A couple comes in for their annual review.

2.8 million dollars. Well invested. Solid retirement. Everything is going as planned.
I ask the same question I ask everyone.
"How is your daughter?"
Mom's face was the first to change.
Their daughter is 39 years old. She hasn't asked for anything. She's never complained.
But she's been living in the same apartment for six years.
Just childcare costs 1,800 dollars a month. The down payment seems impossible.
Dad said: "We always thought she'd make it eventually."
I pulled up a simple chart.
Statistically they live until 88. She inherits at 56. Maybe at 60.
At 60 years old, her retirement is eight years away.
The money that could change everything at 39 years old arrives when her goal is already in sight.
Neither of them had seen it laid out that way.
The annual gift tax exclusion is 19,000 dollars per parent per child.
They can transfer her 38,000 dollars a year. No gift taxes. No implications for the estate.
In ten years, that's a transfer of 380,000 dollars while they're healthy enough to see that it matters.
Dad looked at his wife.
"Why are we waiting?"
Most families leave everything when they die because nobody taught them to calculate the consequences of doing it in life.