So after several years of legal BS, my mom's immediate family is finally settling her mother's estate. I won't go into the ridiculousness, but the bottom line is she's taking about $250,000 to the bank.
She's retired, and thanks to some frugal/wise retirement savings she's actually banking more money each month now than she was while working. SHe's in a good situation for a 71-year-old retired teacher. Very good.
So this money. She contends she doesn't need much to live on and wants to give most of it to family. She wants to set up a trust for each of our daughters. Cool. She wants to put some in some sort of account for my brother and for me. Fine. She wants to take a month or two long trip to Europe. Do it. She deserves it. But she also wants to buy my brother and me new cars. You know, windfall, for fun!
So at the risk of offending folks, I think cars are the stupidest, worst, most financially irresponsible thing the majority of humans waste money on. There is almost no reason for the majority of people, regardless of income, to ever spend more than $8,000 on a car. And before you say , "Well if no one bought $40,000 new cars then there wouldn't be any 10-year old $8,000 cars," I'll just say yes there would because the manufacturers would start making $8,000 cars (again). And for the record, I love cars. Weird, huh?
I digress.
My mom sort of got more than just a little offended when I told her I had a car and wouldn't accept the gift of a brand new one. Mine is 9 years old and only has 60,000 miles. It's also a Honda. Yes, it's sort of stupid and uncomfortable and slow and I don't really like it (fine, I hate it, and until recently was trying to swap it for something more efficient, but just couldn't get the wife on board with the known-unknowns of taking on a more than slightly used car), but whatever, it should last another 12-15 years easily. If I'm lucky, careful, and responsible I could possibly retire without ever buying another one. But she says she REALLY wants to do this for me (my brother said yes with no hesitation) because she contends she won't live long enough to spend all of this money, anyway (I laughed - my grandmother lived to be 96 and my great-grandmother 99). I said if she really wants to give away money, then give me whatever she would have used to buy a car and I'll put it into a CD, index funds, or something long term, and save it until I actually need a car. But she wants to do something irresponsibly nice for me, no conditions, no discussion. Take the new car, you ungrateful brat.
I have no idea what to do, short of just saying No, absolutely not, I won't take the money for something so frivolous and irresponsible. She should donate the money to a charity if she wants to do something nice but responsible. I never thought I'd say this, but I don't want your money.
Any suggestions on how to handle this? I love my mom and don't want her to do something that could severely hinder her ability to provide for herself in retirement. And giving away more than 1/4 of her inheritance for stupid new cars for her sons would go a long way to ensuring she just might find herself in trouble down the road.