Lucky for me my parents were both “I didn’t save anything for retirement, my kids will take care of me when I’m older”, so I don’t have to suffer through this.
Lucky for me my parents were both “I didn’t save anything for retirement, my kids will take care of me when I’m older”, so I don’t have to suffer through this.
I never really considered an inheritance an option. Seems so off-worldly to me, even though I am by no means from a poor family, just lower middle class.
I think the entire concept of inheritance is something more prominent in developing countries like US or India, where there isn’t a well-established safety nets already in place by the government itself.
Of course we have inheritances too, I know a few who got something, but most of it gets taxed away upon receiving or vanishes covering the deceased’s debts, so I’ve never heard anyone I know get anything other than maybe a weekend vacation in the city next over or maybe a small chunk of student debt away.
Then again I’m not very well-off, and I do know there are the upper class families that have a long standing generational wealth passing over to the new generations. I guess it really depends on the circles one’s in.
But I still think it’s not as common here, at least I’ve never considered it to be normal, and I’ve known well people from upper middle class too.
I’m from US and I re-read “developing countries like us or India” like 3 times and then I realized that you’re absolutely right.
People used to buy land and build a house on it and that was the inheritance. It could then be cut into smaller parcels and new homes built for the kids if they stayed close.
And of course if you were wealthy it was businesses and trust funds which still occurs a lot these days.
The middle class was partially stripped of its wealth by each generation giving less to the next
I am with you I never considered that an option and I don’t want to think about it either. But I do think our parents gets/got a lot (depending on how our grandparents lived) more than we will. My grandparents left house and money and even a vacation house so my parents could put the sould houses and furnitures money into building their own house. My mom even gave me and my sister a bit to use to buy our first apartments. It is still money even tho it is pretty sad way to “earn” money… I assume your friends parents lived in rented apartments if there was not much left.