Books

Strategy for the Wealthy Family – Seven Principles to Assure Riches to Riches Across Generations by Mark Haynes Daniell, copyright 2008, published by John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd.

This is the book that caused us to build Family Money Values. In it Daniell provides a look into the organizations, methods and techniques that wealthy families use to attempt to keep their family fortunes together across multiple generations. He specifies elements – such as how to organize the family and what it’s leadership entails – to get to the strategy. He describes four categories of wealth and defines things that may or may not apply to each category. His concepts and suggestions are based on his dealings with his own wealthy clients.

The M Word – The Money Talk every family needs to have about wealth and their financial future

The author digs deep into things that make the family money talk go wrong and tells how to right them through story and fact. Read this book before your next family meeting!

Preparing Heirs- Five Steps to a Successful Transition of Family Wealth and Values by Roy Williams & Vic Preisser, copyright 2003 ,published by Robert D. Reed Publishers

The authors analyze the size of potential wealth transfers in the coming years, the criteria for being considered successful in transitioning the wealth, the problems encountered in transferring the wealth and steps you can take to be one of the successful families. The breakdown on problems they give is that 60% were due to lack of trust and communication between generations; 25% by not adequately preparing heirs and 15% for all other causes (including taxes, legal issues and etc). The authors present you with questions to ask to assess your plans for transfer; measuring heir readiness; ways for the heirs to prepare themselves and methods to continue and evaluate your heir preparation activities.

Family Wealth, Keeping It in the Family by James E. Hughes Jr. offers theory, practical tips and examples on what can be done to keep a family’s wealth together across generations. His main theory is that retaining family wealth centers on building the intellectual and human capacity of each family member so that each can find their own pursuit of happiness. He offers ideas on: techniques to define a 100 year family mission; uses of family rituals to enhance passages from one stage of life to the next; why investor allocation across generations of family members is important and uses of a family bank. He also discusses roles and responsibilities of beneficiaries vs. trustees and defines a method of family governance. Our opinion, a worthwhile read. Some content is geared towards multi million dollar families, but most can be applied to any affluent family.

Navigating the Dark Side of Wealth – A Life Guide for Inheritors by Thayer Cheatham Willis was written by an ‘insider’ – a child of a wealthy family. As promised, she discusses bad things that can happen to people who have unearned wealth (inheritors, lottery winners, children of wealthy parents, etc). Some of these bad things include: remittance addiction (being dependant on the money source); guilt (why am I rich and others aren’t); lack of purpose (why work, I already have money); feelings of entitlement (the world owes me the best of the best); loss of feelings of self worth and inability to trust in relationships. As a certified counselor, she offers solutions to her wealthy readers for these issues. She frequently sprinkles examples of stories into her narrative – from her social work sessions with rich clientele.

The Official Filthy Rich Handbook by Christopher Tennant

This tongue in cheek book tells all about how the really rich folks live – what they buy, where their houses (and second houses and third houses) are, what they wear, the cars they drive, the yachts they have, where to get a nanny, and where to send your kids to school (boarding of course). It has a guide for household help, explaining for the new rich, what the various positions are and how they related to each other. It tells what diseases the rich suffer and where they go for treatment. It’s a great read and you learn things about wealth lifestyles you never thought you needed to know!

Silver Spoon Kids – How Successful Parents Raise Responsible Children by Eileen Gallo, P.H.D. And Jon Gallo, J.D.

The authors combine their talents in law and psychology to bring us a great resource on raising kids in an affluent world. Whether

you have money or not, if you live in America, the message of affluence is all around your children. This book explains how to identify and define your own money story and personality using tools and question to define your money acquisition, use and management tenancies so that you can be aware of how you tend to interact with your kids about money. Theoretical concepts of five stages in child development set the framework for a chapter on talking with your kids about money at different ages. Allowances, ways to expose your child to diverse lifestyles, philanthropy and parenting in today’s world of blended families and more are all covered. This is a comprehensive book, an easy read and covers some points not typically covered in child rearing books.

Estate Planning for the Healthy Wealthy Family – How to Promote Family Harmony, Affirm Your Values, and Protect your Assets by Stanley D. Neeleman, J.D. Carla B. Garrity, PH.D and Mitchell A. Baris, PH.D. Copyright 2003, published by Allworth Press

Have you gone through the motions of drawing up a will, creating a revokable living trust, establishing powers of attorney and other estate planning tasks, but still feel that something is missing?

If so, then this book may be for you. It is a fairly easy read divided into three main parts: 1) information and discussion about money, values, happiness and modeling your family values to your children; 2) basic and advanced estate planning terms and tools and 3) dangers involved in asset transfer.

Young Bucks – How to Raise a Future Millionaire by Troy Dunn.

The book has some practical and age specific advice on how to assess your child’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can pre-think some ideas to suggest (if needed) to your child on what kinds of money making stuff they can do.

His very first prerequisite however, is that you give your child the “gift of want”. They must have a reason to pursue entrepreneurial activities. If they really want something badly, they will be more likely to get started with a business.

He leads you the reader/parent through the various steps that you can take to assist (but not overwhelm) your child in deciding on, researching and setting up a business. He shows you how to tie key business concepts (such as marketing, pricing, location, etc) into your activities with your budding entrepreneur.

Children of Paradise – Successful Parenting for Prosperous Families by Lee Hausner, Ph.D., copyright 1990, published by Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.

Hausner identifies the challenges in raising children of affluence, but presents sound parenting techniques that can be used by parents of any means. She covers developing your child’s esteem, the importance of parents directly spending time with their children, motivating (as opposed to forcing success) a child to succeed; the importance of letting your child develop their own competencies and ways that parents or other caregivers can interfere with that development; learning how to listen and talk with your children – so they will listen and talk with you; brat proofing; disciplining and learning the value of money are also covered. In all, she provides specific techniques, along with the reasons they should be used.

The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class by Keith Cameron Smith, copyright 2007, published by Ballantine Books

Unlike The Millionaire Next Door, this book has no statistics or collected facts. It is an inspirational book by a young man who teaches financial success principles to individuals and companies around the USA. What are the Top 10 Distinctions? Think long term; talk about ideas; embrace change; take calculated risks; keep learning and growing; work for profits; give; have multiple sources of income; focus on net worth increases; and ask empowering questions.

The Millionaire Next Door – The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealth by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. And William D. Danko, Ph.D., copyright 1996, published by Pocket Books

Based on personal and focus group interviews of more than 500 millionaires and surveys of more than eleven thousand high net worth or high income responders, this classic book is full of facts and figures about the characteristics and traits of Americas millionaires – including 7 differentiating factors.

Richistan A Journey Through The American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich by Robert Frank, copyright 2007, published by Crown Publishers

Frank examines the characteristics and lifestyles of these recently rich people. He examines the services they use (such as butlers); ways they made their money (such as public storage, beanie babies, Yankee Candles and potatoes); ways they lost their money (such as dot com crashes and spendthrift spouses); how they spend the money (on bigger and bigger things– yachts, houses, planes and properties); how they are changing the landscape of philanthropy (applying business metrics to measure success in giving) and destroying the rules in old boy rich clubs and activities (inviting the ‘wrong’ people to charity balls or being ostentatious).

He tells stories of how the Richistanis intentionally band together to impact political elections and gives the reader a view into discussions that happen in Richistani support groups – set up to help each other deal with their own wealth and the changes in their lifestyles it has brought.

Through it all, Frank provides actual names of living Richistanis with real examples from each of their lives.

The Golden Ghetto by Jessie H. O’Neill, copyright 1997, published by Stanton Publication Services, Inc.

O’Neill, a psychotherapist and heir to the General Motors money compares children growing up in wealthy homes to those growing up in the ghetto. She claims that a ghetto is a place where a group of people are isolated from others and that this is also what happens to the wealthy. Both groups form protective barriers around parts of their area. Both groups are subject to having limitations imposed by the isolation causing stagnation, dis-empowerment and hopelessness.

She discusses addiction to money and dysfunctions caused by money. She points out the bad side of the family wealth founder “The addictive, medicating quality of money is particularly visible in, and strengthened by, the hectic lifestyle of the Family Founder, the person who makes the original fortune.” p 62. She quotes Collier and Horowitz (The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty) when they say that inheritors pay a ‘life-time debt of service to the wealth itself’.

Overall she presents a negative and somewhat problematic picture of people who establish family wealth. She also covers the ‘hidden’ legacy of wealth – empty childhoods, family turmoil and expectations – as being different that those of non-wealthy children and families. After describing the myriad problems she sees in wealthy families, she offers a single chapter on healing the woes.

O’Neill has an interesting and thought provoking approach to being wealthy and raising healthy well adjusted children in wealthy circumstances.

The Survival Guide for Business Families by Gerald Le Van, copyright 1999, published by Routledge

Le Van frames this book on the issues, challenges and responsibilities of a family businesses around 39 ‘critical’ questions. He uses a make believe family called the JacMars to illustrate the concepts he covers in the books. The 39 questions are woven into discussions of the stage of growth the business is in; family relationship dimensions affecting the functioning of the business;

characteristics and leadership styles of the current leaders and all possible successors; relationships between fathers and sons and fathers and daughters; keeping or selling the business; who will be allowed to work in the business and how are they prepared for it; raising wealthy offspring; succession issues; family vs. non-family shareowners; addressing business vs personal needs; making family decisions using a family council; treatment of non-family employees; and community and public image ideas.

Families, Money and Trouble by Gerald Le Van, copyright, 2003, published by Xlibris

This book views the ups and downs of the imaginary JacMar family through the eyes of a business consultant. The story is a continuation of the JacMar family introduced as a first generation business in The Survival Guide for Business Families. Not having a family business, we found the book to be somewhat boring. We were hoping for an occasional ‘lesson’ – stated outright by the author but didn’t get many.

Raising Rich Kids by Gerald Le Van, copyright 2003, published by Xlibris

In this book, Le Van again tries to tell a story using fictional characters. This time they are adults who have been re-united with their kids at a summer camp they attended as children. In it, Le Van tries to explore some of the issues that wealthy parents have (due to the wealth) in raising their children. Some of the lessons Le Van tried to memorialize seemed a bit obtuse to us.

Family Legacy and Leadership – Preserving True Family Wealth in Challenging Times by Mark Haynes Daniell and Sara S. Hamilton, copyright 2010, published by Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd.

Imagine that your new business is a huge success and you sell it for 50 million dollars, or you write a series of best selling books that earn royalties for you each year of 5 million dollars, or that you actually win the mega millions lottery! On a more mundane level, imagine that you work hard, save your money, invest it well and end up being a multimillionaire.

What does all that money mean for your family? What will your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren do when they get it (if they get it)? Do you want it to provide a way for the family to create a legacy, develop a plan to make that wealth work for them for a long time, and be better as a united family than as individual family units? How do you make that happen?

Daniell and Hamilton address these questions in Family Legacy and Leadership. In their words: “United, fully engaged, and well led, legacy families can create something together that is far greater than anything they could accomplish, or could be, on their own.” p234

The Middle-Class Millionaire The Rise of the New Rich and How They Are Changing America by Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff copyright 2008 published by Doubleday a division of Random House, Inc New York

The author’s theorize (based on a survey) that there is a group of people with middle class values but with more than middle class amounts of money (Middle-Class Millionaires).

Middle-Class Millionaires are defined as those with net worth between 1 million and 10 million including their primary house and having made the wealth themselves. Middle class members, on the other hand,  are defined in the book as: heads of households with annual household incomes between 50k and 80k and a net worth under 1 million.

Prince and Schiff compare and contrast the traits of the two groups throughout the book, with quite a bit of focus on how the Millionaire group is leading the way on new products and services that the middle-class then adopts. They discuss Millionaire traits of hard work, networking, persistence and focus on money – all traits of the middle class, but enacted by the Millionaires in a different way.

Rich Dad Poor Dad – what the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter, CPA published by Warner Business Books copyright 1998

Kiyosaki and Lechter combine forces to give the reader a motivational view into differences in child rearing between the rich and the middle class.

In this iconic book, his real Dad (the Poor Dad) is a college instructor, living a middle class life. His real Dad encourages Richard to study hard, make good grades, go to college and get a nice professional job. In the book, his Rich Dad is his best friend’s Dad. The Rich Dad is a business owner who encourages both boys to learn how to make money via business endeavors.

The authors present several ‘lessons’, such as don’t work to earn, work to learn; use the money you already have instead of spending more time on another job to get more money; use business structures to derive tax efficiency for your operation (pay taxes on the net income, not the gross) and; profit is made when you buy, not when you sell.

Rich Dad Poor Dad – For Teens – the secrets of money they don’t teach you about in school by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter, C.P.A., copyright 2004, published by Warner Books and Little Brown and Company

This is yet another book in which Kiyosaki and Lechter expound the virtues of thinking outside the salary box and getting to passive income. This one is geared to, surprise surprise, teens.

The author’s begin by reassuring the teens that they are smart, using a few tools (like a quiz) to help the reader define what they are good at. They go on to suggest that the teens focus on money (learning, reading, tracking their allowance, deciding what they want and etc). They point out that the people you spend your time with are big factors in determining what your future will be.

Kiyosaki gives (potentially theoretical) examples from his own life to illustrate points such as how working to learn instead of earn can be better in the long run. The idea of asking empowering questions is also covered – such as turning the sentence “I can’t afford the things I want” around to be “How can I afford the things I want?”

Second Edition of Retire Secure! Pay taxes Later The key to making your money last by James Lange CPA/Attorney, copyright 2009, published by John Wiley & Sons

James Lange, CPA and attorney strongly believes in taking full advantage of any tax deferred savings/investing opportunities. He shares his proven techniques in this book.

He provides tax reduction strategies, such as a) contribute the max to your retirement plans b) spend after tax money first c) pay taxes later d) favor Roth’s over non-Roths and let your retirement accounts continue to accumulate as long as possible. He covers methods to stretch the benefits of your tax free retirement funds for multiple generations and gives the reader in depth financial comparisons of different savings and investment techniques.

It is a great resource, especially for detail oriented, do it your self investors!

Born RICH – a documentary DVD by Jamie Johnson

This heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune has gone against the culture of the legacy rich by openly interviewing his own peers about their money, inheritances and lifestyles. The young (twenty something) heirs candidly discuss the lifestyle, challenges and privileges of being ‘born rich’. The DVD runs for about 80 minutes and includes heirs from the media (Newhouse), real estate (Trump), gaming industry (Weill), textile industry (Franchetti), finance (Ercklentz), sports (Floyd), supermarket (A& P Hartford) and European royalty (Zeitschel). It also includes the Vanderbilt/Whitney heir (Hornblower).