With a multimillion-dollar windfall on the horizon – is retirement inevitable or should I keep grinding?

If you find yourself in a position where you know that you might be inheriting millions of dollars in the future, you might wonder what to do next. Should you continue working or just float along until this money hits your bank account? 

For one Redditor, this is precisely the question they are asking with a post in r/Rich, as they know they will receive a sizable inheritance of a few million dollars sometime in the next 10-15 years. The real question for this individual is whether or not to continue to work as hard or just coast until the money arrives. 

The Inheritance 

The original poster begins their story by indicating they are 33 years old, married, and have children, but they consistently put in more hours at work than they would like. The big challenge they are struggling with internally is that the individual believes a multi-million dollar inheritance is coming, so he wants to take his foot off the gas pedal as far as working hard every day. 

Knowing his parents are a little older, in their mid-70s, he expects a sizable inheritance within 10-15 years. Whether it happens by the time he is 40 or 50 doesn’t matter, as he is questioning whether all the sacrifices he is making at work and missing his young children growing up are worth it, knowing he can walk away in a few years. 

Perhaps more importantly, the original poster acknowledges he hasn’t pushed himself as hard as he knows he could because the inheritance lingers in his mind. This contrasts against the real question here as to whether or not he should bother trying to live up to their full potential, or call it quits, coast until the inheritance arrives, and then retire. 

Inheritances Are Not Guaranteed

The most important thing to remember about inheritances is that they are not guaranteed, unless the money is already set aside and completely untouchable. If this isn’t the case, and it certainly doesn’t appear to be the case here, then this money is not guaranteed until it’s in this Redditor’s bank account. 

Between divorce, however unlikely, and the reality that there could be a serious medical illness or home repair need that could eat up a huge chunk of the parents’ money, there is no telling how large this inheritance will be. 

It’s not impossible to think that there could be no inheritance, as this story has played out repeatedly across Reddit and the real world. The bottom line is that until the Redditor has full control over however much money there is when both parents are deceased, this isn’t a reality. Even if you consider that the parents may not live in America and may live in a country where they have covered medical care, several things could still eat up a portion of the inheritance. 

The bottom line is that retirement is not inevitable, and this Redditor should keep grinding away until the money shows up in a bank account. 

The Next Step

Perhaps most importantly, this Redditor needs to realize that not only should they not rely on inheritance, but they also need to start living up to their full potential. Whether this means as a parent or in the workforce, stop making things “harder for themselves” and stop listening to the voice that says they should quit now and wait for the money to arrive. 

Judging by the rest of the comments on this post, other Redditors are almost universally aligned that this Redditor is thinking about this all wrong. In fact, many of the Redditors here share their own stories about sizable inheritances they believed were coming and disappeared before they ever made their way into their bank accounts. This should be a lesson the original poster takes to heart. 

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