Crogglement

[feuervogel]

Thanks to a conversation on twitter, I know I'm not the only person who feels this way; I'm just wondering how common it is.

I'm completely croggled that people casually assume or casually state that they'll be getting some sort of inheritance when their parents die. I've never assumed I'd get anything other than debt to pay off or possessions to sell off when my parents die. At least my mom's house is almost paid for; no idea about dad's. (And another comment on twitter reminds me that someone's got to pay for the funerals...)

To copy and paste someone's comment to a friend's post (completely without attribution and with some paraphrasing/editing), this is what sparked this line of thought:

There's also a sense of "it's spending down the inheritance either way; this way's just time-shifted". I trust my parents to have a good sense of their financial planning and what they intended to leave me, and if they happen to want to transfer some of that to me now rather than later, that's fine.

My mom doesn't buy me stuff. She stopped even sending me money at Christmas and my birthday a few years ago. She had to do two major home repairs last summer (ac/heat and water heater both died at the same time), and her tight budget got even tighter. I honestly don't know if she has a retirement savings plan, or if the United Methodist Church even offers one for their secretaries, or even if they did, if she'd have enough income to be able to split off a hundred bucks here or there to save up. (She's a blasted SECRETARY. For a CHURCH. If she makes more than 30k (or equivalent for the DC-Metro area), I'd be astonished.) The only thing I expect to receive from her is the treadle-powered Singer, which is what I told her I wanted when she asked when she made her will. If I'm still in this country, anyway. (It would be really cool if I could figure out how to get it to work, because it has feet useful for old-fashioned clothesmaking, like piping.)

Dad does buy me stuff sometimes, usually alcoholic beverages on the rare occasions we see each other. I have no idea what his financial situation is like. I assume not very good, because he's never been good at saving, and he's an owner-operator (that is, truck driver). I don't think you get 401(k)s with those jobs. He's got his truck and his house, which together could fetch probably half a million*, though I don't know what of that his girlfriend co-owns.

*Truck resale value depends on the age of the truck, mileage on the engine, and how fancy the sleeper area is. His has a huge bed (2 bunks, I think), a kitchenette, and a lav with shower.

Anyway, it just boggles my mind that people casually mention things like inheritance. Is it just me? Is it a product of my working class upbringing?

Comments

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

My parents are about equivalent to yours, and yeah, I don't expect much past having to sell their houses, which I doubt would go well. Though they do both have life insurance for the funerals. They save for end of life care, not me.

[feuervogel]

I have no idea what my mom has for life insurance, etc. My sister is (physically and emotionally) closer, so she might. My mom may have finally paid off her husband's final medical bills and final expenses, so I think she got rather a shock from that and may have started saving more.

Here via the network

[devilc]

It's a middle class thing, and it's kind of a bad thing, because these days, I know people who assume that of course Mom/Dad/Auntie/Uncle etc. aren't going to blow through that money or won't have a problem that depletes all the resources, and they spend money accordingly. I think the assumption of inheritances comes from a time of a healthier economy and cheaper medical coverage. Also, more and more people are starting to outlive their savings due to better medical technology.

I've already come into a modest inheritance (property) when my mother passed suddenly, but when both grandparents died, I got (and expected) nothing more than some personal keepsakes. When my dad goes (which will happen sometime in the next 20 years), I expect nothing more than some personal keepsakes.

Re: Here via the network

[feuervogel]

Those are good, interesting points. A lot of things in society have changed a lot even since I was a kid (back in the 70s and 80s) that make the assumptions our parents made less valid than they used to be.

(I like network commenters! I get them so rarely.)

[miome]

I just wanted to mention, since you were talking about inheriting debt - not sure if you were serious or not - but that doesn't happen in the US. As I understand it, when someone dies all their cash and property are put together into an estate, and that estate is used to pay off their outstanding debt. If there's anything left, it's distributed according to their will, or if there's no will then according to state law. If there isn't enough in the estate to pay off their creditors, the creditors are SOL. It's illegal for them to go after the persons heirs or family. Some try anyway, because if someone agrees to take of the debt, they immediately become responsible for it. It's a nasty trick that unfortunately works too often, and is prosecuted not often enough.

[feuervogel]

Ooh, I didn't know that. I don't expect my mom will have much debt (beyond whatever medical and funeral expenses she gets at the end), and her house will be paid off in a few years. Depending on where property values in WV go in the next 30ish years, and her final expenses, I may get some fraction of the proceeds of the home sale. I'm certainly not counting on it.

[ranyart]

Hmmm. I do not know my parents' financial situation exactly. An inheritance has never been talked about, and that's fine - it's not something I really want to think about now and I don't think I deserve money from them or should assume anything about the situation. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of planning around things that will happen when my parents die. But probably I would get some money from them? Or their house?

In terms of talking about it... my parents raised me to pretty much never talk about my financial situation with anyone or accept financial help, because both are Bad Manners and Not Done. Which makes the fact that they're now well off and sometimes give me money that I don't need weird and uncomfortable on a few levels. I remember when they worried about money more and my mom had her coupon stash and this clicker-thing that added up her purchases as she went around the grocery store (I used to bug her so much to let me play with it but I almost never got to hold it) so she wouldn't go over budget, and I guess that's where those lessons came from.

[feuervogel]

I definitely wasn't raised not to accept financial help. We wouldn't have had a roof over our heads without our grandparents' assistance, especially when the furnace died or the roof sprang a leak. I was treated to my mom's complaints about dad's child support payments being inadequate to support us on her paycheck, and when he sent her the bill for some semi-emergency dental care while he had us with him, how she raged about that.

Not talking about finances is probably one of the major things that's completely fucked up my relationship to money. I don't really know how to budget; I can't convince Ben of the utility of budgeting (because his parents never had to worry about money, of course); I have the mindset of a poor person: I have money now, I can use it to buy the things I need, like fixing my car or replacing the broken window or whatever.

[ranyart]

I wonder if my parents were taught not to accept help from their parents? I think both of them grew up in homes where they were just barely getting by. I've heard some of those details but not many. I do know their financial situation was pretty dire right when they got married; I've heard some of those stories and I know it was a stressful time.
My dad has historically been very much a BOOTSTRAPS!!! sort of person; I think this may have changed a tiny bit, but I heard a lot of that when I was younger. Maybe you have to bootstrap yourself up and it's bad to have someone else help you? I don't know. It may have taken a while for that financial worry to go away, even when they were more comfortable. I don't even know exactly when that changed for them.

I saw that heirloom comment below; honestly, if I'm "expecting" anything from my parents, it would be some of my mom's Depression glass pieces. That would mean so much to me. I'm in favor of my parents taking care of themselves, helping my grandmother out when her health eventually gets worse, and doing whatever else they need to do. If I don't see any money from them in thirty years, that will be ok.

[feuervogel]

Well, the bootstraps myth is predicated solidly on "and I did it ALL by myself, without anyone else's help." I've long understood that if it weren't for my grandparents, I wouldn't have had new clothes or shoes (which we got at discount stores anyway). That's probably why the bootstraps/Rugged Individual myth makes me want to stab people: I know it's 98% shit. There's a small subset of people who actually DO manage to pull themselves up with minimal help from family--but did they have student loans and/or scholarships for college? Does that count as help? What about public high school?

The comments on lj are interesting, too.

[ranyart]

I've had a few conversations with my dad about privilege and the bootstrap idea, and his thinking is verrrry sloooowly changing. He isn't one of those people who's always yelling about hard work and bootstraps and never helping anyone else, but his personal idea of success is very tied to it, I think, and the concept of "it's good to work hard for what you want" was given to us in a pretty simple format when we were little. And I think that's a great thing to learn, sure, but it's so much more complicated than that as we know.
It's not something I discuss with him often, because we butt heads on it a bit, but I do think he's changing. I wonder what he would try to teach a little kid today.

[lian]

I don't know, actually -- I'm firmly middle class (2nd gen) but I don't expect to inherit anything* apart from my share of the house (which my parents will be looking to sell while they still live, anyway, and then live off the sale.) My parents assured me their debts would be settled tho, so that's good.

*my mom has a gorgeous pair of earrings I asked her about, but that's it.

[feuervogel]

That seems like a reasonable thing to me. Passing on heirlooms or mementoes is what I've always expected to happen, not some giant wad of cash.