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The more you know about yourself, the better your relationships will be—including with money. In this issue, we celebrate two people who are harnessing their experiences and expertise to help others understand the emotional side of money. From a conversation with Jennifer Risher on breaking the money taboo, to Stan Treger, a behavioral scientist, using psychology to unpack money stories—this issue shows that exploring your relationship with money can be the first step to taking charge of your wealth.

Wealthy families have a significant positive socio-economic impact around the world, but lasting impact depends on those families prospering for generations. This is not guaranteed, however, and more intergenerational wealth transfers succeed if families adopt a modern Family Office model that suits their needs and goes beyond managing and growing the family’s financial capital over the long-term.

All parents have reasons for why they do or do not share their wealth with their children, and neither option is without challenges. The key for parents is to find the balance between sharing everything and sharing nothing while also passing along the skills required to ensure their children become responsible inheritors and/or beneficiaries. Here are some best practices for striking that balance without losing the opportunities that come with significant wealth.

At its core, a mission statement serves as a compass, continually steering an organization or business toward their goals. For the families who undertake the process of creating a mission statement, it provides a similar and essential navigational tool. To be successful, however, the mission statement must resonate and mean something to everyone in the family. It should ideally look inward to identify each family member’s personal values.

When setting up a family legacy plan that extends across generations, it’s vital to have a family governance plan that empowers a family to govern its wealth and enterprises as a cohesive unit. While each family is unique, the keys to incorporating an effective family governance will be uniting around shared purposes, having a written family constitution that sets forth broad principles and policies in areas that are identified by the family as needed, and keeping it separate from any operating business governance.

The current next-generation family members are changing the way families view wealth, no longer focusing on creating wealth for wealth’s sake.