Living to 100: why the inheritance may never arrive
Rising life expectancy is pushing inheritance past age 70, leaving the 1970-1990 generation without wealth or prospects.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Living to 100: the boomers' plan for never letting go of the inheritance
An octogenarian couple with over a million euros in assets and health pointing to age 95. For their children, on the doorstep of 60, the inheritance has become a distant horizon: it will arrive when it can barely improve their retirement. Longevity, that triumph of medicine, is rewriting the rules of wealth transfer.
The new cycle is ruthless: people live to 90, leave their assets to 65-year-old children, and the inheritance skips straight from grandparents to grandchildren. The generation born between 1970 and 1990, the one that paid expensive mortgages on low salaries, is left in no man's land: they will die “still rowing” without seeing a single perversos brick. Meanwhile, their parents, the boomers, enjoy an extra decade of life thanks to medical advances.
The grievance has a class dimension. Life-extending treatments will arrive first through the private route. The tenant who paid rent all his life will die at seventy; his landlord, with several flats let out, will manage to stretch his existence to 130. Death, which until now levelled everyone, becomes yet another privilege.
Some settle it while alive: gifts, flats sold cheap, donations. These are the generous boomers. But the diagnosis is clear: inheritance has ceased to be a hope and become a mirage. And while the boomers live to 100, those born in the 70s and 80s watch a patrimony recede that they may never touch. You have been warned.
An octogenarian couple with over a million euros in assets and health pointing to age 95. For their children, on the doorstep of 60, the inheritance has become a distant horizon: it will arrive when it can barely improve their retirement. Longevity, that triumph of medicine, is rewriting the rules of wealth transfer.
The new cycle is ruthless: people live to 90, leave their assets to 65-year-old children, and the inheritance skips straight from grandparents to grandchildren. The generation born between 1970 and 1990, the one that paid expensive mortgages on low salaries, is left in no man's land: they will die “still rowing” without seeing a single perversos brick. Meanwhile, their parents, the boomers, enjoy an extra decade of life thanks to medical advances.
The grievance has a class dimension. Life-extending treatments will arrive first through the private route. The tenant who paid rent all his life will die at seventy; his landlord, with several flats let out, will manage to stretch his existence to 130. Death, which until now levelled everyone, becomes yet another privilege.
Some settle it while alive: gifts, flats sold cheap, donations. These are the generous boomers. But the diagnosis is clear: inheritance has ceased to be a hope and become a mirage. And while the boomers live to 100, those born in the 70s and 80s watch a patrimony recede that they may never touch. You have been warned.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (11 replies).
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