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This book describes a very wealthy family as it struggles to manage its wealth and to discharge its stewardship obligations to future generations. More than anything else, the Titan family is striving to avoid the usual outcome for the rich: shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves in three generations.

On the other hand, the issues the Titan family grapples with are, for the most part, the issues every family faces in managing its money. We tend to think that “the rich are different,” but in my experience, Hemingway was right: they just have more money. If you read through these chapters, you will likely recognize not just rich people talking, but your own family making its way through the selfsame struggles.

It's certainly true that government rules prevent middle-income investors from benefiting from some of the best investments available – hedge funds and private equity. (Write your congressional representative!) Otherwise, investing is investing, and what a wealthy family needs to know is quite similar to what you need to know.

I don't know whether the unusual approach of this book will prove helpful to families and their advisors. I certainly hope it will, and it's been fun for me to write it, basically reliving so many interesting client meetings and discussions. But aside from the format, my main hope is that the book will help families improve their management of capital and help advisors improve their skills at helping families.

In a free market economic system, private wealth is the engine of prosperity. It fuels entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and the arts, it pays the great bulk of taxes, and it greases the skids of the capital markets, making the world safe for all investors. Wealthy families face enormous headwinds in the battle to remain wealthy. If this book reduces those headwinds by even a small fraction, it will redound not merely to the wealth of many families, but also to their happiness.

Gregory Curtis

Pittsburgh

August 3, 2015