How to Raise a Millionaire – Continuing Your Young Adult Child’s Financial Preparation

If you are reading my efforts, you probably want to become a millionaire or you already are one.

If you want to become one, and if you have children, you probably are trying to instill your values in your children – the values that are driving you to want to be a millionaire.

If you already are a millionaire, and if you have children, you may be wondering how you need to raise your children (or maybe your grandchildren) differently than you were raised – because they are being influenced by wealth in ways you weren’t.

To address these questions, I will be writing a series of posts (interspersed with posts on other topics) with ideas on how to raise children to be millionaires.

Training Kids To Be Millionaires Doesn’t Stop When They Reach 18, or 21, or 35, or….
Some of the most critical training occurs when your child is entering adulthood. They begin to exercise their judgment to make decisions on credit, savings, investments, careers and businesses. Coming into sudden money between the ages of 18 and 25 can totally derail a young adult if they are not financially prepared to deal with it.

However, your child IS an adult. Your child will most likely NOT accept the same parent/child teaching model your family developed as it grew. You will need to find new ways to continue your adult child’s financial preparation.

Thoughts On How You Can Continue Your Adult Child’s Financial Preparation
My Dad – a life long learner – self educated on investing and the stock market when in his 50’s. As he learned and started being successful, he began to share his new interest with us, in the form of investing formulas, home study courses and periodic newsletters to us.  You could do the same.

Some families devote part of their annual family meeting to educational topics. Depending on the family size, they may divide up and have a younger and an elder session, or they may take turns sharing their expertise with all family members.

Ongoing daily and periodic conversations with your adult offspring offer countless opportunities to compare and share financial expertise with each other.

Organizing extended family game playing visits can be helpful – using games such as Cash Flow 101. The game itself teaches certain concepts as you play, but the chance for conversations about real world application of the concepts is also key to making this work.

How the Wealthy Continue an Adult Child’s Financial Preparation
Many of today’s wealthy families actively seek methods such as the below to transfer financial knowledge, investment management skills and general financial literacy to their next generations.

• Formal college level instruction – for example Wharton Executive Education puts on a Private Wealth Management course for members of wealthy families to learn more about managing their wealth.
• Summer camps – Citi Bank has offered 5 day camps for children of families with net worth of at least $10 million – entitled “The Next Generation of Wealth”.
• Private Banks – Banks such as HSBC provide next generation planning and training – to help ensure the family fortune won’t be lost when transferred.
• Family Offices – many private family offices have departments devoted to training the next generation of wealth holders.

How do YOU teach or advise your grown children?
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