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One of the things I see all the time with the families we work with is the desire to do more for their adult kids or grandkids–weddings, helping with a first house, upgrading experiences, even the occasional unexpected acquisition. Most of these families have been building wealth their whole lives, and they absolutely have the ability to help.
The challenge is never really financial.
The challenge is whether they actually want to, and what expectations they might set if they do.
A lot of parents and grandparents wrestle with the same hesitation: If I do this once, am I on for the next one? And then the next one?
That is what gives them pause. It is not the cost of the wedding. It is not the gift or the loan for the house. It is whether stepping in now makes their kids less likely to “fish for themselves at the end of the day.”
I’d struggle to name a single client of ours who doesn’t want their kids to work as hard as they did. That kind of grit and work ethic produces stewards of wealth rather than consumers of it. That is the line they are trying to protect.
If you’re facing similar questions, I would encourage you to consider that much of the work is actually financial education for the next generation before these things happen. This creates opportunities to discuss and plan for those expenses in a way that reinforces responsibility rather than dependency.
Even something as simple as deciding whether help with a house is an actual ‘gift’ or a ‘loan’ matters. If it is a loan, what are the terms? Are we going to forgive the note or not? On what basis?
These decisions send signals, and parents know it. Before giving any significant help, I encourage families to ask:
- What is the expectation I’m setting explicitly or implicitly?
- Will this help them grow, or is it helping them get somewhere they can’t sustain?
- Does this align with the kind of stewardship we want in the next generation?
When those answers are clear, generosity becomes a lot easier and a lot healthier. The goal is to raise the kind of adults who can carry the wealth, not rely on it.
