We want them to make their own way. Neither my wife nor I came from families in which our respective parents divulged a lot about their finances or educated us about personal finance. Another reason for our attitude is family history. Our daughters know that we are affluent, but do not know any details. and they are appreciative of the front-loaded inheritance distributions and our reasons for them.
We are boomers who have never and still do not discuss the details of our finances with our adult daughters or, for that matter, with anyone else except our financial advisor and the CPA who prepares our tax returns. Frankly, we have not viewed our finances as any of our daughters’ concern. When, as a teen, our younger daughter would ask if we could afford something, my wife’s standard answer was “yes, Dad earns a good living.” When we started making annual legacy gifts to our daughters last year - effectively, early distributions of inheritable assets - our younger daughter asked me if the gift affected our “retirement security.” I just smiled, and, to mimic Robbie Robertson in The Weight, “no” was all I said. Our older daughter, in contrast, has no curiosity about our finances. Both handles their own family finances and are doing well. Eventually we will need to share information about our finances with our daughters as we get older and may need help with the administrative details. But that should be far off in the future. And we are doing legacy planning now and seeking to simplify our accounts and positions as feasible. Not sharing the details of our financial life with our daughters may not be any way to run a railroad, per Mr. Ben Rodriguez’s comment, but it works for us and them now.
Comments:
We want them to make their own way. Neither my wife nor I came from families in which our respective parents divulged a lot about their finances or educated us about personal finance. Another reason for our attitude is family history. Our daughters know that we are affluent, but do not know any details. and they are appreciative of the front-loaded inheritance distributions and our reasons for them.
Post: Talking to your kids about money
Link to comment from October 13, 2024
We are boomers who have never and still do not discuss the details of our finances with our adult daughters or, for that matter, with anyone else except our financial advisor and the CPA who prepares our tax returns. Frankly, we have not viewed our finances as any of our daughters’ concern. When, as a teen, our younger daughter would ask if we could afford something, my wife’s standard answer was “yes, Dad earns a good living.” When we started making annual legacy gifts to our daughters last year - effectively, early distributions of inheritable assets - our younger daughter asked me if the gift affected our “retirement security.” I just smiled, and, to mimic Robbie Robertson in The Weight, “no” was all I said. Our older daughter, in contrast, has no curiosity about our finances. Both handles their own family finances and are doing well. Eventually we will need to share information about our finances with our daughters as we get older and may need help with the administrative details. But that should be far off in the future. And we are doing legacy planning now and seeking to simplify our accounts and positions as feasible. Not sharing the details of our financial life with our daughters may not be any way to run a railroad, per Mr. Ben Rodriguez’s comment, but it works for us and them now.
Post: Talking to your kids about money
Link to comment from October 13, 2024