I had dinner with Don Palmer and Doug Wilson in Indianapolis this week and we were talking about the many conversations we have had with friends about the danger of leaving wealth to children only to ruin them.  It started me thinking about the way we define wealth today compared to 100 years ago.

Today wealth is almost synonymous with money and other financial assets.  One hundred years ago it would have typically been the family farm.  Leaving that wealth to the children was the plan and there was little thought about “ruining” them in leaving wealth to them.  What was different?  Parents started the children out early in their lives with a sense of responsibility.  They had chores when they were young.  They had animals to care for – not just pets.  They had associations with others living on farms through FFA and 4-H clubs.  As they grew up they had genuine ownership of the wealth.  They had responsibility for it.  They knew everything about it their whole lives and they were prepared to inherit it.

Not so today.  We isolate children from the responsibilities and “chores” of wealth.  There are no official clubs and associations for them to learn about wealth.  They associate through private schools, summer camps and family vacations with others from wealthy families but they don’t learn about the “work” as they would have on a farm.  Wealth is not tangible to them. It is a lifestyle.  They don’t see or feed or plow it or contribute their labor to it. They are separated from it for the most part.  They are the beneficiaries of it but not connected to it and so inheriting it becomes a completely different issue.  Many of our children have no way of knowing how to care for the wealth they inherit and so we worry about their being ruined by it. We didn’t worry about being ruined by the family farm because we were brought up and trained all our lives to inherit it.

What if we did the same now?  What if we included our children in the care of wealth from early in their lives? Perhaps we might see fewer parents talking about the fear of ruining their children and more having the joy of their children inheriting what they had been grown to care for.