Imagine a woman who has built considerable wealth over many years. Her adult children have long been independent. One could use support now because they are making a fresh start professionally. Their mother considers whether to transfer some of her wealth today. She could leave everything as an inheritance later. That would postpone some questions for now. Yet perhaps support at this particular moment would make an especially important difference.
What interests me about this thought is less the size of the gift. Initially, its timing matters. Someone giving during their lifetime makes a decision and can then witness how others use the opportunities it opens. That sounds pleasing, but brings uncertainty too. A gift can be accepted, used differently from what was hoped or even refused. And the giver must come to terms with the money belonging to someone else after the transfer.
With substantial wealth, these considerations matter differently from an occasional birthday present. Financial independence, long-term relationships and one's own plans for life may be involved. Psychology offers no general answer to whether giving earlier or later is better. But it can help explain why giving during one's lifetime is a distinct experience, and why enjoying it is often connected with letting go.
Timing is part of the decision
An inheritance and a gift during life may involve the same asset on paper. But they reach those involved in different circumstances. An inheritance arrives after a death. A gift can respond to a specific present need, and its owner can explain the decision personally. That potentially changes not only when the money arrives but also what it means to both sides.
In a study published in 199900017-1), economist Kathleen McGarry examined financial transfers from parents to adult children and intended bequests. In the US data analysed, children with lower current incomes were more likely to receive support during their parents' lifetimes, while planned estate divisions tended more towards equal distribution. The paper discusses why parents respond to short-term income differences while having only limited knowledge of their children's long-term circumstances.
The study neither says that all parents follow this pattern nor establishes that giving during life makes people happier. It shows something more down to earth: a recipient's present need can prompt a different decision from a later division of wealth. Ten thousand euros during a difficult period of training can serve a very different purpose from the same sum decades later. Timing matters for very large amounts too, although the evidence is not identical.
Giving while alive also allows immediate answers to questions. What is the occasion? Are conditions attached? What may the recipient do with the gift? A will can express wishes, but no longer allows a conversation with the recipient. Conversely, that very conversation can be uncomfortable because it reveals ideas previously left unspoken.
Seeing the impact for yourself
One major difference is being able to observe a development now rather than merely hope for a future effect. Perhaps money enables a move, a career change or the funding of an idea. Perhaps its main effect turns out to be peace of mind as a burden disappears. The result does not need to be spectacular to matter to the recipient.
In two studies published in 2013, Lara Aknin and colleagues examined the conditions under which money spent on others was associated with positive feelings. The key finding was that perceived personal impact mattered. In an experiment involving real fundraising appeals, a larger donation was associated with greater happiness only when the organisation explained how the money would improve a recipient's life.
This is an interesting indication of the importance of visible consequences, but no proof that a large private transfer of wealth makes someone happier in the long term. The experiments involved smaller amounts and different contexts. That limitation should not be passed over. Feeling that you can see an impact may be a motive. It does not tell us whether the particular gift is actually good for everyone involved.
Even a visible result need not look as the giver imagined. Someone giving money for education may find that the recipient takes a completely different path. Someone hoping to ease a relative's daily life may see no dramatic transformation, just less worry. Such outcomes can satisfy, disappoint or do both at once. Once the decision rests with someone else, its course can no longer be managed like one's own project.
Passing something on while your own story continues
Developmental psychology uses the term generativity for the desire to contribute beyond oneself. In 1992, Dan McAdams and Ed de St. Aubin described a model bringing together personal desires, social expectations, care, concrete actions and the story people tell about their lives. This means much more than passing on money. People can share knowledge, take responsibility, support children or create something for future generations.
A 2023 research review by Feliciano Villar, Rodrigo Serrat and Michael Pratt examined 265 papers on generativity in later life. It shows that older people can contribute to family and society in many ways. The authors also highlight methodological and cultural gaps in this research. It establishes no particular psychological duty for wealthy older people to give away their assets.
Nevertheless, the idea helps illuminate one aspect of giving. Some people care about a part of what they have built continuing to make a difference in other hands while they are alive. Perhaps they want to explain why a particular person or undertaking matters to them. Perhaps they want to see their values make something possible rather than exist only in memories.
A legacy therefore need not begin only after death. It can take shape during life. But generativity does not require a large financial gift, nor does old age automatically make someone more generous. It remains a possible personal meaning, not a prescribed chapter of life.
Once the money is gone, the decision belongs to someone else
This is where the subject becomes interesting. Someone making a gift initially exercises their own freedom of choice. Afterwards, they must accept that another person lives with the possibilities it creates. This is especially apparent when giver and recipient remain in close contact. Then you see not only the hoped-for successes but perhaps decisions you would have made differently yourself.
Autonomy is certainly no minor psychological consideration. In four studies published in 2010, Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan examined how autonomous and more controlled motives for helping related to the wellbeing of helpers and recipients. Freely chosen help showed more favourable associations than help given under pressure or for controlled reasons. The studies concerned everyday helping, not large private transfers of wealth.
For our subject, that raises a sensible question rather than providing a ready-made research finding: can I give without subsequently treating every decision the recipient makes as a continuation of my own? Someone attaching a specific purpose to a gift should state that expectation openly. Someone wanting to give unconditionally must expect the other person to set their own priorities. Unspoken conditions are the most uncomfortable version. The recipient may discover only after the transfer that the apparent freedom came with invisible instructions.
That need not end in conflict. People can agree on goals, respect boundaries and achieve very good results. But it helps not to confuse wanting a particular impact with a right to permanent control. One is an understandable personal interest. The other changes the nature of the gift.
Families can interpret the same gift differently
In families especially, money comes with shared history. An adult child may experience support as an expression of trust. A sibling may see favouritism. Parents may intend temporary help while the recipient already senses changed expectations about how to live. None of these interpretations requires bad intentions.
A qualitative study by Liliana Sousa and colleagues published in 2010 examined 55 accounts of inheritance situations provided by 43 participants, including relatives and professionals. The researchers described different motives, from family solidarity and a wish for equal treatment to reciprocity and self-interest. The study was exploratory and took place in Portugal. It does not measure the general frequency of conflict in wealthy families, but helps explain how differently those involved can interpret a transfer.
With gifts during life, the relationship continues after the decision. That is their strength and sometimes their difficulty. People can talk, correct misunderstandings and enjoy developments together. But a gift can also be remembered for years when a later conflict arises. The recipient may expressly want to avoid a lifetime obligation of gratitude. The giver may not want their help taken for granted.
Wealthy parents, adult children: how much help is too much? looks more closely at this particular relationship. For timing, it is enough to recognise that an earlier transfer is not automatically an easier transfer. It simply lets those involved experience its consequences together.
Your own room for manoeuvre still matters
A decision can look generous and still come at the wrong moment. Wealth is often tied up, the future uncertain and one's own life full of commitments. The desire for a lovely moment of giving should therefore not sweep aside the question of whether someone wants to give anything away. Anyone who might need that money later has good reason to be careful. That is no character flaw.
Kathleen McGarry's research on family transfers shows that the timing of actual help depends on specific circumstances. It provides no general instruction to give early. Nor does being able to retain some influence and witness the impact automatically make a transfer sensible. Sometimes deliberately waiting, or giving nothing at all, is the better fit.
Another point is easily overlooked with large fortunes. Even when an amount appears objectively dispensable, owning it may represent security, independence or personal history. That significance does not disappear because a calculation shows a surplus. Taking it seriously may lead to a different decision from looking only at numbers.
What would interest me about such a decision is how free it feels to the giver. Are they acting from their own conviction, or under pressure from family, the public or an ideal they have set themselves? A voluntary gift requires the right to decide against it. Otherwise generosity quickly becomes a role someone is expected to perform.
The idea of still being there yourself
Behind the unusual offer at Tired of Wealth lies a very simple thought: someone who voluntarily wants to give wealth away can also consider leaving it to another person while both can make and experience the decision themselves. I openly say that I would be willing to accept such a private gift. That implies neither a claim on anyone else's money nor a promise that a transfer guarantees a better life for anybody.
Timing makes the thought particularly interesting. The giver would not need to refer to a distant future. They could explain their intention personally and decide for themselves whether they genuinely wanted to go ahead. A no would be entirely sufficient too. The project is, after all, no scientifically developed procedure for producing wellbeing through transfers of wealth. It is an unusual offer from a real person.
Those wanting to think more deeply about the various reasons for giving will find a broader discussion of motives in Why people give wealth away. The right timing remains a personal question, however. It depends on what someone wants to experience and what freedoms they can genuinely allow the recipient.
You cannot revisit the present later
A later transfer of wealth can be sensible and well arranged. A gift during life offers something different: those involved can talk, understand the decision together and experience its consequences within the same lifetime. Timing thus becomes part of the gift's meaning.
But there is no reason to turn that possibility into a race. Someone giving too early simply to see an impact might overlook their own needs. Someone willing to give only if the recipient follows exactly the expected path may discover that they wanted to fund an undertaking rather than make a freely given gift. Both are questions people are entitled to ask themselves before a large transfer.
Perhaps the particular appeal of giving during life is that you need not settle for imagining the result. You can witness money taking on meaning for someone else. But you also have to allow that meaning to differ from your own. You can choose the timing yourself. The story that follows no longer belongs to you alone.
Sources
McGarry, Kathleen (1999). “Inter vivos transfers and intended bequests”. Journal of Public Economics, 73(3), pp. 321 to 351. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0047-2727(99)00017-100017-1)
Aknin, Lara B., Elizabeth W. Dunn, Ashley V. Whillans, Adam M. Grant and Michael I. Norton (2013). “Making a difference matters: Impact unlocks the emotional benefits of prosocial spending”. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 88, pp. 90 to 95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2013.01.008
McAdams, Dan P., and Ed de St. Aubin (1992). “A theory of generativity and its assessment through self-report, behavioral acts, and narrative themes in autobiography”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(6), pp. 1003 to 1015. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.62.6.1003
Villar, Feliciano, Rodrigo Serrat and Michael W. Pratt (2023). “Older age as a time to contribute: a scoping review of generativity in later life”. Ageing & Society, 43(8), pp. 1860 to 1881. First published online in 2021. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X21001379
Weinstein, Netta, and Richard M. Ryan (2010). “When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), pp. 222 to 244. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016984
Sousa, Liliana, Ana Raquel Silva, Liliana Santos and Marta Patrão (2010). “The family inheritance process: motivations and patterns of interaction”. European Journal of Ageing, 7(1), pp. 5 to 15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-010-0139-3