"but have any here thought about giving kids an inheritance early instead of after death? "

Many annual meetings ago, Charlie Munger chose to answer one of the "kid" questions about how to get rich. His answer, as I recall it, was to build the first $100k of capital to invest, invest it wisely, and let compounding do most of the work thereafter.

Another quote - from a magazine article, maybe a book - was to "Die Broke". The thrust of that article was to deploy your inheritance beyond living needs early when you could still see and enjoy the consequences on others lives.

So we've tried to combine the two.

I remember our early years of marriage when buying cars, raising a home down payment, saving for college, and saving thereafter was a constant challenge. I seemed to never have time to learn about investing - there were more urgent matters. It took decades of "working for a living" to accumulate enough capital to make any real money. Fortunately I figured out - with the help of many friends - to plow my capital into Berkshire, trusting Buffett. That's gone well.

So when our daughter came along, received her college education, and got married we decided to try to speed up their raising their investment capital. It wasn't done by gifting them a lump sum to do so. It was by helping with the first paid for cars, the home-down payments, etc.. In return, their job was to save and invest early, and get the compound machine going early in life. That's worked out well for our family, and they plan to do the same for their two children, now entering adulthood. An extra 7-10+ early years makes a big difference later in life.

They understood that if they weren't saving and investing, our game plan could change. They never took advantage of their early assistance to spend unwisely.

Different folks will have different approaches. This worked for us.