Chelsea Logan was a month and a half away from her 21st birthday when her father died suddenly from a heart attack. As her family struggled to cope with the loss, she received another shock: Her father, a longtime federal government worker, had left her $167,000.
"To hear that amount at 20 years old is kind of mind-boggling," Logan, now 23, says.
Logan, a finance major at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., used the money to start her own business. "My inheritance has...