I was reading that story today on how various billionaires have pledged to giveaway about half of their wealth in an act of philanthropy. There is a site about it too at http://www.givingpledge.org/ . It was interesting reading the reasons on why they have decided to giveaway their money. One comment that kind of stuck out was that leaving your family with too much money could wreck their lives as you want them to accomplish things on their own.

It was funny when I read that as so many times people just want money by say winning the lottery. But when you think about it, if you never had to truly work for your wealth you won’t have that experience and discipline on how to manage that much money in the first place. Hence, it is not surprising why you see so many instant millionaires just crash and burn so quick.

For things like an inheritance I have personally only seen a small fraction of people use the “don’t want to spoil” factor in regards to how much money they leave people. Usually it’s more about wanting to divide things equally amongst a select few. Interesting thing to think about though if you are someone that has the ability to completely change a person’s financial situation. Especially if it is a family member.

So here was a scenario that is kind of interesting based on a real life situation. Let’s say there is a building that costs one million dollars. The two owners decided to part ways. The situation, one person was very attached to the building and wanted to buy the other half of it from his old partner. The thing is, he can’t afford the $500,000.

So this was a real option. Essentially, a third party was brought into the picture and let’s say it is yourself. Since the owner was getting old, what he proposed to do was mortgage half the building as collateral to get the money to buy the other half from the current partner. Afterwards, he would sign the whole ownership of the building to you with the stipulation being that he can use a small space inside until he passes away. Essentially, that means you would now own the entire building for half price in many ways.

As crazy as it sounds, would you take it? While financially it’s kind of like a person giving you $500,000, it is a lot of change that you would have to do considering you are essentially going to be in a large debt. For me it would really come down to my ability on being able to find ways to generate an income using that building to be able to pay for it. Cause having to alter your entire life to get this may have a more negative affect overall. Like saying you can own this very expensive car, but it is no good if you can’t even afford your other essentials in life.