Over the years I have sat across from a lot of families who built something meaningful and wanted it to make a difference in the lives of the people they love. I have also watched good money land the wrong way. A couple works hard, builds something substantial, then holds onto it until the very end and passes it down the way they were taught to. Unfortunately, sometimes the money meant to launch their children and open doors for them lands more like a sedative, quietly draining the drive it was supposed to fuel. I have seen it catch good families off guard and realized the need to think this through.
I have been talking with my family about this question: Is money a trophy, or is it a tool? A trophy sits on a shelf and gets admired. It’s a scoreboard, proof of what you have done. Contrast that with a tool that gets picked up and put to work. Our culture tends to think of money as a trophy with the goal being “more”. When money is treated as a tool, the focus changes to the people using the tool and what is being built.
A Trophy Sits. A Tool Builds.
Treat what you have accumulated as a trophy, and the instinct is to guard it, polish it, and hand it over intact at the end. But a trophy handed over can only be admired. It arrives all at once, usually late, to children who are often in their sixties and already settled, where it can only enhance a life that is already built. Put that same wealth into the hands of those you love while you are still here to show them how to use it and while they are young enough for it to change their direction, and it becomes something entirely different.
Some of the most useful tools I have acquired over the course of my life were handed down to me from my parents and grandparents: an appreciation for hard work, the value of honesty, a care for others expressed through generosity, and the belief that a handshake still means something. They not only taught these things to me, but their simple willingness to live them out in front of me as I was developing from a child into a young man, has given me tools I am still building with today.
A Tool Is Only as Good as the Hands Holding It
Strange as it may sound from someone who does this for a living, I have come to care far more about the hands the money lands in than the amount of money that lands in those hands. Character is what turns money from a gift into a tool. Without it even a generous sum often does more harm than good. I have watched two different people receive nearly the same amount. The one who had already built real character put it to work and grew it into something that benefited the next generation. The other, who had never been required to build anything, ran through it in a few years and had nothing to show for it. What set them apart was never the amount. It was the hands that held it.
When it comes to our own children, Nicole and I would rather put tools in their hands now, while we can stand beside them and correct the grip, than leave everything in a glass case to be opened after we are gone. We will get parts of it wrong, but what is given early can be guided in its use. What is handed over at the very end cannot. The chance to be there and help may turn out to be the best part of it all.
You do not have to get it perfect. You only have to decide, while you are still here, whether what you pass on will sit on a shelf or get put to work.
What might change in your family if you passed on not only what you have built, but the opportunity to put it to work alongside you while you are still here to show them how?
I would love to think through this with you. Our team is here for exactly that kind of conversation. Reach out anytime.
*****
Read more From The Founder here.