My wife comes from a well-off family: her grandmother is sitting on 15-18 million in farmland, uncles and father are all in real-estate. But because of the family “drama” (i.e. the “me”-centered entitlement attitude all her relatives possess), we pretty much expect nothing. Life is a lot less stressful this way. Meanwhile we are watching many of her cousins go into debt, mismanage their personal finances, abuse relationships, and even steal from each other, underscoring just how DAMAGING it can be if one lives his life with the expectation that if you can just hold out a little longer, someone will bail you out with a lot of money. This is irresponsible, and stupid.

My family, on the other hand, is dirt poor. Out of all of us – my mom, my deceased father and his wife, my three siblings – I am, by far, the “richest.” Heck, my family was borrowing money from me when I was in college. I don’t expect my mom to ever retire by choice, and she’s sick enough that her life expectancy is shorter than it would be otherwise (and she’s 64 right now).

My folks have a very decent seven-figure nest egg waiting for them when they retire, plus a house that they brought for 85K and is now worth just shy of $1 million. They made it very clear to my brother and me that we get the house but not one cent of their nest egg, which is fine with us. My brother and I have discussed this and have decided to keep the house in the family name and not sell it; therefore, we have will have no cash from our parents when the time comes…unless we decide at the last minute to sell the place.

The Millionaire Next Door does point out that a big chunk of of those thrifty millionaires didn’t get any inheritance and still did quite well. As long as I work hard, I think that I can do what they did.

The thought of inheritances, to me, is pretty depressing, though. I don’t want to base any of my personal life decisions on when my parents kick the bucket. Given my grandparents life expectancy (they all lived well into their 80′s), I’d be wating around another 20 years for some extra money. My wife & I would like to buy a lake house sometime soon when our children are old enough to enjoy yet young enough to still tolerate us – if I were to wait until my dad’s pushing up the daisies, my kids will probably be long gone. So, since I have a specific “want” in my life that has to be purchased, I’d rather figure out how I can make that happen rather than resign myself to having it when my parents die. So to extrapolate, counting on your life getting better in any way when your parents pass away is just morbid and seems like a way to waste time. If you’ve got things you want in life, you’ve got to just go get them.