FAMILY WEALTH BUILDING

1. What is Family Wealth Building?
2. Time is on your side
3. For peace of mind
4. Helps your heirs

1. What is Family Wealth Building?

Family Wealth is comprised of money and time. Wealth Building is a three step process. Where you start depends on your age and whether you have children. Assume:
(a) you have living children and
that you are the family member managing investments,
(b) you have reduced all
debts that are not tax deductible, and
(c) that current family income is greater than current family expenses.

A. Assess what your family most loves doing and having. I mean both the nonmaterial enjoyments as well as the material things. For example, a. down hill skiing, b. two week vacation to a warm climate, c. music collection, and d. comforts at home. With each item, indicate the approximate time the experience takes and the rough range of cost of the experience or material item.

B. Photocopy that list and give one to each family member. Ask them to add ones you left out. And have them more or less prioritize the items. Take the revised lists and either put them on a ledger or a spreadsheet with categories of time, cost, relative importance for each family member. Use that to arrive at your own assessment: How much of what the family wants in common requires money and how much requires free time. What trade offs, if any, in time and money are there at this moment? Do you find examples where the children do or obtain what they desire on their own? (For example, work some of vacations at a ski resort, swap or trade music collection items, etc.) Is there a greater need for time than you realized?

C. You can now define the amount of material wealth building that is necessary for your family doing and having what it most loves. Now consider the approximate time frame for the major expenses, say five collectively highest priory family items. If you will e-mail me the five amounts in dollars you figure you need and five future years when you need those amounts I will send you by return e-mail the calculations of investment and return you need to meet that level of family wealth building. It's that simple.
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2. Time is on your side

"In time, we are all dead." That saying, grim and perhaps upsetting, may mask that we all do lose power and control as we age. For our purposes here, I'll assume that you have been going through life's implicit requirements for some form of spiritual development and "ownership" of your personal nonsense and troubles and troublesomeness.

In addition to your spirit, one thing can keep you in charge of your life in the modern world and that is to (1) take a look at the three assumptions I mention above. These keep the passage of time from eroding your income and assets. By taking a look at my A,B,C's for Family Wealth Building, see for yourself how you follow those rules. If you can do that, you essentially put time on your side.
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3. Family Wealth Building for peace of mind

Family Wealth Building may ease tensions and concerns about money because once you go through the process of discerning what is important to each family member, and add their priorities to the whole family's list of what you love to do and/or have, each person has a voice. And when they have a voice, they have ownership. And when you have clarity about these matters you are better able to lead which includes your knowledge, values, your personal strengths that in the absence of clarity may go untapped.
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4. Family wealth building helps your heirs

Family Wealth Building helps one's heirs in more than the obvious way of giving them some wealth. What are you saying when you leave your offspring Exxon stock and a run down apartment house somewhere? What are you saying when you leave ethical stocks that benefit the environment and human beings even as you are departed? When you die, your legacy may include your accomplishments, the time and love you gave to others, your material estate, and who you are as seen by the many survivors. If you say that does not matter, fine. But if you want to have an impact on the lifelong values and decisions of others, then what you built and how you built it may mean a great deal compared to the sheer size of what you left.
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