- Good Idea, Bad Start
- When Opportunity Comes Face to Face with Hard Work and Preparation
- End of an Era
- No Strategic Approach to Wealth Management
- Alarm Bells
- It's Hard to Grow Assets AND Enjoy the Fruits of Success at the Same Time!
- Our Wealth Represented More than Cash
- We Needed to Get a Handle on Our Investment Portfolio
- Introducing Strategic Wealth Management
- We Are Stewards, Not Owners, of Our Wealth
- Taking Control for the First Time
- Philanthropy Has Emerged as a Shared Interest Among Many Family Members
- Closer Family Ties
- The Wealth-Building Legacy of E.A. Stuart
- How My Dad Taught Me the Value of Money
- A Book About Strategic Wealth Management
We Are Stewards, Not Owners, of Our Wealth
As we wrestled with these questions, several things happened:
We began to see ourselves not as owners of our wealth, but as stewards of it. We spoke of the drifting apart of various branches of the Stuart family after Carnation's sale and agreed we didn't want our family to fracture further. So, we decided to reverse the splintering of the Lucas family assets and, together, manage our inherited wealth so that the bulk of it is passed on to future generations.
We decided to base future wealth management decisions and strategies on core family and individual values. Why focus on values first? Values establish a framework for defining your wealth management priorities.
We decided to dramatically restructure our investments and the way we interact with our wealth advisors so that our wealth could help us meet our goals, not someone else's idea of what they should be. If successful, we'd be able to generate new wealth and pass it on to future generations while still enjoying its benefits in this generation.
We realized it was critical to foster family harmony, strong communications, and wealth management leadership. Wealth management and wealth creation are difficult tasks. They require high-order management and leadership competencies, especially when issues of diversified wealth and multigenerational wealth building and transfer are involved. We recognized that this was critical to the successful long-term management of our family's assets, and you will also.