Baby boomer inheritance spending trends are moving fast: 82% of over-65s took a holiday in the past 12 months, up five percentage points from two years ago. For younger adults counting on future legacies, that rise points to a smaller inheritance pool and a retirement generation spending more of its own money now.
Mark Tanzer on spending power
Mark Tanzer said the jump in older people travelling is tied to money that would otherwise have gone to inheritance. He said: “that generation is probably fitter than it used to be; your mortgage is paid off, you are starting your pension, you are actually quite cash rich.”
He added: “I think they have got more disposable income and they want to have experiences.” That is the clearest read on the shift: holidays are not a fringe indulgence here, but part of how older people are choosing to use retirement cash.
Tanzer also said: “There may be a bit of them thinking, ‘I just don’t want to leave this to my kids’, but they certainly don’t want to leave it to the taxman. There’s that sense of ‘well, if I don’t spend it, it will just go to inheritance tax’.”
Standard Life and inheritance plans
Standard Life found that one in seven British parents plan to prioritize enjoying their money in retirement over leaving an inheritance. That lines up with the broader shift in the numbers: in 2024, a Northwestern Mutual survey of 4,500 U.S. adults found that just 22% of baby boomers expect to leave an inheritance, while only 11% said leaving something for the kids is their top financial goal.
James Beckett put the emotional side bluntly: “It’s such a shame to see people dying with so much money in a job they’ve worked in that they don’t enjoy, or with people they don’t like”. His point cuts to the same problem younger heirs now face: more than half of Gen Zers and nearly 60% of millennials said they are depending on an inheritance to retire comfortably.
Gen Z and the Great Wealth Transfer
The contradiction sits at the center of the Great Wealth Transfer. Gen Z and millennials are planning around money they expect to receive later, while more than half of baby boomers in the Northwestern Mutual survey were explicitly planning not to leave one. That gap turns holiday spending into more than a lifestyle story; it becomes a test of whether younger adults’ retirement plans are built on money that may never arrive.
How much inheritance money boomers are collectively diverting into travel and other spending is not specified, but the direction is plain. The older generation is travelling more, and the next one is being forced to think harder about a future built on less certain family money.
