$100,000 at 30 or 60?
Would $100,000 make a bigger difference to your children at 30 or at 60?
It's the same $100,000.
But I suspect for many people, the impact could be very different.
At 30, it might help with a first home, starting a family, or simply getting established financially.
At 60, they may already own a home, have substantial super and be approaching retirement themselves.
It got me thinking about the way we often approach helping our children financially.
We tend to think about how much we'll eventually leave them.
But perhaps there's another question that's just as important:
When could our help make the biggest difference to their lives?
Of course, that doesn't mean we should start giving money away before we're financially secure ourselves.
But once we have confidence that our own future is taken care of, there may be a point where helping our children earlier has more impact than leaving them a larger inheritance decades later.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be $100,000.
It might be helping with a home deposit, education, or giving them some financial breathing room at an important stage of their lives.
I think the broader point is that when it comes to helping our children, how much we give is only part of the question.
When we give it can matter just as much.