Want to keep your kids’ feet on the ground? Show them the world of charity

One of the challenges clients have shared with me has been the desire to keep their children well-grounded whilst they enjoy the fruits of the family’s wealth and not to take it for granted. Or as one client put it to me, to stop them turning in to ‘trust fund babies’. Whilst many may not phrase it in such wonderful terms, many clients share a similar concern. Where is the line between giving your children the benefits that wealth can bring, and giving them too much so that they lose touch with ‘real life’?

Partly, this depends on the individual and the family setup and values. But a lot has to do with experiences the kids have in their formative years. As the psychologist Thomas Gilovich says, ‘we are the sum total of our experiences’. ?The experiences your children have in their early years can greatly form and affect who they become in adulthood. I’d like to share a couple of examples of people tacking this very problem, in the hope that it can help you too.

One of the most powerful examples of ‘getting it right’ I have ever seen is from a couple who were very successful in business and had exactly this ‘trust fund baby’ concern. Their solution was to look to charity and philanthropy to give them and their family a constant reminder of their good fortune and of the challenges in the wider world. They converted part of their house into an events centre and would host charity groups, for example for children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with health issues, or adults reforming their character after being involved with addiction. This might be a bit of an extreme example but the effect that this had on their children is, quite frankly, astonishing. Their children are quite possibly the most empathetic and charitable I think I have ever come across. The idea that wealth is a vehicle from which you can use to do tremendous good is something that has become front & centre in the children’s minds.

If this example is a bit too much for your liking, something you might want to consider is the idea of an annual charitable donation. This comes from another client who had been very financially successful. Each year, the parents would give each child ￡5 for every year of their age (so ￡60 for the 12 year old, for example). With this money, they had to come up with what they thought was the best way of spending it to help the largest number of people. So that may have been to donate to a cancer charity, or to buy lots of food and make meals for a food bank and so on. Each child was responsible for choosing their own charity. This has worked very well and many of the children (now slightly older!) still keep to this tradition of giving every year.

Whilst there is no ‘one size fits all’ in helping your children deal with wealth, I’d certainly suggest spending some time thinking about how charity might form a part of their experience when growing up.

All the best,

Louis

The views expressed in this article are my own.

This information does not constitute advice or a personal recommendation.