Billionaires Warren Buffett, Bill Gates have similar ideas about how much money to leave your kids
Buffet’s sticking with his philosophy of ‘enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing’
Over the next decade, ultra-high net worth people — those with US$30 million or more — will transfer more than US$3.9 trillion between generations, according to a 2016 Wealth-X report.
No matter your income level, gifting money to your kids can be daunting.
As family wealth transfer expert Howard Sharfman told Wealth-X: “Parents are concerned about making sure that the children have meaningful lives, lives of significance, and they don’t want their financial fortunes to hurt that. They want to help, and that’s a very hard balance.”
How do the wealthy strike that balance?
Self-made billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have expressed similar philosophies when it comes to passing on their money: They, along with other super-rich individuals, say that their children aren’t inheriting much of their fortunes.
Bill and Melinda Gates are giving their three kids “a minuscule portion” of their estimated US$81 billion, they told the Daily Mail in 2011. “It will mean they have to find their own way,” Bill Gates said at the time.