Disclaimer: this article and all content related to it will not be able to tell you what to do with your inheritance.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I would hope that any person who has inherited a large (or even small) amount of money had a plan for what they want to do with it. My sage advice? Don’t do anything stupid.
I was reading an interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal which discussed the topic of when people get rich too soon. Tough problem to have right?
As a lawyer who drafts wills and does estate planning for people, I found the article particular enlightening – perhaps because I didn’t realize the large amount of people who get inheritances a year. According to the article:
More than nine million households in the U.S. reported getting an inheritance of at least $100,000, according to the latest available data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
That is a lot of money for a lot of people. I realize that $100,000 is not $1,000,000, but it is enough that people should be aware of the importance of estate planning.
Yes, this blog can be self-serving for myself and my law practice as an estate planning lawyer, but it doesn’t change the fact that people need to be prepared for a potential windfall from an inheritance.
Furthermore, you would be surprised at how many people who I talk to on a day-to-day basis don’t have a basic will or other estate planning documents. What happens if you get hurt or die? Do you have a plan? Is it not wrong to have some kind of plan for your disability or death when you have children or a spouse at home who needs you?
Another interesting tidbit from the article:
Baby boomers—those 78 million people born from 1946 through 1964—are expected to inherit some $8.4 trillion during their lifetimes, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
If you are a baby boomer and you haven’t had estate planning done, you should be ashamed of yourself. End of story.
