The Pari blog

It has been making loans for seven centuries under different names, in every culture that has had families and money. Where it came from, and why it is larger now than it has ever been.

The median first-time buyer has aged more than a decade since the 1980s, and family money has quietly become a normal part of the down payment rather than an exception.

Education, a first home, childcare, a business. The expensive part of a life arrives decades before the money to pay for it does, and that gap is where family lending lives.

The annual exclusion holds at $19,000 and the lifetime exemption jumps to $15 million per person. Here is how that shifts the decision between gifting and lending.

Tens of trillions of dollars are about to change hands between generations. Whether that wealth compounds or leaks depends on how it moves.

Roughly 80% of assets walk out the door when they pass to the next generation. The fix starts years earlier.

Both transfer wealth to the next generation. They have very different tax and control profiles.

The Applicable Federal Rate is the minimum interest a family loan should charge to stay clean with the IRS.

An undocumented loan can be recharacterized as a gift. Documentation is what protects the whole arrangement.

If informal family loans are happening anyway, helping structure them is squarely in the client's interest.

Well-meant financial help can create dependency. Structure is what turns a handout into a hand up.

Loans are not a sideshow to the estate plan - they can be one of its most flexible instruments.

Pairing a loan with an intentionally defective grantor trust is a classic wealth-transfer technique. Here's the shape of it.

The biggest downside of a family loan isn't the money. It's the dinner-table tension when things get awkward.

Credit scores look backward. Open banking lets families underwrite on what's actually happening now.

The heirs you've never met are your biggest retention risk. Family lending is a way to change that.

Annual exclusions, lifetime exemptions, and how forgiveness interacts with both.

Some of the wealthiest families run an internal bank. The idea is more accessible than it sounds.

A practical framework for keeping capital and clients through the transfer.

Parents can be the mortgage lender - often to everyone's benefit.

Forgiveness is a feature, not a failure - if it's done deliberately.

The money is already moving. The opportunity is to bring it into the advice relationship.

Wealth that lasts isn't just transferred - it's taught.