Wealth of Wisdom

CHAPTER 52How to Balance Family Stability with Resilience over Generations

James Grubman

Financially successful families face many challenges within and across generations. Navigating these with a resilient, adaptive attitude is one of the strongest contributors to long-term family harmony and prosperity. How do families maintain both stability and resilience in the face of a rapidly changing world?

Keep in mind that the transition to wealth by the first generation is the initial challenge to be navigated in the family. There are myriad choices about how to spend or give, how to parent, and how to communicate in the midst of wealth. How these choices are handled will influence whether the second and third generations will be ready for adulthood. If the founding generation has been willing to weave together elements of their past and their present in flexible ways, the family will be well-suited to prepare the next generation and for wise decision-making within the family. On the other hand, parents too strongly wedded to the past or too quick to chase the pleasures of affluence will set the family on a path undermining the family's future.

As the rising generations of the family enter adulthood, those family members raised with wealth (the “natives” of wealth, compared to first-generation “immigrants” to wealth) will in turn influence the blending of the family's heritage with a willingness to adapt to changing conditions. This is the second major challenge for the family. ...