Submitted by mycatsitslikeppl t3_10pg1wj in personalfinance
Basically, any and all expenses for the kids will be taken care of. Housing, school, extracurriculars, vacations, even food. There’s discussion of the trust taking over our mortgage and eventually selling this house and buying a bigger house because we had been planning on having more kids. This is all still very new and it would take a few years to get everything set up but that’s the path we’re headed towards. FIL is talking about private schools, fencing lessons, buying them cars when they turn 16, going to Ivy League colleges, giving them cushy jobs in his company and that’s not even addressing the money they’d get as their living stipend or whatever. He dropped the bomb on us yesterday and since then, my partner and I have been discussing what all of this means. He said “We need to start thinking like rich people.” I don’t know how.
I grew up lower middle class. We always had a house, food and clothes but money was always tight. There was a lot of coupon clipping and hand-me-downs and learning how to shop for stuff on sale. I always had an after-school & weekends job for pocket money and I worked all the way through college with financial aid, student loans and scholarships.
This windfall is the result of FIL’s job and business. My ILs used to have money, then they didn’t and now they do again. My partner knows how to live like a rich person but we currently don’t because WE’RE NOT. Partner makes enough money for us to be comfortable and I am at home until preschool starts. Now I’m looking at daycares, which weren’t an option before but now the trust will pay for it. We can start looking at a bigger house in a few years, houses that would previously have been out of our price range.
I need advice on what to expect, what can be covered by it, what to do with our extra income now that the trust will be handling most of our expenses and most importantly: how to keep my kids from becoming entitled trust fund kids. If the trust takes over our mortgage, using something called a quick deed, how do we make sure we get our down payment and all the equity we’ve already put into the house? Can we ask the trust to pay for our adoption fees? What about foster kids? What sort of investing should my spouse and I do to keep up our credit score and build personal wealth separate from the trust? Eventually my partner and his sister will be in charge of the trust to take care of our future grandchildren and so on.
Part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. It hasn’t even really sunk in yet. This sounds too good to be true. My partner assures me this is all on the up and up. He used to be in the same business as FIL and has seen the numbers. He may even quit his job to go work for FIL because he has experience in this field (insurance) and could make more money. My anxiety is bombarding me with worst case scenarios, like the trust running out of money or getting kicked out of our house because it’s owned by the trust or my SIL stealing all the money for her kids or it all being an elaborate Ponzi scheme or my kids becoming entitled brats.
I’m just really overwhelmed at this life-changing news and could use some advice from people in similar situations. I am flying blind here and have no idea how to prepare myself, financially, emotionally or otherwise.