What is an "average" inheritance?

yes, but it's interesting to discuss changing trends in the last 5 years.








i'm from your neck of the woods and most of those i'm speaking of are still there.

yes, ideally those retired/approaching retirement should be established and have homes paid in full-sadly that's not the reality. recent reports put the numbers at 44% of retirees still holding mortgages on their primary homes-with almost 1/3 of those estimating more than 8 years left on that debt-among those 75 and older the studies are showing the figure at 21% which is a HUGE jump from just 8.4% in 2001.

I know plenty of people who had the best of intentions on paying off their mortgages timely or even early but the economy got in the way-their wages went down, their healthcare insurance skyrocketed, and those whose intent was to pay for their kid's college saw increases they never anticipated (the average was 80% between 2000 and 2014 at public colleges, but that's just the average i know some of them saw much more). so if the choice came down to having health insurance or not-no brainer, they shortchanged their retirement savings. wages go down/commute costs go up (floors me how much bridge tolls into the bay area have increased since I left:crazy2::crazy2:-and allot of my coworkers from your neck of the woods commuted there b/c of better housing options/lower crime/better schools)/cost of living in general goes up and they find that in order to fund their kid's college they have to raid their savings/home equity (if they bought at reasonable prices before the bubble burst and hadn't refi'd it to the hilt). I've never been of the mindset that a college fund takes priority over funding retirement but it seems to have become much more the norm so while their now well into adulthood 'kids' have no college debt (but plenty of other consumer debt) the parents are facing a retirement future that is much bleaker than the previous generation.

I haven't seen the 44% figure, highest I can find is 30%

I understand how unfortunate circumstances can impact financial plans. Sadly, for many, just bad life choices are the issue.
 
I am not mad at her for spending her time caring for others, but at the same time my heart breaks for my son who lost out on such precious memories and emotions the others got to experience.
I agree with this, to a point. It's all a choice. She could've involved your DS and spent time, but chose not to, and I'm sorry for your family that she did not. My great-aunt cared for my great-grandma for years, but had her own grandchildren at the house often. We went to visit, too. My GG's inheritance was gobbled up by years of nurse aides. The week she passed, nearly anything tangible was taken from the home by her daughters (even my own grandma) and it still makes my stomach turn to think about it.

It's an interesting thing to contemplate, the "average" inheritance. I expect nothing, even though I believe my parents have a nest egg with a fully-paid home. Life gets in the way--my dad is succumbing to cancer right now, and so my more important thought is to help them (they live nearby) and make sure Mom knows she doesn't need to make decisions based on anyone but their wishes. That said, she knows she won't be staying in a 2600 s.f. house by herself, and my DH and I are looking forward to having her in our household, if that's what she'd like. What can I say? I love my Mom! But they saved the money they have and I hope she spends it doing things she enjoys. If I get $.50, I'll be thrilled. If it goes towards any medical bills for her in the future, so be it.

I have never counted on an inheritance, just like I don't count on SS. I'm also trying to figure out how to save a different way, as different pension funds fail and reduce benefits, for the "just in case."
 
I would think that the average has to be close to nuffin...
My MIL passed away last year and all we got was a coroners bill... my FIL passed away a few years prior and my wife got 30k from an old life insurance policy..

My mom and dad have promised me a house that was built by my ggf which is all i really want and i only want it because i don't want it to be sold off and lost to the family.
Still, that house is probably not worth 50k... its small and on a small lot...

That being said, i think we would all hope to leave our kids a boat load of $.. that's my hopes but i have also told my kids to NOT hold their breaths! :)
 
My mom was a social worker for a government agency for her entire career. She's on track to leave a paid-off house, vacation property (undeveloped land), and low-six-figure inheritance behind, assuming she lives to 90 as is the norm for women in our family... mostly because of her pension, which is all but unheard of for my generation,

i agree totally on the pension issue-but i'm also seeing it impact soon to be/active retirees.

i'm retired from dhss (early due to disability) but allot of former coworkers who are at or near retirement have seen the pensions they've counted on/budgeting based on grossly different than what they estimated. for allot of them it had to do with wage reductions during the recession that strongly impacted the formulas their pensions were based on. granted-we had years prior to the recession w/o raises but no one anticipated wage cuts that had people whose pensions were always estimated on the historical basis of their highest earning years being in the later part of their careers seeing themselves not earning more but earning much less. combine that with government agencies drastically cutting their contributions to retiree healthcare insurance-if they didn't eliminate it entirely. it makes for a huge impact. many of my former coworkers are going to be retiring later vs. sooner-and those that could have retired before some of the changes are now lamenting not doing so.

She also paid less for the four-year university I attended at 18 than I'm paying for the community college my son goes to

this is huge-I look at what I paid back in the late 70's/early 80's and what it costs now:faint::faint: i'm in a state that actually mandated lowered public higher education costs and it's low compared to most-but it still costs more for one year of community college than I paid for 2 years at a California state run university.


And if you go back another generation, the numbers are even more stark - controlling for inflation my grandfather, an eighth-grade dropout in a manual-labor job, made more in 1968 than DH (an experienced tradesman with multiple professional certifications) and I (entry level with a four-year degree) make COMBINED today. (We found a box of old tax documents and pay stubs in a corner of my grandparents' basement a few weeks ago, which was interesting if a bit alarming.)

i saw the same when i dealt w/my mom's estate. the raw numbers showed that she was able to live at the same level/lifestyle for 30 years after my dad passed b/c they could save a higher percentage of his income vs. what much higher earners can today just by virtue of the cost of living (didn't hurt that they bought a house below what they were told they could 'afford' and stayed put for decades).
 


I don't know that the "average" matters. Some people die wealthy, some die penniless. Often, the heirs have no clue, either way. I don't know if you're a fan of "Real Housewives of Orange County"--I used to watch. There was one family that lived real large and had teenaged daughters. The dad had a heart attack, out of the blue, and the girls were left with nothing--what he had went to his current wife, who had zero interest in giving the kids a dime. They'd been raised as children of privilege, and had no idea what to do.

I don't like to give specifics, but my mom left each of her four kids a 5-figure sum. It was totally unexpected. When my MIL dies, there will be 7-8 figures being passed down. DH will benefit from a few trusts, as will my children. I get nothing, of course, and I'm fine with that. I've been trying to prep my kids, making them understand that this is not a gift to be squandered, that's it's a legacy from their grandparents, and meant to improve their lives, mostly through education. DD17 is grateful that she'll be going to her dream college in the fall. DS16 knows, but doesn't fully grasp it. I'm just starting the conversations with DD10, and DS7 is completely in the dark.

Wow, maybe over $10 million? Nice!
 
Neither of our parents have money so I don't expect anything when they pass away. My dh's grandparents *had* a decent amount of money but all was spent caring for them in old age (grandpa still alive at 92yo). My grandma has been single since my grandpa passed away at 39yo so she's barely been able to make ends meet. We just neither one come from any money. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to get an inheritance.
 
Here is average and median household wealth

A little hard to read as a copy and paste but the columns are

With home excluding home
age median avg median avg

18-24 $93,982.80 $4,394.53 $86,952.25 $4,012.26
25-29 $39,565.88 $8,971.58 $16,941.07 $4,397.11
30-34 $95,235.53 $29,125.08 $58,702.34 $15,980.13
35-39 $257,581.86 $40,666.52 $202,975.63 $17,247.23
40-44 $316,660.61 $87,842.71 $231,092.29 $36,392.69
45-49 $599,194.17 $105,717.43 $459,091.51 $50,462.52
50-54 $838,702.95 $137,866.81 $701,558.76 $50,154.48
55-59 $1,150,037.78 $168,044.19 $979,492.18 $69,338.65
60-64 $1,180,377.62 $224,775.17 $985,790.54 $105,875.74
65-69 $1,056,483.97 $209,575.26 $871,948.49 $94,665.45
70-74 $1,062,427.63 $233,614.37 $861,025.60 $77,472.59
75-79 $1,097,415.06 $242,699.75 $887,051.06 $69,551.59
80+ $1,039,818.04 $270,904.40 $826,304.45 $121,563.27

I will try to set up the columns better

first is median assets with home
second is avg assets with home
third is median assets excluding home
4th is avg assets minus home.


It is very interesting to note the huge difference between average and median. This shows the concentration of wealth is very skewed to the top end. In this case the median would probably be the better number to use. With this it looks like the average wealth including the house through the death years is around 240k. This I think would be the best way to answer the old OP's question.
 
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If I understand your numbers/columns correctly, it looks like a lot of peoples wealth is in their million dollar homes? The difference between with home and without, for those 55-80, is close to $800,000 to almost $1M. I'm having a hard time imagining that that many people have homes with that worth. What am I missing?
 
If I understand your numbers/columns correctly, it looks like a lot of peoples wealth is in their million dollar homes? The difference between with home and without, for those 55-80, is close to $800,000 to almost $1M. I'm having a hard time imagining that that many people have homes with that worth. What am I missing?


For some reason I cannot line anything up even with spaces and tabs. Makes it hard to read if you did not see the original. I edited the original post to try and define it better.

The numbers to compare for this would be first and third to see the house value in the inheritance. Second and fourth exclude this. This gives 210k average difference in avg and 170 k in median. Not as much difference as you would expect considering that the total assets are 4x or more. It seems to me that a big expensive house is not very predictive of total assets. Of course there are a lot of variables not taken into account on this chart.
 
My FIL passed away last year (MIL is healthy thank God) and we just were told "their net worth". My husband thinks its a normal amount (whatever that is!) and I think it's high. Either that, or my own parents seems extremely low.

Now mind you just so I don't catch any flack - I am not in any way 1. Counting on this money 2. Expecting any/all. Just curious. In fact, I joke to my mom all the time and tell her to spend it, I don't want it.

I know when my grandparents were gone, they left next to nothing to my folks. Just thinking since disboards are so diverse I'd get a good idea.

Thanks,
Jenny

Per CNN Money, the average inheritance in the United States as of Dec. of 2013, so maybe adjust a little upward is just $177,000 (not a huge amount). Here is another site that gives the same number. https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-inheritance-amounts-by-country-talking-with-parents/
 
My dad was a truck driver and mom was a nurses aide. They sold their house for $20,000, moved to an apartment. They lived on Social Security, kept that $20,000 for years. Then my brother stated borrowing from them. Dad passed away, my brother borrowed more from Mom. She was down to $7,000. She has a small , $5,000, life insurance policy, she signed that over to prepay her funeral, and paid $5000 from her savings. So she’s down to $2000. So I’m expecting our inheritance to be $0.00. Which is fine. I never expected anything.

DHs parents farmed, and did well. DH will likely inherit land valued at around $700,000.
 
i saw the same when i dealt w/my mom's estate. the raw numbers showed that she was able to live at the same level/lifestyle for 30 years after my dad passed b/c they could save a higher percentage of his income vs. what much higher earners can today just by virtue of the cost of living (didn't hurt that they bought a house below what they were told they could 'afford' and stayed put for decades).

Which is another thing that has gotten harder over time, both because housing costs have increased so that many families aren't able to buy below their means as was common in previous generations without making unacceptable trade-offs on safety or education and because the opportunity costs of staying in one place have increased. We did buy below our means, well below, but we incur a "penalty" in terms of our earning potential because we have chosen to stay put. And we pay private school tuition because a school system that was good-not-great when we bought are more like okay-I-guess now.
 
I think family "legacy" has a lot to do with things. My father's family has long believed that you are supposed to leave something to the next generation to give them a leg up. While my father's parents didn't have much left when they died due to prolonged illnesses and nursing home stays, there were several "spinster" aunts and uncles that left my father a considerable sum for the time. That was put towards our education, and my father then also made sure there was a significant sum left when he and my mother passed away. We are now putting that inheritance towards our children's education, and using the rest to shore up our nest eggs so we then have something to pass along. It's just what you do in our family - I didn't really get it until I found myself coming closer to retirement, and started planning more in depth. I always wondered why my father didn't want to go out and "live life" a bit more in retirement, but now I find myself striving to build up savings more and more so that there is no question that I will have more than enough to pay for myself in my old age even if large medical costs come along, and so that I will more than likely have a nice chunk of change to pass onto my daughter. I am willing to have a bit quieter retirement than I envisioned in my younger days to achieve that (and also because I now realize I don't have the energy of a 20 year old anymore LOL)

We are no Rockefellers - my grandfather came to this country with next to nothing, but his parents are the ones that enabled that journey and he in turn made sure his kids made it to college so the family could take the next step up. And my father in turn made sure his kids all received at least one college degree, and a few received more than one ;) Hopefully that legacy of building the next generation up, even just slightly, will continue for many more generations to come.

But now on my mother's side - well, the last few generations tended to die without a penny to their names. And I see that continuing in some of my mother's siblings - some have broken that mold, but others haven't. Thankfully my mother was one that did, in no small part thanks to my father and his vision for the future - not just their future, but the family's future for a long time to come.
 
It really, really all depends on your circumstances in life. On my mom's side, my grandfather was a doctor, but he was a doctor back in the days where they didn't make the kind of money one thinks of now (he fought in WWI, if that tells you his age range), and during the Depression and for many years after would often be "paid" from quite a few families in milk, eggs, and butter. My grandmother died when I was in 4th grade and my grandfather remarried shortly thereafter. He died in 1973, and there really wasn't anything to inherit. He and his wife had lived off the profit from selling his house and whatever savings they had, and while my mom got a little money (<$10K), there really wasn't much; most of it went to his 2nd wife. I have no idea about the grandparents on my dad's side of the family; nine kids and by the time I was born my grandfather had been gone for about 70 years, so nothing there, for sure! My dad died when I was almost 14, so while there was life insurance and such, my mom used that to pay off the house and to live off of (there were 4 of us, aged 4-14). She was a SAHM at that point (early 1970s) and continued that way for many years, raising and caring for kids (youngest has CP so there was more care, doctor appointments, surgeries, etc. than might be "normal"). My mom was also admittedly terrible with money, and for years lived on social security, borrowing money from her aunt for the taxes; when my mother died, there was enough in her account to pay for expenses and then the mortgage on her home until we could sell it ($250 a month, nothing huge here). When we finally sold the house, we cleared about $200K and split that 4 ways among myself and my siblings. My share of that went to buying a used minivan, a summer training program for DD, some minor home improvements (replaced the roof) and living expenses, with $5K into DD's college account (it sure wasn't a fund, LOL!). $50K just isn't a lot, and it doesn't go very far anymore (although it was just shy of a year of my husband's income, so not trivial to us). DH and I have life insurance policies, retirement accounts, and a small savings account, and eventual proceeds from the house (won't be paid off for another 16 years- I'll be 75- evaluated at about $225K- providing we don't sell/downsize first). Anything left, that we haven't used for living, will go to DD, but the concept of an "inheritance" is something that's never really been part of our family to begin with, so I guess I haven't ever really thought in the terms of "leaving DD well-established" from an inheritance.
 
I think family "legacy" has a lot to do with things. My father's family has long believed that you are supposed to leave something to the next generation to give them a leg up. While my father's parents didn't have much left when they died due to prolonged illnesses and nursing home stays, there were several "spinster" aunts and uncles that left my father a considerable sum for the time. That was put towards our education, and my father then also made sure there was a significant sum left when he and my mother passed away. We are now putting that inheritance towards our children's education, and using the rest to shore up our nest eggs so we then have something to pass along. It's just what you do in our family - I didn't really get it until I found myself coming closer to retirement, and started planning more in depth. I always wondered why my father didn't want to go out and "live life" a bit more in retirement, but now I find myself striving to build up savings more and more so that there is no question that I will have more than enough to pay for myself in my old age even if large medical costs come along, and so that I will more than likely have a nice chunk of change to pass onto my daughter. I am willing to have a bit quieter retirement than I envisioned in my younger days to achieve that (and also because I now realize I don't have the energy of a 20 year old anymore LOL)

We are no Rockefellers - my grandfather came to this country with next to nothing, but his parents are the ones that enabled that journey and he in turn made sure his kids made it to college so the family could take the next step up. And my father in turn made sure his kids all received at least one college degree, and a few received more than one ;) Hopefully that legacy of building the next generation up, even just slightly, will continue for many more generations to come.

But now on my mother's side - well, the last few generations tended to die without a penny to their names. And I see that continuing in some of my mother's siblings - some have broken that mold, but others haven't. Thankfully my mother was one that did, in no small part thanks to my father and his vision for the future - not just their future, but the family's future for a long time to come.
I completely agree with you. My dad’s family has a tradition of establishing family trusts, children’s trusts, etc. My great grandfather started his business career loaning any extra money he had from his small family steamer trunk business to local farmers so they could buy their seed for the next year’s crop. He eventually became a very successful stockbroker. He passed trusts on to his children and grandchildren. Even the great grandchildren got something. The $10,000 I was left when my great grandma died paid for my first used car, a partial down payment on my first house, and paid for an inexpensive timeshare property. The money my grandmother left me went to my kids’ college funds and into savings for retirement for me and DH. Even though my parents lived paycheck to paycheck when I was growing up, their situation improved once the kids were out of the house. My dad is dead set on continuing the tradition and has set up his and my mom’s finances accordingly, including long term care insurance so they won’t blow through all their savings with a long illness. But you never know, best laid plans and everything, so DH and I are saving, reducing debt, and planning as if I will inherit nothing. If I do inherit, the family mentality is that I am a custodian of the funds, who grows and manages them for the next generation. Spending on educational expenses is encouraged, blowing through the money and living high on the hog is frowned upon.
 
I completely agree with you. My dad’s family has a tradition of establishing family trusts, children’s trusts, etc. My great grandfather started his business career loaning any extra money he had from his small family steamer trunk business to local farmers so they could buy their seed for the next year’s crop. He eventually became a very successful stockbroker. He passed trusts on to his children and grandchildren. Even the great grandchildren got something. The $10,000 I was left when my great grandma died paid for my first used car, a partial down payment on my first house, and paid for an inexpensive timeshare property. The money my grandmother left me went to my kids’ college funds and into savings for retirement for me and DH. Even though my parents lived paycheck to paycheck when I was growing up, their situation improved once the kids were out of the house. My dad is dead set on continuing the tradition and has set up his and my mom’s finances accordingly, including long term care insurance so they won’t blow through all their savings with a long illness. But you never know, best laid plans and everything, so DH and I are saving, reducing debt, and planning as if I will inherit nothing. If I do inherit, the family mentality is that I am a custodian of the funds, who grows and manages them for the next generation. Spending on educational expenses is encouraged, blowing through the money and living high on the hog is frowned upon.

Because of the timing of deaths (my mother died just before my grandmother), I received my inheritance early (my grandparents estate went 50% to my aunt and then 25% to each of my brother and I). I was around 21. I've never really looked at it as "my" money (though it is), but rather money to try to pass down to the next generation (I don't have kids, so that would be my niece and nephew). Not that I cannot spend it (and it will form part of my retirement funds) but it was low 7 figures and I still save 20% of my income into other retirement investments. My grandparents came here as refuges after WWII and worked and saved hard to leave money for their children (or, in our case, grandchildren), so I feel that I owe it to them to do the same. My brother, though, actually gets angry if I make comments like that saying that he has more than enough to leave his children and that I should enjoy the money (actually, my dad says the same thing when I talk about saving), though living frivolously is not will viewed in my family. So, it's not like it is expected that I don't use the money - mainly my feelings about it (and, to be clear, I can/will spend and don't live in any sort of poverty).
 
there is none. And as a person that might be getting one.I am grateful to even get 1 dollar from my parents. Its a gift to have great parents
 
there is none. And as a person that might be getting one.I am grateful to even get 1 dollar from my parents. Its a gift to have great parents

Of course there is. It may be meaningless or irrelevant or skewed, but there is an average (can always get a mean and median of a bunch of values).
 

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