Would you leave your children an inheritance?

Would you leave an inheritance?

Would you leave an inheritance for your children…another lounge topic today. Actually, the topics drifted from co-education or same sex high school (secondary school it is called in this part of the world) and them moved on to Unity schools and what has become of them. I will not bore everyone with this unity school thing…it is a local national issue and one that does not merit a lot of attention …at least on my blogsite…I have the absolute control (do I really?) but for the sake of this argument, let us just believe I have.

All of you out there who insinuate we do not do any work in my office because of all the lounge talks are mistaken…we work really hard and when we are in the lounge we talk really hard…we are professionals. We live a balanced life, once we are in the lounge we try to explore life matters and social issues as they emerge. Anyway, I hope I have laid the no work thing at rest…today the topic was will you leave an inheritance for your children? As usual everyone present had something to say but I dare say there were only two schools of thought and at the end of the day it looks like there was really no different school of thought…everyone ended up in a hybrid…

One group said they will definitely leave an inheritance to give their kids a ‘leg up’ in life. Another group said, all they owe the child is good education, values and the morals that will help the kids survive in this turbulent world. If you had an inheritance, would you be better of? I do not know. So the conversation continued. I will like to leave a legacy for my children…legacy? Now that is slightly different from inheritance. We did not explore the legacy end but we accepted it for the sake of the conversation to mean “an inheritance with values”.

So would you leave an inheritance for your children? Will en-masse wealth even if you have hurt, bruise, defraud, kill others in the process of building this wealth? Is there anything wrong with a man who toiled to build a business that outlives him, we see the Italian empires…Salvatore Ferragamo going over 3 generations now…did their father leave them an inheritance? The answer is a resounding yes? Have they built wealth for other generations and also expanded the net of inheritance to include others? The answer I will say is a big yes not to talk of people like the Bill Gates, the Bloombergs, the Trumps and the Hathway empire…whose inheritance will span more than three generations. One guy put it succinctly, “If I think that if I leave my children one million dollars and they will in turn make three million for their own children, I will work hard to leave them an inheritance but if I think that if I leave them this one million dollar they will squander it, then I am inclined to do something else or the money to other causes”. I think that it is easier said than done. If we live long enough, we can see what they make or likely to make of the inheritance but we never know when we will pass on.

The example that quickly came out was Paris Hilton…is that a good example of leaving your children with a ‘leg up’ in the world or is that a ‘leg down’? But you know how it is, we are always critical of what we do not have. Personally, I would have loved that my parents left me a huge inheritance and I did not have to work so hard…wake up so early and go to bed so late...I even had to suffer through school. With a ‘leg up’ in the world like most kids…I would not bother graduating from school…okay I would have, just so that I do not get cut off from the inheritance. One lady said that she would like leave her kids quite a bit, a home in London and else where so that they will not worry about where to go on holidays and if they want to be social workers, then they will not worry about money.

My answer? If the kids want to be social workers then they should learn to live on the salary of social workers…me I just want to eat, sleep and wake up…maybe go to the gym and look good just like Paris Hilton and with a little luck I release one track CD and call the entire world to the launching…please what is very wrong with that?