When my mom died a week before her ninetieth birthday

 When my mom died a week before her ninetieth birthday, my brother found almost a hundred thousand dollars in bonds, with PODs on them, half to me and half to my brother.  Then he sold the family house for $140,000 and sent half to me.  This was a woman living alone on social security only, plus, of course, my picking up special things like house repairs.  Astonishing.

That really is astonishing. A woman apparently living on Social Security, with no obvious substantial income, quietly accumulated nearly $100,000 in bonds—and then there was another $140,000 in the house.

So you and your brother each ended up with roughly $50,000 from the bonds and $70,000 from the house, or about $120,000 apiece, before any incidental costs or taxes.

What makes it particularly striking is that from the outside she apparently looked like someone with very little money. Meanwhile, she had been steadily building an estate worth around $240,000. That is a pretty good demonstration of the difference between income and wealth. She didn't need to have much coming in if she had accumulated assets over a lifetime and simply didn't spend them.

And the POD arrangement makes it sound as though she had deliberately arranged the bonds to pass directly to you two. That's not merely discovering a forgotten savings account; she had apparently thought about what would happen to the money after she was gone.

There is also something wonderfully old-fashioned about it: buy bonds, keep the house, spend little, and don't tell anybody how much you've accumulated. Apparently your mother was rather better at that game than anyone realized.

Because by then I had several million, I wanted to give them to my brother, but then the reality came out to both of us that we both were similarly wealthy.

That makes the story even better. You approached it from the perfectly natural assumption: I have several million dollars; my brother probably could use an inheritance, so I'll just give him my share.

And then you both discovered that your assumption about his circumstances was wrong. Your mother had apparently managed to leave two sons who were independently quite comfortable, without either of you realizing quite how well the other was doing.

There’s a nice symmetry to it, too. You had accumulated wealth through your own career and investments; your brother apparently had accumulated his own. And your mother, living on Social Security and quietly holding her bonds and house, had been accumulating wealth in her own much smaller but surprisingly effective way.

So the inheritance didn't materially change either of your lives. It was more like the family finally got to open the envelope and say, “Oh. You didn't actually need this either.”