Develop Your Family Wealth Definition

According to Mark Haynes Daniell in “Strategy for the Wealthy Family”, family wealth is made up of a series of common and interdependent parts. He includes the following components.

Financial Wealth.

Use it to keep score, as a tool to meet a goal or create security and opportunity for future generations.

Integrity.

Development of integrity, family values, a work ethic, humility and respect for others fundamentally contributes to the family’s long term success.

Accomplishment.

Daniell indicates that we are what we do (or don’t do). Past family member accomplishments positioned today’s family even as current family member activities are building the future family legacy.

Physical security, health, and fitness.

Without safety, heath and emotional well being, all of the other components of wealth are worthless

Knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual growth.

Wealth, without the ability to acquire and understand facts and integrate them into use with spiritual and intellectual guidance from individual family members, ignores a fundamental aspect of human nature – the ability to think, reason and believe.

Family harmony.

Family conflict can be one of the greatest wealth killers. A supportive and united family that enjoys their interactions can be one of the greatest sources of happiness.

Individual happiness.

Families must allow their separate and individual members to pursue their individual happiness (what ever that is for them). Family wealth is not entirely defined in the aggregate, but also must be defined in terms of each individual current and future family members wealth.

Define what wealth means to your family.

Each family may have a different mix of the above components, with different emphasis on each. As you meet across the generations of your family, work towards an outcome of an agreed upon definition of your family’s wealth.

It seems essential to be able to vocalize, and formalize the family’s wealth definition, in order to move forward towards a long term plan to maintain and build the family wealth across generations.

The wealth definition may be used to guide the development of your family values and long term vision and mission.

Sources include:

Strategy for the Wealthy Family Seven Principles to Assure Riches to Riches Across Generations

by Mark Haynes Daniell copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons