Kids, Wealth, and Consequences: Ensuring a Responsible Financial Future for the Next Generation

Foreword

Richard Morris and Jayne Pearl have taken on a large task. They start with some key questions. How can parents raise their children so that they can successfully integrate into their lives the financial wealth their parents, or an earlier generation, created? How can the children of these parents learn to bring their own dreams to life, rather than be drained of dreams by stewarding the dreams of others? How can these children become self-confident and balanced, with appropriate humility? How will these children learn to distinguish between inheritances that cause entropy and lack of wellness and those that can enhance their happiness?

Morris and Pearl offer us, as parents and grandparents of children and grandchildren who will inherit financial wealth, the questions we seek in the hope that our heirs' lives will be enhanced, not depreciated, by their inheritance. Their questions to us are frank, yet their meanings can be subtle. I found, as I pondered these questions, that the longer I thought about them, the more valuable my answers became. But I also found that in reviewing my answers hours later, after absorbing Morris and Pearl's wisdom and compassion about human behavior, my answers often were very different. Please know you are likely to be quite surprised by the courage you will need to answer these questions with the whole truth about your views and actions. As you uncover that second set of answers, you may also feel somewhat diminished by how you've handled some ...