Your kids don't need your inheritance at 65 - they need it now

Many parents spend decades building wealth to leave an inheritance. But if we're living longer than ever, perhaps the better question is whether our children need that money while we're still here to see the difference it makes.

We've been taught to think about money in remarkably individual terms. Build your career. Pay off the mortgage. Grow your super. Invest wisely. Retire comfortably. Spend cautiously. Leave whatever is left to the children.

For decades, that has been the blueprint for financial success. But now that we're expecting to live to 100 rather than 64, I wonder if we're asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, "How much money do I need before I die?", perhaps we should be asking, "When can my money do the most good?" Because they're not the same thing.

Imagine two scenarios. In the first, your children inherit a substantial sum when they're in their sixties. The mortgage is almost paid off, the kids have left home, and retirement is just around the corner.

In the second, they receive financial support in their thirties or forties. It helps them buy their first home, navigate the expensive years of raising children, start a business, retrain for a new career or simply breathe a little easier during one of life's inevitable rough patches.

The dollar amount might be identical. The impact almost certainly isn't.

When can your wealth do the most good?

As a behavioural economist, I've become increasingly interested in what I call the timing value of money.

We spend enormous amounts of time trying to maximise the financial return on our investments, but surprisingly little thinking about when those investments create the greatest return for the people we love.

Perhaps that's because this isn't really a financial problem. It's an emotional one.

One of the great paradoxes of retirement is that the older we become, the more uncertain the future feels.

We don't know how long we'll live. We don't know what healthcare will cost. We don't know what governments will change, what markets will do or whether we'll eventually need residential aged care.

Why 'just a little bit more' is never enough

So we do what humans have always done in the face of uncertainty. We accumulate. We keep "just a little bit more" because it feels safer than having "not quite enough".

The irony is that humans are notoriously poor at predicting the future. We routinely overestimate how much certainty we'll need and underestimate our ability to adapt when circumstances change.

We insure against events that may never happen, while often overlooking opportunities that are sitting right in front of us.

Fear is a brilliant survival mechanism. It's not always the best financial planner.

This isn't an argument for recklessly giving your money away or assuming your children will become your retirement strategy. Every family's circumstances are different, and maintaining your own financial independence remains incredibly important.

But there is another way to think about wealth.

Instead of seeing it as something to preserve until the very end, we might see it as something to deploy intentionally across generations.

Helping a child into the housing market. Paying for a grandchild's education. Supporting a family member through illness, career change or parental leave. Creating shared family experiences while everyone is healthy enough to enjoy them.

These decisions may not maximise the size of your estate, but they may maximise something far more valuable.

Stronger families.

What kind of legacy do you want to leave?

Historically, wealth wasn't simply transferred through wills. It flowed through families over decades. Parents helped children establish themselves. Adult children helped ageing parents remain connected and cared for. There was an understanding that resources, responsibilities and relationships moved in both directions throughout life.

Somewhere along the way, many of us began treating financial independence as though it meant complete financial isolation. Perhaps it doesn't have to.

This requires a significant mindset shift because it asks us to move from a scarcity mindset to an opportunity mindset.

Scarcity asks, "What if I need this money one day?"

Opportunity asks, "What could this money achieve today?"

Both are reasonable questions. The challenge is making sure fear doesn't become the only voice in the conversation.

This is where emotional agency becomes surprisingly important.

Emotional agency is the ability to use your emotions deliberately to drive decisions based on your values, rather than simply reacting to fear, excitement, anger or the mindless pursuit of pleasure.

Fear tells us to protect. Anxiety tells us to delay. Uncertainty tells us to wait until we know more.

But values invite a different conversation.

What kind of family are we trying to build? What memories do we want to create? What opportunities do we want to provide? What legacy do we want to leave?

Notice that none of those questions is actually about money. Money is simply the tool. The real investment is in the people.

The greatest financial return you'll ever achieve may not be found in a share portfolio or a superannuation statement. It may be found years from now, around a family dinner table, when your children remember not just what you left them, but how you used your wealth to strengthen the family while you were still there to enjoy it.

After all, wealth was never meant to be an end in itself.

Its greatest value lies not in the things it accumulates, but in the people it enables. And how much is it worth to see your family thrive?

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