Wednesday, August 13, 2014

From Shoemaker to Shoe maker in Three Gnerations!



 
It’s an old story winningly told by TOM ROGERSON  senior director and wealth management advisor at WILMINGTON TRUST COMPANY (trogerson@wilmingtontrust.com). A 14th generation Mayflower descendant, still living on the family’s original land in Massachusetts, Tom is the scion of a wealthy Boston family that lost all its money – in three generations.

He weaves his personal story into solid wealth management advice for families. Speaking to a meeting of philanthropic advisors in Vancouver BC - members of the Giving Institute (www.givinginstitute.org) - it is less a story about money itself but how family dysfunction and poor-to-non-existent communications among the family, from the paterfamilias downward, took away the wealth.

A recent study, Tom reported, showed that typically a family loses lost 80% of its wealth within 50 years of the fo under’s death. The takeaway is only partly about how the wealth will be managed, or by whom, but ratherthe family dynamic. A dysfunctional family will end up with a dysfunctional foundation – quarreling about the founders’ (usually parents) commitments versus the children’s interests – either philanthropic but commonly about money that they’d rather have themselves; about who’s in charge and how decisions are made. Tom’s presentation included this quote attributed to George Burns:


“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

Tom Rogerson


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