Why Only 22% of Boomers Plan to Leave an Inheritance

Roughly one in five baby boomers now expects to leave money behind for the next generation, according to survey data from two major financial firms, a sharp break from the assumption that wealth flows automatically from parents to children.

What Wealthy Boomers Actually Say They'll Do With Their Money

A Charles Schwab survey of 1,005 high-net-worth Americans, each with at least $1 million in investable assets, asked boomers directly how they intend to handle their wealth. Forty-five percent said they'd rather spend it on themselves while they're alive. Thirty-four percent said they want to preserve it for an eventual inheritance. The remaining 21 percent said they'd rather help their children enjoy the money now, outside of a formal inheritance. For comparison, only 11 percent of Gen X and 15 percent of millennial respondents chose the "spend it on myself" option in the same survey, which suggests boomers are behaving differently from other generations, not just aging into the same instinct everyone eventually has.

A broader, less wealth-screened Northwestern Mutual survey found an even smaller share of boomers, about 22 percent, actually plan to leave an inheritance, and only 11 percent rank leaving money to heirs as their top financial goal. Roughly 40 percent of boomers surveyed haven't written a will at all. The two studies aren't measuring identical populations, Schwab's respondents all hold at least $1 million in investable assets, while Northwestern Mutual's sample is broader, but both point the same direction: inheritance is no longer the default plan for a large share of this generation.

Healthcare Costs Are Redirecting Money Boomers Once Might Have Saved

Part of the shift traces to what retirement itself now costs. Fidelity estimates a typical 65-year-old may spend over $165,000 on healthcare across retirement, not counting long-term care, which can run past $64,000 a year on its own. That kind of open-ended expense makes committing assets to an eventual inheritance riskier than it once looked, especially for retirees also managing the effects of inflation on fixed retirement income. Longevity compounds the problem: retirees planning for a possible 30-year retirement have to budget for outliving their savings, not just spending them down predictably.

The $84 Trillion Transfer Is a Projection, Not a Guarantee

Cerulli Associates projects that $84.4 trillion in wealth will change hands in the U.S. through 2045, with $72.6 trillion of that reaching heirs, mostly Gen X and millennials. That figure gets repeated often as evidence a historic transfer is locked in. It isn't. The projection assumes today's asset holdings convert into inheritances on a similar timeline to past generations, an assumption the Schwab and Northwestern Mutual survey data directly complicates. If a meaningful share of boomers spend down savings on healthcare, long-term care, and their own retirement lifestyle before the inheritance point, the realized transfer could look smaller, later, or more unevenly distributed than the headline number implies. What the survey data does make clear is a shift in form as much as amount: where boomers do pass on wealth, it increasingly comes as gifts made while they're still alive rather than a lump sum after death.