• The Fundamental Question Of Sustainability - What Our Work with Families Tells Us
• Are Sustaining The Money And The Family Mutually Exclusive Objectives?
• Sustainable Wealth: Your Roadmap

• Sustainability White Paper

Are Sustaining The Money And The Family Mutually Exclusive Objectives?

There is significant evidence that suggests sustaining both financial and human capital are perhaps mutually exclusive objectives. From stories in the popular press about family's destroying wealth as a result of in-fighting or inter-generational conflicts, to research that suggests that the odds of a family successfully passing on wealth from one generation to the next are as low as 30%, to proverbs in every culture that reflect the "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" phenomenon, failure to transition wealth from one generation to the next and have it have a positive impact, is quite prevalent indeed.

But our experience also tells us that sustaining wealth is possible. After all, while they may not be written about in the press as frequently as those families that fail to sustain their wealth, there are families who have done so. We constantly ask what we can learn from the families that have achieved success around sustainability, and what we can learn from those that struggle. We seek to share those lessons learned and identify best practices and tools to help our families understand the path to sustainability. And fundamentally we seek to enable the families that work with us to define sustainability on their own terms and then put the plans and activities in place to achieve that success.