Some say: you earned it, spend it, take the cruise, die with an empty bank account and a full life. Others say: family wealth is meant to be passed down, and blowing it is selfish. When it comes to the money you've saved your whole life, who does it really belong to — you, or the people you leave behind?
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Add your commentmy mum left me £600 and a biscuit tin full of every birthday card i ever made her, going back to age 4. guess which one i'd run back into a burning house for. it was never about the money. it was never about the money
It's MY money. I dug ditches in the rain for 40 years for it. I'm spending the lot, and the only thing I'll leave my kids is a thank-you note and a memory of parents who actually lived. That's a better inheritance than a cheque.
Easy to say 'spend it all' when your kids are doing fine. Mine will NEVER own a home on their wages. Leaving them something isn't selfishness reversed, it's the only way my grandchildren get a roof. Different families, different maths.
Spend it, leave it, split it, burn it — just don't spend the years you've got LEFT arguing about the money you'll leave BEHIND. That's the one mistake you can't take back.
We told our parents directly: please spend it, we don't want it, we want YOU healthy and happy and on that cruise. The relief on my mum's face — she'd been carrying guilt for years over money we never even wanted.
The healthiest thing my dad ever did was give us a little WHILE he was alive and watch us use it. Deposit on a house, he saw the grandkids in it. Why leave it as a surprise at a funeral when you could enjoy their joy now?
Leaving money is not love and spending it is not selfishness. They're both just money. The kids who'll grieve hardest at your funeral are the ones you gave TIME, and time is the one thing you can't put in a will.
My parents 'spent it all' on cruises and then needed five years of care that WE paid for. So they enjoyed the money twice — once on themselves, once out of our pockets. There's a version of 'spend it' that's just delayed selfishness.
The 'die with zero' crowd never explain how you time it. You don't get a date. Spend it all at 75, live to 95, and you spend twenty years as a burden on the very kids you 'generously' refused to save for. Then what?
Reading that comment about the biscuit tin and I'm a grown man crying at the kitchen table. My mother's gone and I'd give every penny I own for her handwriting on one more card.
i've watched inheritance turn loving siblings into people who don't speak at the graveside. honestly? spend it. money you leave behind has split more families than it's ever saved
Whatever you decide, WRITE IT DOWN and TELL them while you can still explain why. The fights aren't really about money, they're about a son who thinks the silence meant he mattered less. Don't leave your love to be guessed at.
Oh that's a knife. Because it cuts both ways — my in-laws hoarded every penny 'for us,' lived miserably and cold to leave an inheritance, then care fees ate the lot anyway. They suffered for nothing. There's no safe move here.
My grandfather built a family business from nothing so we'd never start from zero like he did. To him, leaving it WAS the whole point of the struggle. 'Spend it all' would have insulted everything he sweated for. Culture matters here.
65, comfortable, and genuinely torn after reading all this. I came in certain I'd spend it. Now I think the real answer is: give some now, enjoy some now, and stop treating it like a vault that only opens when I'm dead.
71 and I'll say it plainly: I don't owe my children a windfall for being born. I owe them a childhood, which I gave, and my love, which they have. The bank balance is mine to enjoy. That's not cold. That's just honest.
Exactly the fear that keeps me cold and frugal at 73. Not greed for my kids. Terror of being a burden. I'd love to spend, but the maths of not knowing your own death date is paralysing.
That conversation is the whole answer and almost no family has it. The resentment lives entirely in the SILENCE. Say it out loud, both directions, and 90% of this thread's pain just evaporates.
And there it is, the entitlement runs UP as well as down. So many adult children have the next holiday half-spent in their heads before mum's even gone. Mum noticed, by the way. Mum always notices.
Devil's advocate: 'enjoy it, spend it' is a lovely philosophy invented largely by people who HAVE enough to enjoy. When you're skint, every pound you leave is a real door you're opening for a struggling kid. Easy to be carefree when you're comfortable.
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