Because…. Private Wealth Matters.
You are reading (and I hope you will continue reading) the first post in Withum’s new blog series, Private Wealth Matter$. You may be familiar with its predecessor, Charitable Nation, a blog more focused on all things charitable. We decided to expand our coverage to many more topics of interest to those with wealth because…
Private Wealth Matters!
Many years ago, a client’s son got married. Back then, his family was on the Forbes 400 list but lived a relatively modest lifestyle. The children knew they were rich but had no idea how rich, although one would think the Forbes 400 list would have been a dead giveaway. Anyway, prior to the wedding, Mom and Pop wanted to educate Son and future Daughter-in-Law about their wealth. They weren’t concerned about the risk of a greedy Daughter-in-Law getting ideas because the family had a long history of tying up their money in trust. The trusts were of the “sprinkling” variety with distributions at the discretion of the trustee(s), so it made sense for Son and Daughter-in-Law to understand and plan accordingly. I will never forget both kids’ eyes getting as wide as saucers as they saw the assets, sorry, income available to them because…
Private Wealth Matters!
At the other extreme, I recall a family office consultant telling a story about a billionaire client who essentially had no use for his children or succession of ex-wives. He hadn’t done any financial/tax/estate planning and did not intend to because he really didn’t care. In fact, he wanted his family to end up with as little as possible. I guess this is the exception that proves the rule because…
Private Wealth Matters!
Private wealth can help and it can hurt. Some go to inordinate lengths to keep as much of it out of Uncle Sam’s hands as possible. Some want to give it all away. There are those like Warren Buffett who once famously said that he wants to give his kids enough “so, that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.” There is no boiler plate plan that will enable you to enjoy your lifetime wealth, minimize its taxation, support your favorite charities and enrich future generations. There are, however, building blocks that can be efficiently integrated in ways that make sense for you. Exploring some of these building blocks is the purpose of this blog. Over the coming weeks, we will bring you thoughts from experts internal to Withum as well as external money managers, attorneys and other specialists. We’ll keep it short; we’ll keep it fun. We encourage you to participate in the dialogue by posting comments and calling us if you need more in-depth assistance. We do all this because…
Private Wealth Matters!
