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Taking time to tell family stories, and finding interesting ways to record them for subsequent generations, can serve as a foundation for family members to bond and identify with each other. Stories can engender in family members an appreciation for their own unique “differentness” of identity from those outside of the family. This shared sense of ...

There is the age old stigma that wealth can bring or buy happiness. But, we hear it time and time again: money doesn’t buy happiness. The lack thereof may create unhappiness, but the presence of wealth does not necessarily have the opposite effect. Wealth does not create happiness nor does it provide the meaning of life. It may provide opport...

Putting together an “operating” succession plan is just one step in the business succession process. The rubber really meets the road in its execution and when the operating leadership is successfully transitioned. In a perfect world the management transition is planned and occurs over time. However, when the CEO or businesses owner une...

Are you doing everything you can to sustain your family relationships and your wealth? This study provides a look at the 15 best practices that 192 members of the world's most successful multi-generational families - members of Family Office Exchange and the Family Business Network - rely on and view as important for the future. A copy of the surve...

With the world changing so quickly, the role of the family as a bulwark of stability and support becomes increasingly important. In response to this growing educational need, Family Office Exchange in 1998 formed the FOX Foundation. Operating as the Family Learning Center, the Foundation will serve as a resource to facilitate all aspects of "famil...

Financial families who have accumulated great wealth face unique challenges associated with passing that wealth productively to future generations, and/or philanthropic recipients. Being invested together in multiple financial and business opportunities requires a sophisticated structure for managing the family’s financial enterprise.

Educating the children of wealthy families can be an extremely difficult challenge. Today, more and more family offices are recognizing the compelling need to assist in the effort to educate heirs.

“I’m not the only rich kid worried about the voodoo of inherited wealth.” With these words, 21-year-old Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, set out to record his peers’ angst over coming into vast inheritances.

Continuity planning requires a comprehensive and thoughtful process that should be utilized and extended beyond the family to a broader group of enterprises that will potentially impact the family for generations to come, including the family office, family business, and family foundation.

One of the most important aspects of a family’s legacy planning can be philanthropy. Family philanthropy can be thought of as the organized charitable giving by several members of a family to achieve a unified goal. It is more than the annual giving of one individual or married couple, though such giving is critically important in its own right. P...

One tradition that some FOX members take quite seriously is that of documenting their family’s, company’s and even family office’s history. To assist other FOX members who haven’t yet decided upon the best means of accomplishing this challenge, we talked with two family group, the Richardson Family and the Laird Norton Family, who have done an extr...

The senior generation of a financial family usually has some notion of when and what to tell the next generation about the family finances. This is typically based on the family goals and family philosophy on how to reach those goals. For example, if parents are concerned that their offspring will fail to become productive members of society if all...

Family Office Exchange LLC is often asked about resources that are available to teach basic concepts in money and finance. In response, we've researched some of the best Internet resources available.

Leadership succession and governance are important issues for every financial family. However, these issues are especially complex for business-owning families. To explore succession from an expert perspective, FOX spoke with Kelin Gersick, co-founder and senior partner of Lansberg, Gersick & Associates, a consulting and research firm specializing ...

Selling the family-owned business is one of the most important financial decisions and transactions that any family will face. Business owners, their children and grandchildren will live with the results for a long time to come. Getting it right is important to maximize family wealth, and some basic advance planning — even several years in advance ...