Mother May I … In Reverse

by Sue Peterson, CFA

Liv Fun: Vol 2 – Issue 1

Having a conversation with your kids can help you go about spending “their inheritance,” without the guilt.

Permission. Authorization. Consent. Each of these words implies that, before taking action or making a decision, a higher power of some sort is involved and needs to be sought out and consulted. Even as fully-grown adults, we often find ourselves seeking approval and the unspoken permission that comes with it, whether consciously or not. Dr. Henry Cloud, a noted clinical psychologist, makes it clear, however, that “becoming an adult is the process of moving out of a ‘one up/one down’ relationship and into a peer relationship to other adults. Becoming an adult is assuming the authority position of life. Adults have the power or right to give commands, enforce obedience, take action or make final decisions.” (Cloud, 1992)

As an adult then, with some level of financial wealth, the spending decisions you make do not require anyone else’s permission, approval or even acceptance. I find this to be heady stuff for many seniors, especially when children are asking nosy questions about the cost of your lovely apartment or wondering whether you could (read: “should”) have taken a less expensive trip or given “so much” to charity. As an adult, you can shamelessly slap the bumper sticker “We’re spending our children’s inheritance” on your RV and head south!

If this raises your kids’ eyebrows, and it very well might, it wouldn’t take you long to catalog the inheritance you’ve already passed along to them. As noted by John H. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale University, this infamous bumper sticker bespeaks jocularity, not resentment or hostility toward inheritance. It is a sign of the times, as ordinary people have come to sense that the patterns of inheritance are in flux. (Langbein).

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Liv Fun

by Leisure Care
Spring 2013
View Table of Contents

Possessed by the Things We Possess
by Laura Leist

“You can’t take it with you when you go.” My mom lived by those nine words and repeated them often; I didn’t understand their full meaning until September 23, 1984.
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Mother May I … In Reverse
by Sue Peterson, CFA

Having a conversation with your kids can help you go about spending “their inheritance,” without the guilt. Permission. Authorization. Consent. Each of these words implies that, before taking action or making a decision, a higher power of some sort is involved and needs to be sought out and consulted.
Read More

Chanting Into Halawa
by Pam Mandel

Gaining access into this heaven on earth requires more than good intentions. We were stopped in the middle of a narrow, winding road by a vehicle coming the other way. The big guy behind the wheel rolled down his window.
Read More