Telling your kids about money feels like the responsible thing to do. But about $28 billion a year gets taken from Americans over 60, and 72 cents of every one of those dollars is taken by somebody that person already knew, usually family or friends. Here's what not to tell your adult children about money once you're past 60.
Your Net Worth Number
The total. Every account, plus the house, plus whatever else is in there. Your kids don't need that number, and the reason has nothing to do with whether you trust them. It's what the number does to a person once they know it.
People who expect an inheritance tend to report saving less, working less, and taking more risk with what they already have. Another group in the same study was told what long-term care actually costs and that a few years of it could eat through the inheritance they were counting on. That group went back to saving more and working more.
Every request your kids bring you gets measured against it. Maybe your kids would never ask you for money. But "can you help me with the down payment" sounds a lot more reasonable in their own head when they know there's $900,000 sitting in your brokerage account.
You can teach your kids everything you know about money without telling them how much you have. The number goes to your spouse, your CPA, and your attorney. If one of your kids asks straight out, you can answer truthfully without the figure. We're fine, we've planned for this, and we'll tell you if that changes.
Access to Your Accounts
This is the "just in case something happens to me" move. You add your son or daughter as a joint owner at the bank, or you hand over your login, so somebody can pay your bills if you end up in a hospital bed.
Legally it doesn't work that way. The day their name goes on the account, that money also belongs to them. Their creditors can reach it, a lawsuit against them can touch it, and if their marriage ends, the account can land on the table as a marital asset.
The bigger problem shows up after the funeral. A joint account passes straight to the surviving owner and bypasses your will. Say you planned to split a brokerage account three ways between your three children, and you added your daughter as a joint owner just in case. That account now goes 100% to her, and your other two kids may get nothing unless she hands them a third each. She doesn't have to follow the will. There's a tax wrinkle as well. If they pull more than the annual gift exclusion, $19,000 for 2025, it can trigger gift tax paperwork.
What you want is for them to manage the money without owning any of it. A durable financial power of attorney lets them pay your bills and deal with the bank on your behalf without owning it. A payable on death designation sends an account where you want it to go, and a revocable trust does the same job with more control.
Whether You'll Co-sign or Bail Them Out
This one is as much about the information as it is about the signature. Once your kids know a backstop is in place, their behavior changes.
When you co-sign a loan, you're legally responsible for the entire balance from the day you sign. It shows up on your credit report and counts toward your debt to income ratio. Go to refinance your own house two years later and that loan is sitting right there, counting against you.
In one survey of co-signers, 38% ended up paying all or part of the debt themselves, and 26% said it damaged the relationship with the person they signed for. And a bank that won't lend to your son or daughter without you on the paper has told you something about the loan.
Here's the rule I'd use. If you wouldn't hand them the cash for it, don't co-sign for it. If you would hand them the cash, maybe just do that and call it a gift, and you don't have to announce that as your policy. Once your kids know where the line is, the math they run on their own decisions changes.
A Windfall, for At Least Six Months
You sell the house, you take a lump sum pension buyout, you inherit money from your own parents. None of that has to go in the family group chat.
When there's suddenly cash in the family and everybody knows, the asks start arriving on that schedule instead of on whatever is actually going wrong in someone's life. A roof that's been aging for three years becomes urgent the week they hear about your windfall. A windfall is also the one moment when your money is liquid and hasn't been placed anywhere, which makes it easy to move and easy to hand out.
The asks almost never come for the whole thing. They come in slices, because a slice is easier to say yes to. That's how a windfall disappears without a single big decision ever getting made about it. Give it six months, and get the money into growth assets or income producing assets where it's working for you. Money that's already placed is a lot harder to ask for.
What They're Going to Inherit
You'll get the house, there's about $300,000 there for you. The second you say that, your kid starts planning around it. Nobody can guarantee that number.
Look at what long-term care costs. A shared room in a nursing home ran about $111,000 a year, the 2024 national median. A private room is closer to $128,000 a year. Assisted living, the lighter version, came out to about $71,000 a year. Say you or your spouse needs that care and it runs three years. At $111,000 a year, you're looking at $333,000. The $300,000 you promised is spent by being in the nursing home, and that's for one person.
Once you've named a figure, you'll try to protect it. You'll underspend your own retirement to keep a promise you made at a dinner table, and that's money you need to live on.
Tell them a plan exists instead. The documents are in this drawer, here's the attorney's name. They don't need the balances or a number to plan around.
The Exact Split of Your Estate
Who gets what, and how much goes to each of them. Knowing a plan exists is fine. What's actually in it should stay yours to decide while you're still alive.
The thinking behind announcing it early is that you'll prevent a fight after you're gone. Ameriprise surveyed about 2,700 families on this. Siblings don't fight about money all that often, only about 15% of the time. But when they do, the parents are at the center of it 68% of the time, usually over how an inheritance gets divided.
Announce the split at Thanksgiving and now three grown adults have opinions about a document you're still alive and can still change. You get phone calls explaining why their share should be bigger. Or your circumstances shift, one kid needs more help than another, and now you can't adjust anything without starting a fight.
Instead, you name an executor, you keep the documents current, and you tell them where the documents live. They find out you were fair afterwards, when it doesn't cost anybody a relationship.
Retirement has to stay under your control from start to finish. The income you've built has to carry you first, and everything you're able to do for your kids comes second to that, and because of it.