You don’t have to wait until after you’re gone to leave your kids money. There’s no rule that says an inheritance must be given all at once when you die.
There’s far more flexibility than that. You just need to be intentional about it.
One reason people don’t gift earlier, for instance, is that they’re not sure whether they’ll need the money themselves.
This is where having a financial and estate plan comes in. Working with someone like me, you can go through different scenarios, figure out your future financial needs, and get a better sense of what you could comfortably give without jeopardizing anything or putting yourself at risk of running out of money.
It’s a worthwhile exercise because gifting money earlier can be so much more impactful, and it gives you the opportunity to see the effect.
Often people wait so long to give that the recipients are already far enough along in life that they don’t really need the money and there’s very little time, if any, to see its impact.
If you’ve been lucky enough to accumulate some assets over your lifetime, you should give some thought to how best to give them to the next generation and then plan accordingly.