You are reading a single comment by @Greenbank and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Greenbank
The "problem", as I understand it, is that they inherit full control of the lot on their 18th birthday and the parents/guardians have zero control from this date. I wouldn't be surprised if my daughter spunked the lot on sweets and crap jewellery from Shein (ikr) if she suddenly came in to a chunk of money. I've got another 3 and a bit years (shit!) to try and instil some sense of financial acuity in her.
Any money that we have been given for her has been split between the Child Trust Fund that was free (with an initial £250 from the Government) for children born around that time, and Premium Bonds, with pretty much everything (not much) in the last 10 years going towards PBs rather than the CTF. She's welcome to get control of all of that on her 18th birthday as that's not my money to fuck around with.
But the monthly payments I've been putting into her Premium Bonds from my own salary (that she has no idea about) may have to be moved somewhere else just before her 18th birthday, it may even go towards paying off my mortgage if I haven't done that by that time - as an only child she's going to inherit it all (subject to IHT - which I won't do anything to try and avoid/minimise) at some point anyway and she'll get help with early adult life if necessary (University if she goes that route, etc).
I have inherited a sum total of about £250 in my life, and my parents couldn't provide any more than room and board from 18 anyway. I had to work part-time (and take a year out) to get through Uni and then launched straight into full time work with (tiny violins at the ready...) the luxury of 2 month and 6 month sabbaticals over the course of 26 years. Still got a good number of years to work yet.
The youth of today will have their own challenges. My daughter will get more support from us than I got from my parents, but I didn't have to pay course fees for Uni (well, technically I did in my final year but it was under £500), my student loans were ~£4k in total and paid off relatively quickly after starting work full time. Housing will be an absolute fucker for the youth of today but she'll be lucky in that we can help her with that when the time comes. No doesn't really have an idea of what she wants to do in life, but there's no rush as she's still a kid.