Having expectations for your stuff beyond the grave is definitely a source of suffering. That is one advantage of selling one's house and converting that to a number on the page that can used for care or inherited by your heirs. On the other hand, I still resent my brother for selling my parents' house very cheaply and daydream sometimes about buying it back.

With this place, I doubt it will be our last place, and we owe money on it. If it were paid for, that would be another kettle of fish. My aunt was big on passing individual properties to her children and gave one my grandmother's house and one my great aunt's house. The sons got a rental property and the other the family home. So she assembled four properties, one for each child, which I thought was very cool and one way to go. But I can't afford to assemble four properties. If we died tomorrow, the kids would have to sell this place and pay off the mortgage and split anything, unless I write some will leaving this house to the more local kids, who really like the house, and then leave money to the other kids. But is that fair?

And what to do if you have one really popular property that everyone wants, but it is your significant asset and you might need the money to care for yourself? At 11000 a month for memory care, you can go through a lifetime of savings very quickly, including the value of the house you've managed to pay off.

Back to the idea of what is being wealthy, to me it would be having enough that each of my kids could get left a paid for property they could live in. But that's not going to happen. So in my own mental schema, I'm not wealthy, and am just concentrating on having enough to meet my needs and look out for my husband and kids.