Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this page exists to aid you in your research, but not make or suggest decisions for you. Further research is recommended for you to draw a conclusion of your own. Additionally some links contained on this page may be affiliate links in which Dynastus will receive a portion of sales at no additional expense to you.

If your goal is to build a dynasty and create generational wealth, you are a founding parent. You’re not alone.  This is what Dynastus is all about.

You don’t have to be a incredibly wealthy to grow your dynasty. Money is the least of it as you’ll discover both in this article and throughout the rest of the content here on Dynastus. All families, regardless of where they are now, can build a dynasty and generational wealth with the principles laid out in this article.

Most of what you need is consistency and perseverance. Primarily this will manifest in the most important aspect of generational wealth creation: building a strong family culture(human capital). A family made up of members with a strong sense of self, belonging, purpose and confidence. A family that is ready to handle what it takes to be a dynasty. From there you can build on the resources required to create a framework to generate the resources and assets that will last generations.

To build generational wealth requires immense effort and sacrifice. There is no one definitive path, but with a plan and a family culture strong enough to follow it, it can be achieved by you and your descendants, with or without the money.

Know you aren’t alone in the desire to create this. I built The Dynasty Foundry, a free Discord community filled with people on a similar path to yourself. We’d love to have you. Click here for your invite.

Extreme examples of generational wealth are The Rothschilds, The Rockefellers, and The Walton Family. They are well established and already past their first and second generations. Their wealth, like any generational wealth, was not built by accident. One thing of note is, however, that these families could lose all of their financial capital, and still be in a position of power where they can rebuild from the intangible capital they would be left with.

For those of modest means now, you can focus on frugality, hard work, taking opportunities and growing our knowledge to build a financial foundation. This will allow you to live a more flexible lifestyle to further free your time to focus on following your plan to create a dynasty. I started as a blue-collar worker and managed to build a seven-figure net worth at age 26 on one income without having any major entrepreneurial successes(yet!).

Generational Wealth is Attainable for All Families

There are 3 main methods to build financial wealth for your family, which I’ll cover in this piece. The Great Accumulator, The Collective, and The Family Business. Each with their own benefits and drawbacks. These methods make it possible for any family to build a pool of resources that everybody can benefit from, regardless of their backgrounds and professions.

It all comes down to one key principle – Family Culture.

Building a strong family culture that focuses on unity over lifetimes, is the core of creating wealth for you and your family. Family is everything, and should always come first. People, money, and things all come and go, but family is forever. This is why culture comes first. You are preparing you family for the money, not the money for the family.

That isn’t to say the resources you accumulate can’t be leveraged in creating generational wealth. Every dollar you save now, could be $46.80 in 50 years (about $10-12 adjusted for inflation), that $5 daily lunch treat will cost your child nearly $74,000 by the time they hit 18(is that a college education? I didn’t go).

So you can see why the earlier you start on this path, the better. Doing so, you’ll be able to better reap the benefits of compound interest sooner, have more wealth for future generations, and build a strong relationship with your family(young and old) over the years.

Before we begin…

This is a mega-post I will be continuing to grow over time and meant to be a bit of an all-in-one resource. As such I’ve added an update table at the end. That way, if you ever need to see what’s new, it’s all in one easy place.

If you’re serious about building generational wealth in your family, and forming a dynasty, you should add Dynastus to your bookmarks, follow us on Twitter, and join the email list for regular updates and advice (plus there’s a free ebook to grab too).

Create a Strong Family Culture

Building generational wealth starts first and foremost with your family’s culture. Family is everything. Wealthy families support each other emotionally and educationally primarily, wealth creation is always secondary.

You’ll need to build your fortune from the ground, and your children seeing this process will be encouraged to do the same. Children raised by entrepreneurial parents have a much higher chance of being entrepreneurs themselves, and the same goes for wealthy families.

A fortune earned is a fortune kept. You can’t expect to win the lottery. Everybody knows that people who win the lottery often (almost always) wind up in a worse position than before they had the winnings.

If you don’t know how to make it, you don’t know how to keep it.

Instead, you need to educate yourself and your family in the ways of building and maintaining wealth through cooperation. Cooperation means to live intentionally, creating a culture that caters towards this philosophy. As a result, your family will be able to support each other emotionally, educationally as well as financially.

The opposite – ‘competition’, creates divides.

While ‘the norm’ suggests competition is healthy among siblings and family members(a little is, for sure), it actually means families can’t reliably lean on one another to create a supportive emotional, educational and financial environment. Consider the below points when planning out your intentional family culture.

Avoid “Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves”

In every culture, there is a saying equivalent to shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, which I believe originates in American culture. The Japanese have “Rice Patties to Rice Patties” and the Irish have “Clogs to Clogs“. The Scottish summarize it the best: “The father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells, and his son begs”. Basically, what all of these proverbs are saying, is that most families fail to hold onto any semblance of wealth for more than three generations.

In order to build any generational wealth at all, you need to establish a culture so strong and ingrained in your family, that it will apply to people you will never even meet. Mayer Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild’s, the most wealthy family in the world, died in 1812, over 200 years ago. Yet his family still exists today and remains the most wealthy of any family that has existed in relatively modern times. This is because the culture the Rothschild dynasty built transcended the life of Mayer.(and they had some questionable methods to build the immense wealth they did. Including capitalizing on the French revolution by funding wars and crashing the market afterward. Allowing them to buy up the bond to rebuild for a fraction of its true value, but I digress.)

To build a culture in your family will require hard work, building a solid foundation and adopting an authoritative parenting style(not authoritarian!). This will require the study of parenting books and all parenting resources you can absorb. Including Dynastus, of course!

The Wealthy Family’s Main Asset

The main asset of any wealthy family, or any family at all for that matter is its members, not the money. Just as it is with wealthy entrepreneurs, if a wealthy family lost everything, they would still be able to rebuild.

In order for this to happen, it is imperative that the right culture and values be built into your family. This is less indoctrination and more of a parenting style. Raising your children to appreciate their family, being supportive of their pursuits and encouraging curiosity and hard work.

The term ‘Demanding Respect’ always makes me laugh – you have to earn respect, you can’t request it or order it out of people. As such, this is more of a “leading by example” approach to parenting, while following your own ideas and those you believe are right for your children.  I’ll be writing about this parenting style in another post.

Creating a family balance sheet is hugely beneficial at the start of planning out your family’s wealth-building plan. This is doubly so for a more mature family. More on this later.

Breaking the Cycle

Know that you can’t go back a generation. You are the founding father or mother of your dynasty. To try and go back to change a pre-established culture with your siblings or parents is impossible. This is because for the culture to change, is to admit fault in the way things have gone in your family in recent generations. You are not a product of an isolated parenting environment. It goes back many, many generations with minor tweaks and adaptations that ultimately resided in how you were parented.

None of these people, your ancestors, created a dynasty that lasted the ages. If they had, you would already be a part of one. If you keep doing the same thing, and falling into the pattern of your ancestors, you will get the same results.

Now it’s up to you to break the cycle, live intentionally, and parent in a way that will create the culture required to create a dynasty that will live on for generations to come.

Form Traditions

Traditions are a mainstay of any strong family. Whether it’s the kids coming over once a month for dinner, or an all-out family bash at the end of December, keeping traditions is paramount to building a family culture. Traditions create a sense of permanence and a routine for a family to follow, giving them common ground and a time to share events, stories, and their lives. All while forming new memories, rich with their family.

Examples of How My Family Handles Traditions

My Wife and I make a point to form new, unique traditions in our family. We plan how we are going to make sure to preserve the memory and expand on it with each subsequent generation. One example of this include our Christmas tradition, where we have ‘days leading up to Christmas’ and a book that holds recipes, events and memories unique to our family. We plan on this book being a part of our dynasty for generations to come, with a picture for each year of the family on the special day. It will be interesting to see the evolution of this book with each subsequent year, and look back on it with our grandchildren someday, before handing over the torch.

We also make a point of having a good, cooked breakfast on a Sunday before going to church. This gives us a great bonding activity to do together, a chance to build our social capital, and give back to our community.

Church is The Original Family Tradition

Family Projects/Hobbies

Family projects and hobbies are a great way to form strong connections. Having created something with your loved ones that you can all observe or even use is the perfect way to collaborate and create a sense of togetherness. If this is a financial project you can all benefit from, such as renovating a house(your own, or a rental) or perhaps planting a new garden bed, then all the better. If it’s something like repainting some furniture or painting a fence or even building a boat then they work just as well. Having these physical projects allow families to work together as a single unit to achieve a common goal while creating memories to share and reflect on, and a sense of unity.

Way of Thinking

Most all families with a ‘wealth culture’ tend to have some similar trains of thought. Family comes above everything else, money should never be the priority. Money shouldn’t even be the second priority(or the third etc). Forming good memories and creating a healthy life and home for your family should always be the top priority.

Money can’t help you be a good parent, nor can it help you build a good home environment, it can’t buy you a family or create your culture. Put your family and parenting first, focus on your family values and the wealth will follow.

With that said, remember that it’s hard to plan for the future when you’re living for the moment. Always looking forward and planning for the future is a keepsake of any wealth creation method. Money isn’t a means in and of itself, nor should it be thought of as something to hit ‘retirement’, then whittle away at. Money should be used to accumulate assets for the family to improve its members’ lives.

When first establishing your family resources, frugality plays a big role too. Every dollar spent is many dollars ‘stolen’ from future generations – in the form of compounding interest. $1 saved at the beginning of a child’s life can grow to become $46.90 compounded at 8% per annum by their 50th birthday. Imagine if you saved $1000, $10,000 or $100,000! More on this subject later.

Teaching your children the real meaning of money and wealth and giving them a good financial education will set them up for life. Realizing they’re a part of a bigger family unit that can support each other emotionally and financially will do wonders for their stability, motivations, career/business as well as countless other factors.

The Stay At Home Parent

Having a stay at home parent is the single best move you can make toward building generational wealth. Period.

In traditional roles, this is the matriarch of the house. Women are best suited to raising children, and staying home with them. A lot of families believe they can’t afford this, but there is no price that can be put on the strong bonds that form out of having a mother raise her children.

By handing the raising of your children over to transient caregivers, like daycare and socialist organizations like public schools, you are outsourcing parenting.

Outsourcing parenting is the fastest way to disseminate your family culture. The stay at home parent plays the roles of building human capital through cultural formation, making a house your home, managing your family sanctuary and creating tradition. They raise capable, responsible adults. There is a reason we are seeing such an attack on men, feminine women(mothers) and the family model in the modern day.

Parents that actually want to parent are the only kinds of parents there should be. A career isn’t going to visit you in the hospital.

How can you be a woman if you’re trying to act like a man? The traditional model of women stays at home to raise a mans children, and the man protects and provides worked for over 99.99% of human history. Every time a dominant culture tried to change this, it collapsed.

Why Build Generational Wealth:

Who doesn’t want to be close with their children and grandchildren, really? It’s our family that gives us strength. Its families that make up a society worth living in.

Raising children and giving them ample opportunity will become more important in the coming times as automation and a changing world begin to take the roles out from under many of the unprepared.

It seems to be a growing occurrence that the media portrays happiness as materialistic hedonism rather than a cooperative, fulfilling family lifestyle. Families that support one another are capable of progressing further in life than those who are disparate and competitive. If there’s one reason to make the sacrifices now, it’s to help your kids, if not your grandchildren.

Stepping Stones

By giving your children an optimized and thought out upbringing, supporting their education, growth, and creativity you’ll ensure they’re ready to be self-sufficient adults earlier than most. This will give them a strong start to their adult life. How many of us wish we started out stronger and more sensible when we set out to tackle the world? How many people do you know that are in their late twenties, or even older, that are basically big babies?

A former neighbor we had, we called “Beersies” what a poor specimen of a man. A particularly bald gentleman who spends all of his free time drinking beer and acting like a selfish teenager. His young son(when it’s ‘his weekend’) only sees his dad like this. What will that kid think is normal when he grows up?

How we behave now will have a huge impact on who our children become and how they see us when they become adults.

Also, establishing a family enterprise/portfolio and a decent pool of resources will give your children a great launching point to begin their adult lives. Having a starting point and a foundation to build on will ensure a stronger empire in the coming years. Remember that every dollar you save and invest becomes much, much more as time goes on.

Purpose

Having a purpose is something that all of us seek. It’s the reason many people subscribe to a cult, join clubs or charities or even browse Reddit – to find reason in it all.

Instead, we all should channel this desire to find purpose into a reason to grow your family into a dynasty.

Keeping your family strong together and building a cooperative culture will ensure each subsequent generation will climb higher than the last. And isn’t that the point of all life – to progress your own and leave the world with a little more than you took from it?

Keeping your family together and concentrating on strengthening it will fill you and your descendants with a sense of purpose. Built and established properly it can last for many, many years to come.

The Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan is a hotel in Japan that has been run as a family business for 1300 years. That’s 52 generations. Their story is pretty incredible, I advise you read about them if you’re at all interested in establishing a dynasty of your own.

Stability

Strength and wealth come from sharing connections with other people. If you have 5 people working towards a common goal, even if not in the same exact profession or business, a lot more can be achieved. A family in different professions can each help one another out when times aren’t so good and likewise when times are good.

This creates a sense of stability in life and helps us be more confident as people, knowing we have a support network to lean on in the good times and the bad.

Connectivity

Keeping your family in touch with one another can seem tough at the best of times, especially as we all become busier in a changing world. Families should stay in touch with each other even in the simplest form. It might take a bit of experimentation to find the method that works best for your family. Electronic media makes it easier than ever to stay in touch, be it through some social media platform or messaging application or even just texting.

Attending regular family events and participating in projects helps facilitate connectivity as well. It’s hard to beat actual human contact. Something that seems a bit lost on a lot of people these days.

Transcending Time

Even if you live to 100, you’re going to die. Unless you’re some sort of jellyfish, hydra or other more specific sea creatures, it’s inescapable, unfortunately. A family transcends the short lifespans we’re confined to and give us the ability to look at the bigger picture. To live for your family is to live for a greater purpose, something bigger than you. To put it simply, time is not as much of a factor for a family than it is for an individual.

When looking at the bigger picture and your family, everything you do can be tailored towards growing your family status, culture and wealth. Investments you make don’t have to be structured towards a comfortable retirement or purely provide an income, you’re able to look at more macro trends and follow beta investing techniques. This involves looking at bigger picture moves and sitting on them for large lengths of time. This gives you more wiggle room for error and a long compounding time.

Examples of this could be buying land in a town poised for growth over the next 40 years. You could amass a huge pool of gold, silver, and copper and sell in 50 years. You could plant an orchard of olives, with your grandchildren reaping the rewards a 100-year-old olive grove brings.

The Intergenerational Wealth Handovers

It’s a good idea for family members to go and work in another place for a time. Whether it’s in the same industry or in a different one. If this work involves getting a formal education is up to the business, the individual, and the family culture. In old times, fathers often educated their sons in their line of work, watchmakers, carpenters, farmers and bankers alike would all pass their knowledge and businesses down to their children(usually the son).

In modern times, it seems, most people take shame in following their parents. And now we aren’t necessarily forced into following in the exact footsteps of our parents. But if parents have set something up for their children’s adult lives, in a non-forceful manner, then they should be grateful for the opportunity. This is referred to as a transmission of intellectual capital.

Parents can hand a chunk of wealth over in the form of a formal education, or giving children their first home, or a company to work in, or a loan to start a company…the list goes on. All of these things can be considered wealth in their own right. My father gave me my trade, A gift that keeps on giving. I’m infinitely grateful for it. These skill handovers are footsteps of their own – clearing some of the ways so children can build stronger paths of their own.

Simply handing over with no preparation will, of course, result in incapable people, hence why upbringing is so imperative. Below are some examples of other intergenerational wealth handovers

• Skills
• Hobbies
• Collections
• Land/buildings
• Businesses
• Investment Portfolios
• Art
• Numismatic Coins

How to Build Intergenerational Wealth:

It’s not often that emphasis is put on the ins and outs of intergenerational wealth accumulation. There’s more to it than just ‘start a business’ and ‘create a good culture’.

Strategies

There are 3, interchangeable paths/models to build intergenerational wealth in terms of financial capital, each with countless variants. Inheritance isn’t one of them. Whether you use one or a combination of all of these will depend wholly on you, your capabilities, ideals, and methodology to build your dynasty.

The Great Accumulator

The Great Accumulator is the method most of the established families have come from. It’s the most documented approach, though this is due to the very front-facing nature of the businesses built by the founding parents of the families they built wealth for. Bill and Will Bonner write in Family Fortunes(Review|Affiliate Link) that this is the only real method. I personally don’t subscribe to this, but it is the pathway that builds wealth the fastest while being the most difficult.

The great accumulator method involves one individual creating vast wealth, which they then forego to ‘put in the middle’ to benefit the family. This allows a large chunk of wealth or a high-value asset to be created in a single lifetime to use as a foundation to build on. The inclusion of other family members in a family enterprise can create work for other family members. Alternatively, a family can provide trustworthy people to contribute to the growth of the assets or wealth in general. The Great Accumulator can hand over the reins of this empire or use his or her acquired knowledge to teach descendants their methods. The money put in the middle is for the family to manage and grow, though a lot will still hinge on The Great Accumulator until they have educated their successor/s.

One flaw worth noting is a sense of unfairness can fester in siblings. If The Great Accumulator has to grant those who were formerly uninterested in the sacrifices it takes to build wealth, animosity can rear its’ ugly head. The great accumulator strategy can only really work with parents and subsequent generations. I am the only one of my siblings who has built a modicum of noteworthy wealth, and I did it majoritively on my own. While they partied, I worked(not saying they don’t have their own achievements, which I’m proud of them for). I just know I would be pissed if I gave what I have over for them to share, them having put in none of the work or sacrifice I did. I’m sure most people would feel the same. As it stands now, this is where we are at with our wealth creation, under this category, though I did it mostly with working a job and investing.

The Collective

The Collective is a method of building wealth by pooling the collective resources of a family. It collective capitalism, pooling resources to take advantages of a capitalist nature. It is the most accessible method by far, but lays strain on the Human Capital of your family. This is the slower and harder path, but it is still possible.

Essentially, it involves pooling resources of family members to open opportunities that would not be available to individuals of the family.

Once enough have been pooled, the accumulated resources are utilized to access opportunities that would not be available if the contributing individuals were to go at it alone. You may use this pool for entrepreneurial opportunities such as renovating properties, building or buying a business or some other means of wealth creation.

The pool may also be used to acquire properties for the members of the family to rent off of the collective as well. The rents can be based on market values, less a predetermined discount. This means resources that would be flowing out in rent, is now flowing into the family. All the while the members have a reduced financial strain from the discounted market rent.

Your family may choose to buy a multiplex to all live in(for discounted rent), while renting out the spare doors. This serves to create both a residence that lifts the financial strain of the family, and create an external income stream. The collective pool could also be used to buy the family sanctuary as well – a vital cultural mecca for your dynasty.

A collective could also mean a family building a network of businesses. Three sons may be each an electrician, plumber and builder. they could collectively put together a business that is capable of building houses. By pooling together, families are capable of achieving much more than they could on their own. There is a tonne of variants in this method and how you go about it is wholly up to your family.

If this is of interest to you, I highly suggest reading my more detailed article on this concept by clicking here.

The Family Business

The Family Business model is the transfer of capital through a tangible or intangible performing asset. This can mean a small family-run operating business or intellectual capital in the form of a skill passed from one parent to another.

In the case of a business, children and other family members can be brought up to deeply understand the inner working of the business, then add their time and labor to grow the business. This may mean handing the family trade down to the next generation or adapting and growing the business with the contribution of fresh intellectual capital. The result being a direct time for money exchange, or another trustworthy staff member to run a crew or a new branch of the enterprise.

It can also mean the family member goes to learn a new diverse skill to contribute to the business as well. For example, a son learning plumbing so he and his father can offer an electrical/plumbing combination. Or a daughter learning to account so she can help manage the books and accounts.

The Family Business Model can also involve working with your family members to build an asset that everybody benefits from. This could be something like a restaurant, or building a rental portfolio, or running a bundle of publishing websites. This gives the family something physical to unify over and work on, all the while using its excesses to build wealth, which is allocated to a family pool. Ideally, this is built from the ground with everybody that is capable, doing their part.

If building up businesses is your family’s preferred wealth creation method then members of the family that band together can take salary/wage hits in the early days to help build the business faster and give you a competitive edge. Family members outside of the business could even give referrals for the business too, or help them get their place of employment as a client.

Regardless of how it’s created a family business creates a central focus for a family to build its’ values, memories, and connection on. I highly suggest reading more on The Family Business Model here.

Matriarch and Patriarch

It is the family’s goal to build on the strengths of its members and leverage them to it’s advantage while mitigating the weaknesses and supporting each other where needed.

This requires the acceptance of a return to a more traditional family structure with a patriarch and matriarch at the head of a family, and more conservative, traditional family roles being incorporated into the family model.

By adopting these conservative values, delegation and specialization occurs. Instead of acting like men, women get to be feminine by acting like women and being mothers to their children and taking care of their man and the household. While men get to be manly by focusing on providing and protecting.

By not trying to juggle a career, chores and children each parent is able to focus in on being great at what they are supposed to do. The end result is a more stable household, healthier children and a higher earning provider.

The Matriarchal Role

In modern times, with the value of money the way it is, it can be hard to get by on one income. When it’s expected that both partners work, we get double the workforce, which kind of halves the value of people’s time – leaving us in the same position financially but with less time on the whole. This coupled with the decline in the value of fiat currency in the 70s led to a lot of women being forced into the working world, leaving behind the most important job of all – being a parent.

Those that stepped in to fill the role were various forms of outsourced parenting. Public school, daycare, after-school programs – all of which diminish the family culture and gradually erode the bond between parent and child.

Women working, especially young has put a dent on the traditional family structure. Women enter college, take out phenomenal amounts of debt, shackling them to unrewarding careers, resulting in higher rates of mental illness. Women with debts become unattractive burdens for men that want families, and thus we get either working couples or smaller families later in life. Leaving starting a family too late lowers fertility and increases the chances of high risk pregnancy.

Women, actually being feminine, and not being ravaged by misogynistic modern feminism allows them to be truly happy and fulfilled. Being a mother is the most important job and should not be looked down upon, as so much of the modern media tries to do. A high quality mother will be self educated in multiple fields(cooking, management, organization, psychology, physiology, nursing, gardening, the list goes on…), manage the household, educate and motivate children, manage traditions and social events, create memories and so much more. Its a full on role, but the most important of all.

And for those saying ‘being a mom has no pay’ – bull crap. The woman gets to stay at home and be provided for by her man. And in exchange the man has a quality woman to raise his children.

The hours may be long but the pay is a loving family and memories with the kids while not being hounded by a boss or clients to do a task and suffering high cortisol while juggling family responsibilities.

The Dual Income Treadmill, Broken

If both people work and are busy focusing on two separate jobs, the family unit can take a hit. When both parents are working away, the child has to go to daycare(outsourced parenting), and thus spends less time with family. It also means that neither parent has as much of a chance to devote themselves to create something bigger and creating intergenerational wealth. This creates what is called the dual income treadmill. Both parents are too drained from juggling mixed-role responsibilities that neither of them can master anything and wind up exhausted at the end of each day.

When one parent takes care of the house and the other devotes themselves to wealth creation it means that there is time to focus on building the family unit as well as creating wealth. The children get a sense of permanence, which creates stable adults. It also means you aren’t pouring money into daycare. The matriarch that focuses on the household can really study and learn the ins and outs of creating a stable environment, honing and perfecting their skills in running a household and raising children.

The matriarch plays a pivotal role in the creating of intergenerational wealth and her values should not be underestimated, as many mainstream outlets would lead you to believe.

Start Young

Starting a family young, especially for women means there will be time later in life to pursue a career, or focus on providing in the local community and establishing even more social capital and influence for the family.

The matriarch also plays the role of the “Cheif Emotional Officer”(‘CEO’) and should study the field of psychology and philosophy as best they can. The ‘CEO’ helps resolve and stabilize family conflicts and emotional issues, from dealing with toddler tantrums to curbing teenage angst(GL with that one). Having somebody to confide in, in this regard will help to form emotionally stable adults. As we all know, women are typically better suited to empathize, and thus make better “CEO”s.

The ‘wealth creation’ from the patriarch can come in the form of career advancement, investment, or entrepreneurship. He should be masculine, lead, protect, provide and persevere. He should be fit, well educated and motivated.

Having the daily chores alleviated grants more time to knuckle down and build something great that everybody in the family can benefit from over the long term, while improving himself for his family.

The Family Balance Sheet

The family balance sheet involves taking stock of the assets and liabilities your family has – and not just financial. There are 4 elements you’ll want to take stock of within your family: The Human, Intellectual, Social and Financial capital. These are listed in order of importance.

Human Capital

You can’t have a family without people, which makes Human Capital the most important. You need to take note of what each member of the family is capable of, and what their limitations are. Their assets and liabilities. Learn more about Human Capital here.

Intellectual Capital

Intellectual Capital is the next in importance. It’s hard to get anywhere if nobody could read. The more knowledge you accumulate in your family, the better. People can’t earn or progress in their lives if they’re shut off, ignorant or unwilling to grow their minds.

The best education is experience. Having children participate in finances and learn skills and concepts young will open millions of doors all the sooner. Being active in each other’s intellectual pursuits(especially your kids) will create ideas and reinforce concepts and knowledge through discussion.

Learn more about Intellectual Capital here.

Social Capital

Social capital is the bonds, connections, relationships, and reputation with other people, institutions and circles OUTSIDE of the family. Humans are very social creatures, and we benefit from the social capital we have and create both in mental health and in other areas of our lives.

Read about Social Capital here.

Financial Capital

Family Financial Capital is different from Personal Wealth. When Families seek to grow intergenerational wealth, it matters little how wealthy one individual is. Instead, the pool of resources is the springboard for the families well being, and it’s members are its stewards.

Family Financial Capital is used to improve the lives, not lifestyles of the individual members. It is used to improve the members in both creativity and competency. But it is never sued for any lavish reason. It can be loaned, borrowed from, invested, built upon. Never is the principle reduced. It is not to buy fancy homes and cars, not for selfish spending by any one individual. It is very different from any personal wealth built and is only meant for the good of the family and the world.

Learn all about Family Financial Capital here.

Frugality

As I said earlier, every dollar you spend now is like stealing from your family in future generations. That meal from McDonald’s could be used to buy some shares in a company or an ounce of silver.

If you buy lunch every day for as little as $5, over the course of a year that adds up to $1825, if you did this over the course of 18 years while a child is growing up, it grows to $73,814 compounded once annually at 8% interest. That could be a house or two in some places. Or a deposit on a few. Or enough to fund the start of a business, or for a good chunk of education.

You can make moves to save money quite easily, with minimal sacrifice. For example, swapping out standard light bulbs for LED Lights has an ROI in excess of 500%. Each light you swap out can save you over $30/year. Other things like shorter showers and keeping chickens can save your family a tonne, which can be reinvested back into building your family’s intergenerational wealth.

So every dollar counts. The money you save now can be used by future generations to build further assets, which in turn contribute to the family’s pool of resources.

Obligatory Growing Stack of Coins Image

Living at Home

Most youths can’t wait to move out of the family home and most parents can’t wait to ship their kids off. This is diametrically opposed to building intergenerational wealth. Living with your parents as long as is reasonably possible allows for greater load sharing of chores like cleaning and cooking, which frees up time(for more work). Co-Living also less expenditure on living costs while wealth is pooled.

Living with your parents, even on a modest income for 5 years can result in a savings of 114k. Money that can be invested, used for a home, or for building a business. I advise you check out our post on living with your parents, by clicking here.

Avoiding Rest Homes

On the other end of the age spectrum, there is the elderly.

Rest homes can do the elderly a great service. Most modern facilities provide a safe place for people to retire, offering a community and many activities for retirees to participate in. The retirements homes I’ve invested in have pools of vehicles, offer biking and emergency care on site making them perfect for the aging population. I am not wholly opposed to rest homes in the least, they can be great for the right people.

The number of lonely deaths(dying alone and not found for a while) is on the rise, and for those sad or unfortuante individuals without the family to support them need to rely on these services in their twilight years.

This said it’s hard to fathom a bigger drain of family wealth than retirement homes. They are a great business model, basically purposefully designed to drain the elderly of their remaining resources in exchange for comfort, security, and community – a perfect exchange for the right sort of people. You do typically have to buy your own living space, and in exchange for the services they provide, there are surcharges that come along with it. These charges range from the cost of every meal down to the maintenance on your property.

I hate to say it, but rest homes may also shorten your life by making things a little too easy. If you aren’t exercising your body and mind, they start to fail as the neural pathways reconfigure into obsolescence. First, your mind goes, then your body fails. You get upgraded you to specialized care, which drains you of whats left. And ultimately, sent to an early grave. If you haven’t bothered with tax structures, a lot of governments tax the crap out of whats left and all that remains is a pittance.

Any good rest home is going to provide ample facility to prolong life. If you choose or need to use one for your elderly, it’s important to go into it fully educated and aware of the trade-offs.

Avoiding Traditional ‘Inheritance’

I detest people that are waiting for an inheritance(“Hurry up and die, Dad!”). But a part of preserving intergenerational wealth is keeping it in the family. Having a strong sense of unity and culture means that there is no animosity between family. Elders could also continue contributing to the family wealth by working, which also keeping their mind active.

When elders need to(or want to!) they are able to move in with their children and help out around the house. This results in longer lifespans, more wealth preservation and stronger unity(not to mention forming memories!). Of course, this means that the elderly can’t be grumpy old buggers, and must have earned and maintained their children’s respect, which comes along with intentional living and building/maintaining a strong family culture.

When the unfortunate time comes to finally hand over an inheritance, it becomes a part of the family pool, well in advance of any expiry dates. The elder should be, at this point, receiving ample lifestyle dividends from the family pool. Rather than losing everything to the rest home, and inheritance tax. This stops infighting that can lead to sudden and permanent division in families.

Dynastic Land

Nobody wants to or should live multi-generationally in a small home. 4 couples in a house living with Mom and Dad is some medieval-ass talk. You could have one massive home, sure, that could work. Otherwise, families should have homes close to one another. This allows everybody to participate in family projects, attend family events and generally help one another out. This might mean in one city/town or nearby towns. It might also mean purchasing and establishing Dynastic Land.

Dynastic land is an old tradition that seems to be lost in a lot of western cultures. It could be considered the “Family Farm” in a more modern, dynamic format. From a more industrious perspective, dynastic land could be forests, commercial property or a large apartment complex.  On the lavish end, it might be the family cabin or a holiday home. Having the ability to live on it creates a sense of permanence, but it isn’t always a necessity.

“They” aren’t making any more land, so the saying goes. So it helps if you purchase and establish a mini real estate empire for your family early on. Do your research and buy wisely and you’ll be benefiting from a combination of capital gains and ideally a revenue stream for generations to come. Over time, you should be adding to this portfolio. Never underestimate the power that comes with holding land, as long as you purchase and manage it intelligently and well. Many families have used land as a way of preserving intergenerational wealth.

The Family Sanctuary

While dynastic land fit greats into a large and growing family’s asset pool, a Family Sanctuary acts as a hub to intergenerational wealth families. It is a central focus point that the children of first-generation grow up in(if possible), where celebrations are held and memories are formed. Where the ever-growing family comes together to break bread and what they refer to when they say ‘home’.

It isn’t necessarily a Corleone Compound(thought it could be) and is instead custom-tailored to suit a families traditions, interests, and lifestyle. You can read all about the family sanctuary here.

Family Council

A Family Council should be formed to tackle all family matters, big and small. The council makes sure everybody is heard and plays a role in family decisions. The Council manages a decision-making process so that the backbone of the family isn’t torn away if the founding members were to ‘expire’.

The role of The Family Council includes:

• Drafting a family mission statement and constitution
• Overseeing the investment committee and monitoring performance of family investments
• Managing and drafting legal documents regarding family estate planning
• Managing philanthropic efforts
• Oversee Family property management
• Resolve major Family conflicts
• Manage the strategic goals of the family enterprise
• Organizing activities for the family to partake in
• Formulating policies for those working int he family business
• Formulate policies for spousal inclusion or exclusion in family finances

Who goes into the council?

When starting your Dynasty, this is probably just going to the founding parents. But as your family grows, others with the emotional wear-with-all should step in to fill particular roles. Some people will fill multiple roles if it best suits them.  For larger families, these council members will need to have other members of the family backing them to ensure everybody is fairly represented. You can make any number of roles, within reason, as long as they serve a specific purpose for the family as a whole. These roles could be, but not limited to:

• General Manager(Dominant Patriarch/Matriarch)
• Chief Emotional Officer(Partner of the General Manager)
• Property Finder/Manager
• Financial Planner/Accountant(who also head the investing committee)
• Event Planner
• Philanthropic Manager

You may later need to create separate committees to manage different arms of the family affairs. The Family Council should have representatives from each of these to ensure cohesion and inclusion of all members and branches of the family unit.

The Family Bank

The Family Bank is a pool of funds collectively owned by the family that can be loaned out to individuals for the purposes of contribution.

The Family Bank is a technique used to keep money in the family in the early stages of intergenerational wealth creation. A set of rules must be made up as early as possible and adhered to. A committee should be assigned, whether its the same as your family council or a different set of people more knowledgeable about finances will be up to your family skill distribution. Ideally, the established rules should be cemented and not need to be changed. If issues rise up that require new standards to be formed, or if there needs to be a rule reformation for any reason, the financial committee should handle this.

A young grandson may want to start a lawnmowing business, so the family bank could lend him the $500 to buy a halfway decent mower, some gas and get some flyers printed. The family could lend him the money at a really low-interest rate, or take a stake in his business all the while guiding him to grow his mini-empire and your family’s macro-empire.

Lending money at an interest rate or for a stake may seem crude, but this method teaches them a few things. First, they learn how to borrow money, repay debts and build a business. Second, they see the benefits of contributing to the family pool, the benefits it brings and the long-term rewards. His business may boom, which could provide other grandchildren(and employees) with work, and swell the family coffers further. It may also go bust, in which case he isn’t indebted to a bank or loan company and is free to start fresh, paying back his initial loan to the family when he can.

On a higher level, the family bank may be able to lend out some or all of a house purchase at a lower-than-market interest rate. This would make sense for a personal home. But doesn’t make sense for rentals, you want to be leveraging Other People’s Money for a higher ROI,  and keeping rentals as a family asset. This way they aren’t paying money to an external bank for the privilege of a house, but instead are swelling the family coffers with their home purchase, and paying lower interest to boot.

The family bank also assigns money to the finance committee to make investments for the family empire.

Children of Generational Wealth

This kind of goes without saying, but you’ll need to have children to form a family and a dynasty. Supporting your children in their interests should be done regardless of your financial pursuits. Guiding them towards gaining a thorough education in finances will help progress the family financial interests, however.

Raising your children with the right fundamental values is key. If they have the inclination, directing their pursuits to further the family fortune will aid immensely – it’s almost a must that some of the descendants have the desire to comprehend and grow the wealth, otherwise, they’re likely to destroy it.

Get Brain Rules on Amazon (clickable)Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina

The responsibility isn’t purely on your children either. It will be up to you and your partner to get a good understanding of raising children through reading parenting resources and high-quality books, such as Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina(Review to Come|Affiliate Link). You could also listen to this with a free 30-day Audible Trial, and choose this as your free audiobook.

However you decide to raise your children, do it intentionally, be well informed and have an intelligent structure. Normal parenting creates normal children, if you want your child to excel, you have to be an excellent parent, and that may be the hardest job of all.

If you want a large dynasty, you’ll need a lot of children. Make sure you don’t over extend your finances though as this may lead to despair. And for all of you psychos out there, don’t have children purely for this reason.

Retirement: Forget FIRE and be FINE

I am not a fan of the whole FIRE(Financial Independence, Early Retirement) movement. Instead, I propose a new approach, FINE. FINE is an acronym for Financial Independence, Never Exit. Never Exit – meaning the workforce. If you can achieve Financial Independence through your vehicle of choice early, then why stop there? By continuing to build on your resources, you’re able to create a pool to use to build up intergenerational wealth and a family empire.

If you’ve worked your whole life, why spend all of your money in your old age? The original idea of retirement was conceptualized by social engineers for an idealistic welfare state. The idea being that the cogs of the machine(the working class) worked to prop up the bourgeoisie, with the eventual reward to be able to have a rest when you’re all broken and worn out – ready to be replaced. The welfare state(ie socialism/communism), while idealistic, has never worked throughout all of history. It led the the fall of Rome, Greece, and Venezuela. If it did work historically, then why aren’t we still using it now?

The truth is that resources are finite, and effort begets reward. When the effort-reward ratio is ruined from regulation, immigration and taxes, a disparity happens that ultimately dismantles a society. Socialism and communism don’t want you to create intergenerational wealth. Preventing you from doing so stops your family from creating personal power that can be leveraged against the state in their effort to garner more and more control and power of the populace.

It sounds harsh, but one should not expect to become a leech on society or their family just because they reach a certain age. Even if their pooled resources are enough to live off of, an eligible retiree can redirect their efforts to a more managerial role. I like to call this the ‘Shadow Master’, the wise oldie who pulls the strings. Kind of akin to Don Corleone, except…you know, without all the murdering and crime and horse heads in beds.

Work should be something to enjoy, and thus we should be focused on what we’re working towards, not what we’re working from.

Proper Hard Structures

Intergenerational wealth needs to be preserved in the proper structures. As much as I’d like to be able to advise you on this, I just can’t. I’m probably in a different country to you for starters, not to mention I am wholly not qualified to give any form of legal advice. You’re best to speak to an attorney that specializes in family trusts and wealth preservation in your local area. Often times you may need to put money in an offshore account also, but this can result in a double taxation. As always, do your own research, get multiple opinions and advice, and trust your gut on who suits your families objectives.

Growth Beats Income

As an income grows, so do taxes. Once a family has enough income to cover all it’s members, through jobs, businesses, investments or other means, wealth accumulations should be pointed towards capital gains. I am fortunate to live in a country where the capital gains tax laws are…iffy. You don’t have to pay capital gains taxes on property held for over 2 years, nor on stocks/shares if your intent wasn’t to sell when you bought them. When I sold some of my rentals, I made dank bank. When I sell shares in a company, cha-ching! I never intended to sell them, it was just a change in circumstances needed me to hold a cash position temporarily. Odds are, you aren’t at such an advantage, and that’s ok too.

I spoke briefly about this in my Dynastic Land Post, which I advise you check out once you’re done here. Some taxes are good, arguably. They keep a society running and cohesive, give us roads to drive on, rubbish trucks to take our refuse away, keep our parks growing, pay for the lazy to be life-long bludgers and overpay underqualified/ignorant/generous/large-toothed/bad mother Prime Ministers to…wait a minute.

Now it could be said a lot of our taxes go to waste, and I’d be behind that suggestion, but it doesn’t mean we have to waste our families money on taxes. Assets that throw off appreciable income need tax to be paid periodically, resulting in deductions from the family coffers, even if you reinvest all of that income, you’ve already paid tax on it. If this asset instead was oriented towards capital gains, the tax delay would result in greater capital appreciation. Even if tax is paid upon closing up and selling the investment after a fixed period of time(aka capital gains tax), you still have a greater sum from compounding the capital appreciation throughout the duration of the investment.

To learn more, I highly recommend the post on Growth vs Income.

Intergenerational Wealth

Building intergenerational wealth is an admirable endeavor, one that will be equally challenging and rewarding. Focusing on creating unity in your family culture is the running theme here. Taking care of your family and the culture first will see the wealth follow. Traditions, projects and developing the way you and your family interact with one another is key to building a dynasty, infinitely more than money ever will be. Dynasty or not, this should be your top priority with a family.

Focusing on your why will keep you motivated and drive you towards your ultimate goal. There is no ‘FIRE’ in intergenerational wealth, financial independence and Early Retirement take a backseat. You should instead be ‘FINE’, Financially Independent, Never Exit, and build as many resources as you possibly can for you and your family. Building unity in your family will have you taken care of for a lifetime, as it was in times before our own.

Choosing the right method for your wealth building strategy that suits your family will play a big role financially. Whichever method you choose, it isn’t set in stone, there’s a lot of room to cross over, so you can start with what best suits your situation now, and gradually make the shift. As long as you have a plan. Remember that families transcend the time of an individual, there’s plenty more room for growth, error, and execution when opposed to more selfish financial pursuits.

Reading as many resources as possible in intergenerational wealth, like the articles here on Dynastus, will go a long way toward reinforcing your mentality and building intellectual capital for your family. Books like Family Fortunes by the Bonners, Brain Rules for Baby work especially well for family culture and parenting. Other great reads more centralized on financial mentality are Richest Man in Babylon, Millionaire Fastlane, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Get Family Fortunes on Amazon (clickable)Family Fortunes By Bill & Will Bonner

Every dollar you spend now is like stealing from your descendants. Compound interest plays a massive role in building generational wealth, especially capital gains. A five dollar lunch daily becomes a college education by the time a child turns 18(without tax). A dollar saved and compounded over 50 years becomes $46.90. Things get pretty crazy, pretty quickly. So it’s important to save what you can to build a foundation for your empire to stand on.

Phew, I know this was a big one, a veritable mini-book. I hope this piece has given you a bit to think about and a great place to start from. I recommend picking up Family Fortunes as a bit of reading material, and joining our email list so you don’t miss a beat. You could also follow Dynastus on Twitter and check out our Youtube Channel.

There should be some recommended articles in the section below if you’re still hungry for more right now. For an easy read, check out ‘The Three Big D’s to Avoid‘.

Building intergenerational wealth is more important now than ever, you and your descendants really can’t afford not to. Evidence of this may take 50 years to manifest, but you will let yourself and your kids down by not starting right now.

Did I miss anything? Have something you want to add? Are you going to get started right now on the path to building intergenerational wealth? Drop me a comment below and let’s discuss.

Updates:

17/6/18: Article Completed

20/6/18: Release

14/1/19: Correction on Income vs Growth Calculation

31/3/2019: Further research lead me to change organizational capital to social capital, a broader type of capital that is fundamental to all major wealth creation, especially intergenerationally.

26/7/2019: Links updated to lead to further, relevant reading on subject material. Grammatical errors fixed.

3/12/2019: Clarification, and Dynastus Transition update. Content on traditional gender roles added.

6/2/2023: Image updates, spelling corrections, links added.