Many wealthy families envision keeping a shared property in the family as a means of building family unity, harmony and legacy. A number of notable families have been successful at this, but many others find the reality creates the opposite of their intention.
Families that marry the strength of individualism with a more inclusive, long-term mindset can capture the best of both worlds. They can improve on a traditional foundation with diversified business interests and strategically populate affiliated ventures with members of the extended family.
One of the greatest concerns among wealthy parents is that the family’s great fortune might inadvertently lead to misfortune for their children. Raising responsible children in affluence is a life-long task requiring patience and persistence. Like learning to read, financial literacy is a process that is best started in early childhood. Teachable m...
While family businesses are playing an important role in the economy and studies have regularly shown that in the long-term they outperform other businesses, there is the continual challenge of succession to the next generation. An estate is built up over the generations and the family grows larger. This source of diversity is not without its chall...
Traditional wills involve what you want your loved ones to have. Ethical wills involve what you want your loved ones to know. This short article discusses how the ancient practice of crafting an ethical will is an essential piece of today’s multigenerational wealth planning.
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...