Broadly speaking, we’ve been talking about Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa when discussing the Great Wealth Transfer. And that makes sense, it’s a purposefully broad brush. But the research is clear: women live longer, women do and will control more financial decisions than ever before, and as many of us know, women are smarter.
Our friends at The Morning Brew note “women who are baby boomers and older are set to inherit $40 trillion of the “great wealth transfer”—primarily by outliving their husbands. Here’s the back-of-the-cocktail-napkin math reported by CNBC:
- Between 2024 and 2048, approximately $124 trillion will be bequeathed from baby boomers and older generations to their heirs, according to data from Cerulli Associates.
- Of that total, $54 trillion will go to surviving spouses.
- Ninety-five percent of that amount will go to women, with older women set to be the largest beneficiaries, as their average life expectancy exceeds that of US men.
Some experts caution that if the spouse who handled the finances predeceases their partner, inheriting the money may be more fraught than comforting.”
This last point is the one that stopped me. I am certainly not going to pretend to have answers here, so I shall humbly ask: How can Forward Inheritance help? How can we make this process more comforting rather than fraught? Our families need this to be true. How can we help Mom or Grandma be the Matriarch who financially leads the family? We are open to learning, listening, and helping us move our families forward…