{"id":532179,"date":"2026-04-15T12:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T12:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532179\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T12:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T12:45:11","slug":"what-this-50-year-old-plans-to-do-with-a-333000-inheritance-from-her-very-frugal-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532179\/","title":{"rendered":"What this 50-year-old plans to do with a $333,000 inheritance from her very frugal mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Sources: Getty Images<\/p>\n

The beneficiary: Married without children, \u201cSandra\u201d is a 50-year-old data analyst in Winnipeg. She\u2019s the eldest of three children raised by her single mother, now 88, who\u2019s been in and out of hospital for the last few years. \u201cThe cycle seems to be getting shorter and shorter,\u201d says Sandra, meaning the three siblings are currently working overtime to manage their mother\u2019s rapidly failing health. <\/p>\n

\u201cConstant, ongoing pressure,\u201d she says, has made recent years \u201cabsolutely the biggest stress of my life.\u201d As she prepares for the inevitable, Sandra\u2019s thinking a lot about what a well-lived life looks like to her. <\/p>\n

The inheritance: Long before her health declined, Sandra\u2019s wise mother put all her financial affairs in order \u2013 including a will, power of attorney, personal directive, funeral plans (all prepaid) and her chosen executor \u2013 Sandra. She will be responsible for distributing an estate worth seven figures, saved one dollar at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom didn\u2019t come from money and was not a high earner or a savvy investor; she\u2019s just of that generation where everything was scarce and she held onto every dollar,\u201d says Sandra. Upon her passing, Sandra is set to receive a third of the total inheritance, amounting to about $333,000. <\/p>\n

What this 85-year-old, seven-time executor can teach you about carrying out wills<\/a><\/p>\n

What she learned: Albeit not by choice, Sandra is enjoying a mid-life \u201cdouble income, no kids\u201d situation \u2013 an entirely different financial situation from her mother\u2019s. \u201cMy mom was born in the 1940s when everything was scarce, and that mentality never went away,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Her mother worked as a nurse and raised three children without financial support from her long-deceased ex-husband. When the siblings recently cleaned out her home, they found deep-freezers stocked with decades-old food. \u201cThat kind of saving, to me, represents a deep psychological trauma and a need for security that I\u2019ll never understand.\u201d <\/p>\n

For the record, Sandra and her siblings tried to loosen that scarcity mindset. \u201cWhen she was mobile and healthy, we tried to convince her to travel and meet like-minded seniors and spend her money being social, but she flatly refused.\u201d (Easier to accept than unrealized bucket-list regrets, admits Sandra.) <\/p>\n

In contrast, Sandra is comparatively well-off, she owns her home and spends comfortably. She doesn\u2019t need the inheritance. \u201cI have a deep appreciation of how long this took her to save and how quickly I could spend it if I\u2019m not careful.\u201d A new car, a few swanky vacations and a home renovation would quickly blow through what could be expendable income, but not for Sandra, whose inheritance \u201cactually feels like a big responsibility and very heavy in terms of expectations.\u201d <\/p>\n

How this \u2018bossy\u2019 sister is making sure the kids get their piece of her father\u2019s estate<\/a><\/p>\n

What she\u2019ll do with it: Initially, nothing. \u201cI\u2019ve decided that I\u2019m first going to take a cooling-off period of at least a year to make sure I\u2019m clear-headed,\u201d says Sandra. In the meantime, she plans to invest the funds in a non-registered account to generate interest and dividends.<\/p>\n

Sandra plans to let her mother\u2019s invested money be the (untouched) principal while she guiltlessly enjoys the interest it accrues \u2013 ultimately landing right in the middle of frugal and frivolous. \u201cOn one hand, my mom taught me I should save money and would prefer I don\u2019t spend any of it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut on the other, she showed me that the time for living is now. Today is the youngest you\u2019re ever going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a new appreciation for financial security and good health while she has it, Sandra\u2019s eyeballing something like retirement \u2013 provided it has meaning. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019d call it \u2018retirement,\u2019\u201d she says, \u201cbut I might call it \u2018career transition.\u2019\u201d Coaching, teaching or a joy-driven business are all possibilities. Travel is also on her list \u2013 Japan is at the very top, while she can still climb the temple stairs. <\/p>\n

Some details may be changed to protect the privacy of the person profiled. Have you recently received an inheritance and would like to participate in Inherited? Send us an e-mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Sources: Getty Images The beneficiary: Married…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,11749,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-532179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-personalfinance","12":"tag-r-fp","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}