Guides
Gifting to family without straining your own retirement
Helping children with deposits or school fees is generous — and risky if it leaves your own later-life income thin.
Inheritance tax planning often starts with gifts. The annual exemption, small gifts from income, and potentially exempt transfers after seven years are familiar ideas. What is less discussed is whether the giver can still fund a thirty-year retirement after the money leaves the account.
Before approving a large gift, we run a simple cash-flow: essential spending, State Pension, private pensions, and a buffer for care or home repairs. If the gift forces earlier drawdown from investments, the long-term cost can exceed the headline amount given.
Gifts from surplus income — for example regular support that does not touch capital — can be effective for estate planning when carefully documented. Gifts that empty emergency cash or raid a pension pot usually need a harder look.
Our inheritance and estate planning advice ends with a note you can share with a solicitor, including what we recommend leaving untouched. Generosity and prudence can sit together when the numbers are on the table first.