You need more than $5 million to pay for a funeral? Because there won’t be any taxes on the first 5 million.
I’m not talking about your american taxes, i’m not an American.
Maybe state where you’re from tho
Why do you sepos think everyone on the internet is also a yank? Haha
If that’s in the US there’s a very good chance there’s not enough money in the estate or inheritance to trigger it. We’re talking in the several millions.
In the US the threshold is 13 mil before inheritance taxes kick in, so basically never.
The ultrarich still dont pay it here. The con they use is setting up a charity that they dump hundreds of millions into and then give their children outrageous lifetime salaries and full discretion to throw parties/events/travel/etc in the name of the “charity.” Since no one else actually donates, no one cares about how thr money is spent. They kids get the same ultra wealthy life style with none of the downsides, with media accolades and “Charitywashing” rarr rarrs to boot.
Chances are, corporations are already plotting how to get the boomers to spend as much as possible before they pass away.
Shopping network and other 24/7 buy-over-the-phone television programming has already filched billions away from the silent generation by taking advantage of their cognitive decline. They just need to figure out what sticks with the Boomers now.
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Same. Everyone I know who has boomer relatives doesn’t expect to get any inheritance. That goes for my wife and I as well. I don’t really mind personally. I’ve made a concerted effort to be self-sufficient and have never banked on getting a dime of inheritance. But I feel like too many in the media are setting a dangerous cultural trend where many people will falsely expect to get money.
Yeah I was disowned and my wife’s parents have made it clear nobody gets much
I don’t get how we blame the media for reporting on unprecedented things that economists are talking about. If someone thinks they are getting an inheritance because they heard boomers have a lot of money as a group, then that stupidity is on them, not on the media.
Oh no, my milkshake!
Shit. Throw in a few reverse mortgages to pay for Meemaw and Pop pop’s cruise every 6 months, and we won’t even get that generational housing.
There was a segment on NPR recently where they were talking about how many Boomers are selling their houses to pay for medical bills and long-term care, leaving little to nothing for their children.
My Boomer parents had one of those “I’m spending my kids’ inheritance” bumper stickers on one of their RVs and it was no joke. New RVs every couple of years, driving around the country part of each summer, new boats every couple of years, two timeshares, one in Branson, one on the gulf coast FL, two houses, one in the Adirondacks, one outside Orlando, flying back and forth twice a year, a new gold wing every couple of years. They don’t believe they’re rich.
My father worked his whole life as a telephone lineman, retired at 55. My mother worked swing shift in processing at Kodak. Neither started wealthy. My dad had to purchase my grandfather’s farmhouse. My mother didn’t inherit anything. And they didn’t think one second about passing anything down.
Placing the blame on medical costs for the generation as a whole is letting them off the hook, again. Boomers are too selfish to pass anything down anyway.
Not true. They voted, and THAT legacy will be with us for a LONG time…
And sadly, I don’t even mean DT - there’s Ted Cruz, Moscow Mitch, the whole cohort - along with all the international agreements that we’ve already pulled out of and so on.
See, they left us something after all?! :-P This economy, lack of access to healthcare, and so much more!?
Btw, I don’t know about you, but I have a retirement plan for my old age. I plan to die. :-P
In fairness, it is less that they are “selfish” and more that they are “clueless” (to the point of obstinacy, outright refusing to open their eyes) - b/c as you said, your mother didn’t inherit anything, and yet THEY are fine, so why wouldn’t you be, with nothing left to you either? (remember as you think this through to remove all of the actual “facts” first, and add the layer of Faux News Nostalgia factor)
Yep my dad brags about his wealth and how rich he is and he has made it clear we will not get jack shit. He will blow every dime save nothing.
Union workers with pensions?
Pensions, yes, though my father lost his sometime after he retired. I don’t think the phone company was union, but Kodak likely was. Both parents were anti-union. Both were forced into retirement as Kodak passed on digital photography and phone companies started consolidating.
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It’s absolutely going to be most of them. Modern medical care isn’t worried about quality of life at end of life, and because we don’t have healthy conversations around death in the USA, the kids will probably be desperate to keep mom and dad hooked up to machines until they’re literally fucking braindead.
I’m Gen X with an adult daughter.
I have never received a penny from a deceased family member and have watched too many people getting into nasty fights over the crumbs left by their recently departed loved ones.
It’s become a life priority to leave my daughter a clean estate, with no debt encumbrance, and no possibility for any other person to get at it.
At present, if I were to take my leave from this mortal coil today, she would net roughly $300k.
Part of my plan is to get everything out of my estate and into her hands before healthcare takes it all. Fuck them.
The irony here is that she won’t need it. She’s done well for herself. I anticipate that when it’s my turn to shake hands with the devil, she’ll more likely than not use the proceeds for some charitable pursuit.
The point is that I want her to make that choice rather than giving some doctor his semi-annual Ferrari that he’ll drive for six months then dispose of.
I know two people now who’ve had their father leave everything to a new spouse of a few years (the biological mother had passed away in both cases already) thinking the new spouse will take care of his children with it.
One set of children didn’t fight it, and the other is considering fighting it as it’s recent.
One spouse didn’t help the children and one is acting like she won’t.
So thank you for ensuring your daughter will be taken care of.
Kick ass. I’m gen x with 2 young kids and this is pretty much my plan.
Gen X as well, and never expected an inheritance. That just seems so wrong to be looking forward to a loved one passing. When my Mom brought it up, my brothers and I each said individually that her savings are for her, not to leave us.
My teens may be too young to think in those terms but their best bet is for me to kick off now while they’re in college and I have huge life insurance to cover that. I’ve never talked in terms of leaving an inheritance and am certainly more worried about how to afford living out my retired years
Yep. Same here. That said, both of my parents are already deceased, and I don’t have anything to show for it, which is fine, since I never expected anything in the first place.
I’m going to try to do better for my daughter.
Even ignoring the health care costs, the transfer isn’t going to save anything. The vast majority of wealth is concentrated in a small number of families, so only those few will benefit anyway. It was never a generational problem, it was always a problem of wealth concentration among the rich.
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My mom was a boomer and died when I was a young adult.
Because she was wildly irresponsible with money, as many boomers were in the early internet days, and because of cancer, the only asset really left after she died was the house, which my step dad sold because they were upside down on it after the bubble burst. He didn’t really come out ahead on it.
I was left with nothing but her stuff to sell off. I made about $4k total on it, and it took months on eBay to even get that.
I hope it’s better for others, but I rather expect it won’t be unless they are already pretty well off -and- make a point to preserve as much as they can, which most won’t because “I earned it I’m going to spend it as I see fit”. (Which, you know, totally fair, but doesn’t help if you are banking on inheritance)
I want to sympathize with this since about the only asset worth anything from my boomer father when he died was what remained of good savings after selling his house.
The short version is that he got Alzheimer’s, and we were forced to put him into a care facility. We sold off his house and dumped the money into a trust account so his power of attorney could use it for his needs (mainly paying for equipment and everything with regards to his failing health and the long term care facility). He was pretty smart with money but when the remainder of the funds from his house being sold were divided among his direct descendants, we were looking at 30-40k each.
My brother and I went in on a house together with the money and after the down payment, there wasn’t much left, and now we each have about $2300 a month in mortgage payments instead of rent. Predictably, the house needs some pretty serious work, and we’ve been trying to tackle what we can on our own. The only real benefit we got from all this is that in 25 years or so, we won’t have to pay the mortgage anymore, and the mortgage won’t really increase over time; so we’re kind of fixed in terms of rent increases.
We’re considering this our “forever home” because we don’t really want to move again and because we’re going to do everything we can to make it ours. It has enough space to do that though some areas need a lot of work to get them where we want them.
It’s just sad that his entire life of working and earning money and saving, being the penny pincher he was, only amounted to around $150k. Three siblings and lawyers fees later and we have to pool our inheritance to make enough cash to put a down payment on a house.
There’s a lot of other contributing factors, which I won’t get into here, but that’s just so sad to me.
I think a LOT of people underestimate the boomer “It’s my money I do what I want” mentality.
These days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more boomers leaving their cash to republican campaigns and shit instead of their shit kids who moved away.
I grew up poor so wealth transfer wasn’t really a phrase spoken at our house. I always thought inheritances were just plot points on tv or for the rich to maintain their power.
Lol yeah, we always joked about inheriting debt!
The wealth the Boomers amassed decades ago was good enough to pay off a mortgage and pay for their retirement. It didn’t include passing anything to the next generation. The money itself became borderline worthless because their “Greed is good” and “I’ve got mine. Fuck you” mindset quite literally destroyed the world. The economy is just as fucked as the planet.
They paid off a mortgage, they had something to pass on.
what a stupid attitude to have. Boomers did not get anything more than they deserved. You should be asking for the same. It should not be a race to the bottom. The rich are getting richer at your expense: work out who you should be bitching at.
No transfer for me. My boomer dad already sold our family’s property to slumlords
Then they find out that a parent put a reverse mortgage on the family home…
It’s kind of ridiculous how rich people get everyone riled up about estate taxes that will barely impact them, if at all. It will impact the rich though, extensively if they’re not careful with their arrangements.
