The impact of inheritance: A “great wealth transfer” may be on the horizon. Will a gift from grandma save the middle class?

Ohhhh, this is a great read and timely in accordance with what used to be Tax Day in America until Miss ‘Rona changed it all:

The impact of inheritance: A “great wealth transfer” may be on the horizon. Will a gift from grandma save the middle class?, by Meredith Haggerty via Vox.com.

The majority of people who inherit aren’t getting millions, either; less than one-fifth of inheritances are more than $500,000. The most common inheritance is between $10,000 and $50,000.

None of this can quite explain the sum total of inherited wealth’s effect.

While it’s incontrovertible that anyone who receives an inheritance is plainly fortunate in at least one large respect — this isn’t a story about why you should feel bad for people who inherit — my conversations with those who have or expect to receive a sum from their families after death indicate that a transfer of wealth can be a lot of things: freeing and stifling, a relief and a burden, a windfall and a pitfall. It depends on one’s circumstances, which is really just to say that it depends on a person’s family, and their money…

If you’re going to talk substantively about the impact of inherited wealth, you can’t focus only on the impact on one-fifth of people. The fact of inheritance reverberates among the other 80 percent, often in big ways.

Among that group is Ivie, a multimedia journalist based in New York, who says that all she ever wanted was to be comfortable. 

Last month, Cherrell Brown, a community organizer and educator who tweets under the handle @awkward_duck, tweeted, “S/o to the folks with no security net. Who won’t inherit any wealth or property from any family. Those who are their parent(s) only retirement plan. The grind, the pressure, the stakes are different.” 

The hundreds of replies illuminate what it means to live without financial underpinnings. Mostly young people of color, they had taken in a family member’s kids, were caring for their own parents, or were otherwise navigating a world where others don’t share their economic stresses.

…It’s an indictment of the US that one of the best ways for a middle-class American to hold onto that status is to have someone who loves them a lot die.

So…………

Let’s get this out of the way riiiiiight now:

One’s parents do not owe you a college education. That’s very generous of them to pay for that for you (or even part of it), but that’s not a given. Neither is paying for a wedding, a down payment for a home, or literally anything else after you graduate from high school. Congrats on hitting a certain genetic lottery for being born to whom you have, but let’s just be really real here - generational wealth is basically the lottery, not everyone has access to it, and one is not financially savvier than someone who does not. You are so fortunate if you’re born in to a family with a marginal amount of wealth; if said family decides to share that wealth with you after they die, that’s another cherry on top of your Life Sundae.

Oh, I am no penny-pincher-frugal-mogul, who stitched her own textiles and made her own shampoo and wore honey-undies and that kind of stuff. Nor am I some rich bitch over here, either. My father passed away when I was very little, and my mom made things work on a shoestring in a wealthy part of the country where other family lived, who were also trying to put it together with some shoestrings, and it turns out we were a regular ass American family just getting by. Suffice to say, this area has wonderful public schools.

I worked as a kid, I have since I was 12 years old, but I also had job opportunities due to the geographical and economic area I lived in. I could babysit and house sit and dog sit (the latter two being the best gigs ever); I was a rec soccer referee (omg, awful, why, it’s so so early on Saturdays); I was a cater waiter at weddings and other parties; I worked retail; and I worked a ton because I was lucky enough to live in proximity to where there was a demand and opportunity for those kinds of jobs. I am so very grateful to have this work ethic and those job experiences from those times.

I’ve never had a ton of money on my own, but I’ve always made money. From about 7th grade onward, I was paying for my own leisure (movies, clothes shopping beyond the annual purchases of shoes/sneakers and new jeans for school LOLLLLLL), . My mom was still super generous towards us, for instance getting us cell phones, which were beginning to get popular for teens in my adolescence, as well as the use of a car but we paid all gas and, eventually of course, we got all those things on our own.

I’m not clueless to my own privileges. And yes, I’m saying others are.

Come college, my mom paid for some of the tuition my freshman year, but I bought my books, my undies, my booze, and a lovely uncle co-signed on loans for the rest, payments on which I would solely be responsible.

I worked in college - no internships here. Same retail/housesitting loop in the summers, and whatever piece of shit campus job I could find at my state university. “Unpaid internships” are a scourge on society as well. Work should be paid? Why is this a topic of discussion in a capitalistic society? Wow????????

Post-college, I got a g.d. job, and soon thereafter started paying those absolutely painful $500-some-odd student loan payments per month across, geez, 5 or 6 different accounts??? Lord, hear our prayers. Glad I had a blast in college, b/c DAMN. (Not to mention my first job out of college in no way, shape, or form required a college degree, but corporate America and that elitist crap is for another post.)

The same uncle also gave me great financial advice before college, which was, “Just keep your credit good. You’ll always have debt, just different kinds of debt. Pay your payments on time, keep your credit good, and you’ll be OK.” And 18-year-old me, an insufferable rule-follower to this day, was all, “K!!!” And it’s true - I diligently make student loan payments, pay my other things on time, I’ve gotten every apartment I’ve needed, or cell phones, cable, ELECTRICITY!!!!!!!!, and decent rates on things I need decent rates on. Not for nothing, I went without a car for 2+ years because I didn’t want to deal with the expenses. I was able to live close to work, and literally able to walk to work.

Then, come 2012, and my darling, kindred spirit grandmother passed away. My grandfather, her hubby, passed in 2010. Since my father passed years and years prior, my siblings and I inherited our dad’s shares in the real estate LLC established that owned two properties in Connecticut. Two lovely family homes in a lovely school district. The houses lost their luster, but whatever, some fucking dope bought each of ‘em, godspeed.

One property was sold, and once I got my share, ya goddamn fucking right that was a life changing amount of money!! For the first time ever, I got an actual windfall of cash. I paid off a student loan with the biggest monthly payment - $260 USD per month - as well as the biggest outstanding balance, and I cried, nay, sobbed at the relief and release that was. Paid off a credit card, too, but whatever with that shit, that’s going to loop up and down and around forever.

A few years after that, when the second property was sold, I used that money to pay off another student loan, paid for my wedding, and lived off of it b/c I wasn’t working at the time LOL great, go team. Sure, I could have eloped but would have met the wrath of my sister if I did that (moreover I wanted pretty pictures with my husband and family), and then put the rest of that inheritance in, IDK, a C.D.??? “Invested it” like some nameless snobs reading this are thinking. But I didn’t. I still used the money wisely b/c as that other old saying goes, “Paying off debt is saving money.”

Nowadays, I have maybe $5,500 left of student loan payments out of…..a lot more than that. I’d love to Dave-Ramsey-snowball that shit, but I’m waiting for J. Robinette Biden, Jr. to “forgive” all the student loans ever (geez, enough with Judeo-Christian stuff in every corner of life). I doubt that’ll happen, buttttttt whatever, #CallYourSenator.

Some people will have cash to inherit. Others get life insurance policies in place for their families to take care of debts, etc. after their passing. Of course, there are those who will have both or none at all, because even if there is money to be had, that doesn’t mean a party will pass it down to family! Maybe it’s earmarked for donating to a non-profit or something.

I guess I’ll end by saying how grateful and blessed I am. I’ve worked hard, there have been struggles, and I have been very very fortunate and lucky, and I do feel secure in where my spouse and I are. The money I inherited, though gone now, helped to get us this life now. I love us for the hard work and reasonable financial decisions we have made together, and I know there are great things ahead, too.