How an expected inheritance can play a role in your life’s financial plan

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Nobody wants to think about the demise of their parents or loved ones, least of all in so crude a set of terms as money. But for many middle class and upper middle class families in Pakistan, the family assets – which can often revolve around real estate – can be an important set of assets to consider in one’s personal financial planning. 

In order to remove all ill-consideration with respect to inheritance, the SmartRupee model does not require any data about inheritance, and it allows people to enter zero values. It also assumes that one’s expected inheritance plays a role only in the most far-out financial need most people have: their retirement. That way, one need not be reliant on receiving an inheritance before a specific time in order to meet their financial goals. 

Our model starts by asking for an estimate of how much your expected share of your family inheritance is, and we explicitly ask you to exclude any assets that may be subject to a dispute. It is best not to count on such assets being available to you if you expect a legal dispute. Only include your share of assets in which you have an undisputed claim, and which will not be contested. 

Also, be sure to only include your share of the current value of the expected assets. Do not include the total value of the assets. 

Our model also asks you to exclude any family home that will not be available for sale (either because you or any of your relatives will want to keep it) and also exclude the value of any family jewelry that has sentimental value and will never be available for sale. 

In other words, only add undisputed assets, only add your share, and only add things you would be able and willing to sell. Leave everything else out of these calculations. 

Once you have determined how much you expect to inherit undisputed and sellable, add the values based on asset class. We expect real estate will be the biggest portion for most people, but for some it could be other types of assets. 

Why do we ask for these assets to be broken out this way? Because each of these assets have different returns characteristics, and we expect you to not have control over them until you are already retired yourself. That means that if we want to get an estimate of the value you will inherit (which we assume will not be before retirement), we need to know what the average rate of expected return will be, for which we need the break out by asset class. 

We simply grow these asset value by the average rates of return for each asset class, and then deduct the amount from the amount you need to save for retirement before calculating how much you need to save. 

For many people, expected inheritances can make a big difference in how much they need to save for retirement, so if you have undisputed claim to inherited assets that can be sold, it may make sense for you to include them in this calculation. 

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