Читать книгу Complete Family Wealth - Keith Whitaker, James Hughes E., James E. Hughes Jr. - Страница 30

We will leave the growth of a family's financial capital to the many other authors who have made this capital their focus.¹

We add only these two considerations, reflective of the often-difficult relationship that families have with their financial capital.

First, many family members who have inherited financial capital do not know how difficult it is to create it. They may feel awed by the presence of the wealth creator and define success as the creation of great financial capital. Defining success in financial terms can create a sense of not being good enough. In addition, their experience of the wealth creator may have some negative associations. As a result, later-generation family members often do not feel the same motivations that fueled the creativity of the originator of the family's financial capital. This is a problem for the family's financial sustainability. The problem is compounded if the family imagines or, worse, assumes that every member will turn out to be an entrepreneur. Such assumptions can become counterproductive. Only through undertaking the hard work of identifying and supporting each family member's own talents and dreams can the family hope to see—perhaps—the blossoming of the entrepreneurial spirit that will, in turn, contribute to the larger family's financial capital.

Second, most families have a hard time talking about financial capital. Money is perhaps the last and most pervasive taboo. Many times, this is for bad reasons: family members feel uneducated, disempowered, and embarrassed. This silence comes with a real opportunity cost. As we will discuss more fully in Chapters 14 and 17, long-term success depends on helping family members talk productively about money with each other.

That said, as with any taboo, there are also some good reasons that people are hesitant to talk about money. No one knows better than people with significant financial capital that many others (including even family members at times) can end up seeing you only for your money. Not talking about money can be a sound defensive measure. The chapters that follow aim to help readers develop safe ways to talk about financial capital, ways that preserve and promote the family's four qualitative capitals.