Anonymous
Post 07/15/2023 11:06     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:What is generational wealth?

When assets are passed down across multiple generations, that's often referred to as generational wealth. What type of assets? Think property, a Roth IRA account, a 401(k), life insurance, stocks and bonds, or anything else that has monetary value.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-build-generational-wealth


I think you’re being purposefully obtuse. In a conversation with another, would you say you have generational wealth if you inherited less than a very large amount? Anyone can submit a definition.

https://themakingofamillionaire.com/how-much-money-is-needed-to-build-generational-wealth-330d5b013695

“Generational wealth is achieved when you’ve accumulated enough investments to pay for your families living expenses in perpetuity without touching the principal.”


The phrase “term of art” means a term that’s specific to a particular industry or discipline that’s used in a very specific way.

“Generational wealth” has been used since at least the 1950s as a term of art in the fields of economics and sociology to explain differences in net worth between groups with similar levels of income (e.g. low and middle income white and black households) and how things like redlining and restrictive real estate covenants help to explain the vast wealth differential between white and black households with similar income levels.

Goofy self help types with no academic background may have glommed on to the term as they have other terms of art (e.g. “utilize”) because they think, without understanding the terms, that using those terms makes them sound smart. That affectation doesn’t change the actual academic meaning of the term.
Anonymous
Post 07/15/2023 02:18     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
DH's family lost wealth because of kids making poor business decisions and gambling, and... also having tons of kids. Wealth really thins out in a couple of generations if you have lots of kids who also have lots of kids and like someone said.. these kids aren't marrying into other wealthy families as much and aren't really getting awfully rich on their own. Your key to having kids and keeping wealth is marrying them up and not down. As a result DH grew up broke, but with endless supply of cousins that he can't keep track of. The only sign of their wealth was the fact that all these many kids were well educated.
Anonymous
Post 07/15/2023 01:56     Subject: If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
DH's parents really blew it. Total riches to rags.
Anonymous
Post 07/15/2023 01:07     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Nantucket family since 1600s.
Ended with Great Depression
Anonymous
Post 07/14/2023 17:33     Subject: If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
My grandparents had live-in help. One of my grandmothers grew up going to dances where ladies carried their dancing slippers in a little bag and a servant put them on for you.

Go back far enough, and there were enslavers in my family.

My parents didn't have that kind of money, but they paid for our college and could get a mortgage (the only debt they ever took on) from a bank at a low rate. Their kids will be able to retire someday. If we or our children needed thousands of dollars for an emergency and there was no time for a bank loan, someone in the family could provide it. We wouldn't have to use a payday lender or a title loan.

It may be nice to imagine owning multiple houses and having a staff, but the level of financial security I have is because of the people who came before me, and I know it's a luxury.
Anonymous
Post 07/14/2023 16:44     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:What is generational wealth?

When assets are passed down across multiple generations, that's often referred to as generational wealth. What type of assets? Think property, a Roth IRA account, a 401(k), life insurance, stocks and bonds, or anything else that has monetary value.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-build-generational-wealth


I think you’re being purposefully obtuse. In a conversation with another, would you say you have generational wealth if you inherited less than a very large amount? Anyone can submit a definition.

https://themakingofamillionaire.com/how-much-money-is-needed-to-build-generational-wealth-330d5b013695

“Generational wealth is achieved when you’ve accumulated enough investments to pay for your families living expenses in perpetuity without touching the principal.”


So you cite one guy who wants to become a millionaire when other the other people cite Forbes, Fortune, Nerdwallet, assorted other personal finance sites and think it's equivalent? How many reputable sources use your definition?
Anonymous
Post 07/14/2023 16:38     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Anonymous wrote:What is generational wealth?

When assets are passed down across multiple generations, that's often referred to as generational wealth. What type of assets? Think property, a Roth IRA account, a 401(k), life insurance, stocks and bonds, or anything else that has monetary value.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-build-generational-wealth


I think you’re being purposefully obtuse. In a conversation with another, would you say you have generational wealth if you inherited less than a very large amount? Anyone can submit a definition.

https://themakingofamillionaire.com/how-much-money-is-needed-to-build-generational-wealth-330d5b013695

“Generational wealth is achieved when you’ve accumulated enough investments to pay for your families living expenses in perpetuity without touching the principal.”
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2023 12:24     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
What is generational wealth?

When assets are passed down across multiple generations, that's often referred to as generational wealth. What type of assets? Think property, a Roth IRA account, a 401(k), life insurance, stocks and bonds, or anything else that has monetary value.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-build-generational-wealth
Anonymous
Post 07/13/2023 12:20     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:How do you define generational wealth?


Literally the term means when wealth (any money or real assets) are passed from one generation to the next. Any other definition is DCUM bs.


Really? So when grandpa gives a grandkid $20, that's generational wealth? When a parent passes away and leaves $10,000 split between three heirs, that's generational wealth?

If that's really your position, all future conversations regarding generational wealth are pointless.


of you die and your heirs inherit property- that is generational wealth, it is enough to cause the huge wealth gap between Black and white Americans and the gap between white and South-Asian Americans. knowing how to preserve property and pass it on to your heirs even it is a small amount has a snowball effect through the generations- its why poor white Appalachians have measurable more wealth than their equally miserable and same living standard Black peers in the Delta. I had a friend in college who was white and her parents took out a loan on their owned since the revolution small farm on the eastern shore and she was enraged when someone said she was benefiting from generational wealth since she was under so much pressure to pay back that loan and also their lives as small farmers was incredibly labor intensive and lacking in luxury but she was still better off than our peers who had nothing. In fact her family was dumb- their forbears who kept the farm for 200 years even if it was a hardscrabble living were smarter b/c they kept their land mortgage free until this college obsessed generation came along. She is doing well and they still have their farm but they were one pregnancy or drug addiction away from losing inherited property passed on over 2 centuries! generational wealth doesn't mean that you are independently wealthy.


No, inheriting any property at all is not generational wealth. The word wealth means something: inherited property versus inherited wealth.

Also, I mean this in a gentle way, but try and make your sentences shorter. It’s very hard to digest when they are too long. Example: “ I had a friend in college who was white and her parents took out a loan on their owned since the revolution small farm on the eastern shore and she was enraged when someone said she was benefiting from generational wealth since she was under so much pressure to pay back that loan and also their lives as small farmers was incredibly labor intensive and lacking in luxury but she was still better off than our peers who had nothing.”


DP. You are exactly wrong, and PPP is exactly right. “Generational wealth” is a term of art in economics and social science with a specific meaning that’s exactly as PPP said - ANY assets passed from one generation to another. Your boundless confidence is combining with your ignorance to make you seem like a real jerk as you condescend to someone who is trying to educate you.
Anonymous
Post 07/12/2023 12:15     Subject: Re:If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Anonymous wrote:One 2G grandfather left over $13MM when he died ~1912; another, about $4MM at death ~1900. Part of Mrs Astor's "Guilded Age" 400, 5th Ave mansions, the works.

The depression, alcoholism, and marrying impecunious women (including from old-school NY elite families), and in my line, all that's left is a bunch of silver, horse paintings, and brown furniture nobody wants.

The trick to maintaining generational wealth: leveraging your social cachet to marry into other wealthy families. My dad had plenty of 2nd cousins who were fabulously rich because their parents and grandparents married into big-money families.

Marrying into other wealthy families would obviously be beneficial into maintaining generational wealth. But the key is to living off the passive income of the wealth and not drawing down the principal. So if the wealth was in the stock market one would be tapping the dividends but not selling shares. And if in real estate, living off the rental income and not selling the properties.

Not everyone has the same level of financial expertise and interest. If you are not familiar with the Rule of 72 and the concept of deferred gratification and basic concepts of stock market investing, any wealth will diminish over time.

Anonymous
Post 07/12/2023 11:47     Subject: If your family had generational wealth when did it end?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Some people here are confusing basic generational wealth with “dynasty wealth”.


Not really. Generational wealth is a recently invented buzzword that means nothing because the range is enormous and includes everything under the sun and imposes a fake binary. Dynastic wealth has historical precedence.


Generational wealth is not recently invented and you're confusing it because you're thinking it describes a threshold when it actually describes a category of types of transfers. It doesn't impose a binary at all, it's usefulness is a description of a category in which you could divide into any number of levels you want (e.g., reverse generational wealth transfer, no generational wealth transfer, minimal generational wealth transfer, average..., top 10%, top 1%, etc. etc.).


I suspect you, and I, and most people never heard the term used with any meaningful regularity till quite recently. Maybe you can find it being used in arcane academic journals but you are also missing the point. And what you described also showed clearly why "generational wealth" means nothing, as it encompasses everything from a billionaire leaving billions to his children to a working class carpenter who was frugal his entire life leaving a paid off house and 100k to his only child.


Nope, I've heard it in the context of personal finance advising for decades. Estate planning--even for small estates--often uses the term managing generational wealth. Back when they were permitted, stretch IRAs were posed as a tool to create generational wealth for decades. It's a pretty common concept/term for non-super wealthy people when they go to a basic financial planning meeting with advisors and has been for decades.