Why do families often fail to live successfully with success?
Many family members who have inherited financial wealth have no concept of how difficult it is to create, and often their experience of the wealth creator was a negative. Also, these later-generation family members are rarely motivated by the same emotions that fueled the first generation creators. In order to preserve the family’s wealth, these latergenerations must understand that wealth preservation is a dynamic, not a static, process and that each generation of the family must become a new first generation – a wealth creating generation.
In Family Wealth, James Hughes points out that “the issue most critical to the failure of a family to preserve its wealth is its concentration on the family’s financial capital to the exclusion of its human and intellectual capital.” At Family Wealth Practices, one of our three main pillars that form the basis of our calling is education and mentoring. It is our opinion that the key to successfully living with success is living a life that exhibits a combination of: 1) stewardship – a belief that what you have is not actually yours but is held in trust for the good of all humanity; and 2) humility – honestly assessing our self in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness. We have also found that those who have learned to live successfully with success typically have the following five characteristics in that they:
- Work hard with great perseverance and determination
- Study continuously
- Give wisely
- Walk in humility
- Love well
A well designed education and mentoring plan will focus on these truths and seek to impart them in every generation it serves.