Anyone inherit money, and it wasn't good for you.

[Mooshamoo]

I inherited a large sum of money 4 years ago. Large to me anyway, it was over 200,000 and less than 500,000.

It was good in one way, but I also feel it was bad in other ways. I feel like I became really reckless, and lost my grip on reality, and made stupid decisions.

I had been quite poor before. When I surprisingly inherited the money, at age 34, the smart thing to do would have been to buy a house. However, I had never really traveled. And I decided that I would go and travel for a year. I left a good job to do this.

I ended up travelling for longer and longer. periods I ended up travelling for four years, and not working at all. I began to see this way of life as normal, when it really wasnt!

Oh I'll just keep travelling for a bit longer.

I also travelled around some quite poor and dangerous countries, as I chose cheap places to stay, to make the money last longer. I dont know, I just feel like I lost a bit of grip on reality. I shouldnt have gone travelling for four years in my mid thirties. I didnt enjoy much of the solo travel at all. I dont think it was good for me. I dont know why i kept doing it. I just kept making bad decisions. It was because I had money, and I didnt really have to work.

Ive come back home now, and back to renting in one place and applying for jobs. Now Im back in reality, I think what the fuck was I doing for the last four years, I went a bit mad with money.

Did anyone else inherit a large sum, and kind of go a bit crazy?

I inherited the money in a bad way too. A member of my family killed themselves and left all their money to me. That alone was bad enough. That someone died by suicide.

But my extended family are nasty people. And they didnt want me to have the money, and they challenged the will. Many people were not happy about me getting the money, and challenged the will. This led to a long legal battle that went on for two years.

So it was a battle of about two years for me to get the money. I didnt think that I would get the money. It wasnt just the battle over the will that wore me down, it was how my own family members treated me after some one i loved died. They were not kind to me. They were cruel.

By the time I got the money, two years later, I was so worn down emotionally after all the fights over the will, that my mind was weak.

A good friend inherited £3 mill at 18. (35 years ago so really a huge sum of money back then)
it wasnt good and he died in rehab aged 21.
i knew a few others with large trust funds of similar ages which made them twats in many ways

Yes!
It is good in many ways of course.

But the bad side, is it can make you have too much choice, you have no boundaries, and it can lead you to make really bad decisions.

One of the bad things could be - if you have any way of an addictive personality, - if you inherit money, you can buy as much drugs and drink as you want.

Its weird. Because I look back and I think I am grateful, but also it was a weird few years for me.

Anyway Im going to think of the positive sides of it.

Ive learned. And now Im back to reality.

Were you grieving badly in this time? Sounds like you were escaping your family and life. Maybe you needed a break from reality.

Spending too much long doing something that is bringing you down is really common, and I think when you could compare other wastes of time you’ll find travelling still puts you ahead of the game. I spent seven years doing a job that I loathed and was stultifyingly dull. It influenced my whole life at the time. I learnt absolutely nothing in terms of either professional skills or personal development, I saw nothing new and I’ve come away with no interesting stories. I don’t think this is especially unusual. Seeing a bit of life in different countries will at least have given you experience.

No point dwelling. I don’t really think about my previous work life at all these days.

Not the question you asked but I did the opposite !
Inherited , don't need to buy a house , but don't know what to do with it. Still sat there 5+ years later.

I agree, maybe you were grieving in a weird way for the person who died. Getting an inheritance can be loaded with guilt or anxiety to 'spend it wisely' or that you didn't earn it etc. I'd say it can be a bit of an emotional minefield.

Go easy on yourself, you had some good experiences, and some shitty ones. You now know more about what you want from your future. Plus you have a house to show for it, and some interesting memories, not too shabby!

I know well if I had inherited a significant amount of money in my 20's it would have been pissed away on nothing. That's just how I was back then. I will probably inherit something in the next 20 years, and if so, it will be used wisely.

I would have done the same as you you shouldn't live with regrets as that's what you wanted to do at the time

yeah inheritance is good and bad,

because you get something really good, but someone also has died. And then there is often a battle over the will and estate aswell. So it is really emotionally draining.

LIke, I got loads of money, but someone I cared about had to die for me to get it, so yeah it was an emotional minefileld. I did feel guilt, and anxiety.

But yeah I did my best.

Thanks @Farmageddon

Thanks @zaza687

exactly - he also had a lot of people hanging on his coat tails and had the money to do what he wanted. Bought his own place so none to tell him what to do And lots encouraging him. Very sad.

I have friends that haven't inhereted yet but are only children with parent who bought properties in London on the 50s and 60s that are now worth multimodal millions. They are now approaching 50 and freely admit that they have done very little with their lives and are basically living very basically, woating for their last remaining parent to die. I think this has been very detrimental to them (and their kids).

Wow what fab advice
wish I knew a few more sensible people that give out this kind of advice in real life

Multiple millions that should have said.

Travelling alone for a long amount of time, is actually a lot of effort and hard work. I think it really badly affected my mental health. You really need work to give you structure in your life.

If it was really so bad then the person in charge should have called a halt to all this awful, damaging, series of events. The person in charge was you, you didn't, you now have a smaller house and memories, don't understand your problem.

yes but I ended up being abroad longer than i wanted to, not just because of me, but because of Covid.

Covid made it very difficult to travel or to get home. So I ended up staying in the country that I was in, for longer than I wanted to. Which was Mexico

I was thinking this you made some very poor choices and yes you've had an experience but that could really have set you up

I didn't inherit, but had a half-decent sum through redundancy, on which I went travelling with a friend - was about eight months.
It basically ended up with me borrowing money off my parents to afford to travel, and they're fortunate enough to have explicitly told me to not pay it back. What did come out of the woodwork, after the event, was that I'd never been taught to budget, and hadn't seemed to grasp the concept - it's something I live with even now, ten years later.
But circumstances meant that I was back home at the right time to get a foot in the door of the industry in which I've since progressed much farther than I thought possible...and ultimately, travelling's absolutely made me. I am just utterly shit with finances and am still in therapy for that!
These things are never straightforward OP. I do hope you can see positives in what you experienced - to my mind there's not a lot of point beating yourself up about things that have passed - although that's way easier said than done.

So it's the last two years you didn't like? I'm not sure why you couldn't have come back after the first lockdown.
But look at it the other way. You could have bought a nice house and stayed at your job and four years later... been promoted but likely still in the same house and as there was covid not much travel at all.
You say you didn't enjoy the travel, but you also say you kept on doing it.
Don't regret the time. You must have become very self sufficient, and despite your regret now must have grown a lot as a person.
You are back, and bought a house and will get a job - pretty much where you'd be if you hadn't travelled. Maybe the house isn't as nice and you no longer have a financial cushion, but I don't agree what you did was such a bad thing in itself. You have lived a life few can - there must be some value in that.

could this be a case of grass is always greener?

If you hadn’t travelled, and instead decided to stay in one place, would you now be wishing that you’d travelled?

Whatever decisions you make, you’ll always find negatives and well as positives. How many people do you think we’re looking at what you were doing and wishing it was them? Comparing their routines to your adventures? Quite a few I would imagine.

Most people never get to do what you did, and you’ll have those experiences with you for the rest of your life. You did also purchase yourself stability in the form of a house, so you’ve set yourself up going forward.

It sounds like the issues surrounding the inheritance (and the loss itself) were very traumatic for you, and I wonder how much that has impacted, and is impacting, you. The money became intrinsically connected to that trauma, which can cast a dark pall over anything you have chosen/will choose to do with it. It represents your a time where your life went financially ‘right’, but was also emotionally devastated.

I’m going to assume that some relationships were damaged beyond repair, so could that be why you’re feeling deeply a lack of them?

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is depression resulting from some really shit circumstances that you’re still struggling to process.

It also might be why you decided to stay away for years longer than you intended to, and why you didn’t enjoy (or allow yourself to enjoy) your travels. It was better to keep running than to return to the shitshow you left behind.

Not quite the same. But my parents often talk about how they have given me my inheritance early. They say they like to give me money with a "warm hand" i.e. whilst they are alive. This has involved them paying for my mortgage and contributing to buying me my own property outright. Looking back they have actually just facilitated a situation whereby I can be in and out of work. This has led to me having a stagnant career over the last 2 decades. I feel like I would've made more of a success out of my work life if they hadn't thrown money at me. It's not been excessive amounts, but enough for me to lose touch with reality and coast along.

For some people inheriting young can be bad, too young to make wise decisions (though I don't think yours were that bad, yes you wasted some time but you still kept enough aside to buy a house so that's good). I worry about my DD, she's inheriting money as a child so she will have access to it when she's far too young to make sensible decisions and once she's 18 (possibly even younger, I haven't looked into the legal side of things fully yet) she'll be able to do what she wants with it. Its not a huge amount but its enough for a decent house deposit which would be the best use but what 18 year old would want to do that with a lump sum?