The Core

"You should leave your children enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing."  --Warren Buffet

This is pretty close to how I feel.  I do not think that it's good for them to clear their paths through life with money.  Sometimes, though, I step in and put their train wreck back on the rails.

I think that's true in your case LM, but Buffet's children are mostly in their 60s and rich in their own right. Why would you leave them anything?

I was having this discussion with my dad in February. He's thinking of mostly writing his kids out of his will because he feels like his kids have all reached a place where they are fine and his money (not very much) won't change a thing for us. But for some less fortunate people, it could be a big sum. So he's looking into token gifts to his kids and most of it going elsewhere, which, honestly, seems like the rational thing to do.

In other words, the 99% of what he could do for us, he has done for us over the last 63 years (age of his oldest child). That 1% isn't important to any of us.