When Did You Actually Need the Money?

Next week is our 21st anniversary. Dalanee completely changed my life. I genuinely don't know what I'd be doing without her, and I don't want to find out. I hit the jackpot. She has been through so much, but she seems to be regaining much of her strength.

The orchids have black rot. For the non-orchid people: when it stays wet and cloudy for too long, bad things start growing inside the plants. I'm running around the lanai like a first responder, spraying everything in sight. I think we're going to be okay. Orchids are simultaneously fragile and resilient.

And finally, homeownership. In the same week, the plumber showed up, the air conditioner died, and the pool pump decided it was done. All at once. Why does it cost $135 for an AC guy just to pull up in front of my house? And then the clock starts ticking. Every 15 minutes, the bill increases. I'm sitting there, peering out my window, checking my watch every five minutes.

My daughter is apparently an escape room savant. She's worked her way through every single room at Escapology on Clark Road, and last week she conquered the challenge room. I have also done escape rooms. I got a headache and contributed nothing. We are very different people. 

I've seen it a bunch of times this year. A client walks in, somewhere in their early 70s, and tells me their mom or dad just passed away and left them a decent-sized inheritance.

Here's the question nobody seems to be asking: what exactly is this money supposed to do?

The Math Doesn't Add Up

Think about it. Your parents lived into their mid-to-late 90s. God bless them, genuinely. But that means you're collecting your inheritance at 72 instead of, say, 45. You're already retired, or close to it. Your kids are grown. The mortgage is paid off or nearly paid off. You don't need a down payment. You're not trying to start a business. You're not sweating tuition bills.

The money arrives, and it's... fine. It'll make retirement a little more comfortable. Maybe a nicer vacation or two.

I had a client last year. She was 72. Her mother passed away at 99. She got $250,000. And when I asked her about it, she put it perfectly. She said it was nice, but it wasn't life-changing. It didn't let her retire early. It didn't put her kids through college. Those opportunities were long gone.

That's the problem. The money showed up 25 years too late.

When Did You Actually Need the Money?

Think back. When were the genuinely hard moments?

When you were 25, just starting out, trying to scrape together a security deposit and a used car at the same time. When you were 32, and the kids came along, and the daycare bill made you question every life decision you'd ever made. When you were 40, the house needed a new roof, and the timing was spectacularly bad.

That's when $50,000 would have changed everything. That's when it would have actually been genuinely life-changing.

Instead, it arrived at 72. And now it's sitting in a money market account being mildly useful.

I Don't Have a Perfect Answer

I want to be upfront about that. I'm not here to lecture anyone about generosity. It's not my money, and it's not my family.

But I've been thinking about this a lot, and I do have a few observations worth sharing.

First, lump sums are tricky. People don't handle them well. It's not a character flaw, it's just human nature. A large chunk of money shows up, and it's really hard to know what to do with it. It gets absorbed somehow, and two years later, nobody can quite explain where it went.

Monthly deposits are different. A few hundred dollars landing in your kid's account every month for years, that changes behavior. They can actually build their lifestyle around it. They plan differently. It's predictable in a way that a windfall never is.

Second, buying something specific is often better than handing over cash. A car. A down payment. A year of preschool tuition. Something concrete that solves a real problem lands differently than money that just disappears into the general fund.

The One Thing That Makes This Possible

Here's what I hear most often when I raise this topic: "I'd love to help my kids, but what if I run out of money?"

That's a fair concern. A very fair concern. I'm not dismissing it.

But here's the thing. If you have an actual plan, a real written financial plan that accounts for your spending, your healthcare, your lifespan, the market going sideways occasionally, you'll have a much clearer picture of what you can actually afford to give. Most people are working off anxiety and guesswork. A plan replaces that with real numbers.

And those real numbers are often more reassuring than people expect.

The Bigger Picture

Baby Boomers are sitting on an extraordinary amount of wealth compared to the generations behind them. That gap is real, and it's significant. And a lot of that wealth will eventually transfer, probably to people already in their 60s or 70s, who don't need it anywhere near as much as they would have 30 years earlier.

I'm not saying give it all away. I'm not saying enable your kids or hand them so much that they stop trying.

I'm saying, think about the timing. Think about when the money would actually matter. A small, steady, monthly transfer to a 35-year-old who's grinding away to support a young family is a completely different gift from the same total dollars handed to a 72-year-old who's already figured out retirement.

One of those changes a life. The other one is just..... nice.

Worth thinking about.

Be Blessed,

Dave