Let’s give credit where it’s due: teaching society to be mindful of the importance of money now AND in the future is commendable.
But most of the lessons teach to our selfish nature, investing for our own personal retirement.
I’d like to invite you to think well past your retirement. Think, instead, about how you can invest for eternity.
Approaching Life with the Basic Needs Met
At some time in your life you became aware of the concept of money and shortly after that you were taught that you’ll need to spend most of your energy and waking hours in pursuit of it.
What if, at the same time you became aware of the concept of money, you were also taught that your basic needs for money will be met and that you can, instead, spend your life pursuing the most interesting things you can conceive?
Cool, right?
Plan Beyond Your Existence
Conceptually, what follows applies most directly to those of us with children, and I’m going to steer the conversation in that direction but want to point out that it doesn’t have to. Spend the time while you’re alive deciding what your legacy will be.
For those of us with kids, let’s try to think way beyond our own time on this earth. Think about what you want your family to look like 20 years out, 100 years out, 1000(!) years out. What decisions can you make today to influence the quality of life and degree of happiness for your family in the future?
RELATED: Is It Financial Freedom or Personal Freedom That You’re After?
Nothing can be guaranteed, but one of the things you can do is work hard to address the financial stressors your future generations will incur by investing in them now.
How To Invest In Your Future Family
I consume a lot of personal finance content, and there’s only one person that I’ve ever heard vocalize this shared sentiment and approach, JL Collins.
JL Collins is the author of The Simple Path to Wealth. In an interview he did on the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast he shared that the primary reason he started a blog was to document his teachings for his daughter, and that his investment strategy extends well beyond the time scale of his own life.
This topic deserves a much deeper exploration and here are some of my ideas on how to lengthen our investment horizon:
Setup passive revenue streams
Passive revenue streams are the ones that deposit money into your account without a continuous exchange of time. Once in place, these passive revenue streams may continue forever:
- Real Estate – arguably the best place to put money for the average person to acquire passive revenue. It’s also a great place to lose a shitload of money, so it has to be done smartly. And when you think of the timeline in terms of generations it becomes much more feasible to wrap your head around. It’s absurd to me that our current societal model is that every generation takes on a lifetime of debt to pay for shelter. Binge out on the Bigger Pockets Podcast for a PhD in real estate investing.
- Royalties – spend your life working on things you love and you might cut an album with your friends, write a book to help humanity, or code an app about investing. Royalties are a possible way to setup a passive revenue stream.
- Inventions – again, if we remove the financial stress that drives us into a life of bondage to income we might be inspired to invent things we are passionate about. Patent royalties are another passive model. And if you tell me you’re not smart enough to invent a patentable product I’m going to point at the path that got you to where you are to inspire you to help the future generations in your family.
- Market Investments – You don’t need any creativity to invest monthly into a total stock market index fund. If you do this religiously over the course of your entire life you’ll amaze even yourself at the wealth you’ll accrue. Read more from JL Collins to learn how Simple this is.
Develop Active Revenue Streams
The boat yard that works on the research vessel that I captain is currently operated by the 3rd generation Jay. Jay started it, passed it to Jay Jr. who is currently working with Jay III.
Jay III and his dad work together every day. There is a part of me that wishes my dad built something with enough opportunity for me to work with him. Not so much for the security, but for the ability to spend way more time with him.
Related: When Your Kids Turn Into Adults
Owning a business is a lot of work, no doubt about it. It’s an active revenue model, but what a great way to pass on generational wealth. Instead, we spend most of our lives working to grow someone else’s wealth.
Diversify Your Strategy
Honestly, how about you just do ALL of those?
I just can’t help but continually realize how silly we are. Who teaches us this stuff?
We spend our lives busting our ass for someone else to take on an ever-increasing amount of debt to dream about the elusive retirement, which, once we reach, we have no idea what to do with ourselves.
Choose a better life.
RELATED: Personal Freedom Does Not Have To Come From Frugality
Document Your Intent
Most businesses don’t last past three generations. Some last for centuries. What’s the difference?
The difference is that the businesses that last for centuries have a clearly defined strategy that is written down, communicated and respected.
That doesn’t mean they always do things because that’s the way Pappy did it. It means that they were smart enough and deliberate enough to have a broad set of principles to guide the business and those principles were broadcast through the ages.
The best way to do that is to document the journey. Take pictures, hang them up, tell stories, take care of people, exercise kindness, write things down and share them with everyone you know.
Maybe that’s exactly what this post is right here. I hope to achieve this level of success and I also hope that my great great grandchildren can revisit this article to give thanks for the leg up on life they have and to understand the way to perpetuate it to their own future generations.
I’m the only one in my family that blogs, which makes me the weirdo, but maybe some year they’ll come around.
Avoid rapid depletion
Isn’t this your biggest fear?
You give a bunch of your hard-earned money to your kids and they blow it?
This might be why our culture holds onto all their money to turn it over in their will only for Uncle Sam to get his greedy hands on it, more on that next, in the meantime, here are some ways to overcome this fear:
- Meter the Payments – The model that leads to abuse is a scarcity mindset suddenly overwhelmed with abundance. Instead, start limited metered payments early and use each payment as an opportunity to educate the intent of the payment and the existence of the investment from which the payment is being made.
- Communicate the Intent – Educate, Educate, Educate. Communicate the intent and teach responsible use of money and investing all the time. The result will be the counterintuitive growth of the investment while dividends are being taken out. Stop making money such a taboo topic.
- Continually Reinvest – With the proper level of education and a responsible withdrawal rate the pool will continue to grow. Reinvest the growing pool into the existing investments or use the growth as opportunity to continuously diversify.
- Cap the Payments – This number will be different for everyone, but to illustrate, I’ll share my goal, which is to grow an egg that can provide $60k a year to each person in my future family in 2018 dollars adjusted for inflation. If someone doesn’t need it, they don’t take it, but nobody gets more. Enough comes before rich, and rich is not the goal.
Avoid Inheritance Tax
My intent with this site and blog is to avoid political drama, but the government will impose itself on your freedoms and you’ll need to find ways to appease The Man while maintaining as much personal freedom as possible.
Perhaps the most shameful practice of our 7000 page tax code is to take money from people when they die. You have my blessing to work around this to the highest degree within the confines of the law. Here are some things to consider:
- Setup a Trust – I must concede that I need to do some more research on this, but my understanding is that if you place your wealth in a trust and put the names of your children on the trust before you die, you can avoid some degree of inheritance tax.
- Transfer Wealth Prior to Death – Die with as little money as possible. Find ways to transfer the wealth prior to your death. This harkens back to the metered payments idea, or could be as extreme as passing all your money and property to your children in exchange for repayment to meet your monthly expenses.
- Invest in Precious Metal and Crypto – Investing in precious metal is a great idea for many reasons, and technically, it would be reported and transferred at death, but if you hide it somewhere, and forget about it, well…mistakes happen. I’m talking a pirate’s chest of one-ounce coins of silver. Crypto is another way to anonymously transfer money. Again, one that is supposed to be reported, and maybe someday the fed will achieve the control they desire over this, but for the time being, this could be a tool in the tool chest.
DISCLAIMER: This is all probably pretty bad advice, so please consult someone more qualified like a tax attorney and CPA before taking any action at all. I’m just an idiot putting shit on the Internet.
Be Selfish and Philanthropic
If you’re starting from less than nothing get yourself out of debt, that’s a top priority.
If you’re doing ok, keep it up and plan for getting old, that’s smart and your future self will thank you.
If you have a nest egg growing, refocus the lens on the definition of the future. Think beyond yourself and into as many generations ahead of you as your mind allows.
That is, perhaps, the finest form of philanthropy and the best place to leave a legacy.
To the future,
NHMan
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