I spent Saturday with my friend Doug Freeman and his partner Victoria Collins at a taping for 60 Minutes Australia about the financial and life skills program for the kids of the rich at the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine founded by Doug, Victoria and Lee Hausner.

And when I say rich, I mean it.

Doug, Victoria and Lee teach courses aimed at the kids of families who have $100 million dollars or more with the median in their last class $250 million.

I’m looking forward to being on faculty for their future programs and taking their curriculum and making it accessible to families with much more modest wealth who have the same concerns as the wealthiest American families about the passage of family wealth. Doug said that the #1 concern of the wealthiest families is whether their kids will be ready to receive their wealth.

My thinking about it is that whether you are passing on $250 million or $1 million, you should have the same concern.

Maybe even more so if you are passing on less because there are a lot fewer chances to make mistakes when you’re only working with $1mm than if you’ve got 250 more where that came from!

And, if you are not planning to pass on at least $1 million if you died today, you’d better call your life insurance agent tomorrow and make plans to get some additional insurance in place right away.

Email us to get a complimentary article on what type of insurance you should have - term, permanent, variable, whole, universal - before you buy!

During the taping, we got to talking about the ideal age to start talking to kids about money and I was shocked to hear some of the participants say that their parents never really talked to them about money.

If you aren’t talking to your kids about money, why aren’t you?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll give you some ideas about the best time to start talking to your kids about money and what to say and when at each age.

© 2007 Alexis Martin Neely

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WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com”

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A couple of months ago, I felt something in my breast. It felt like a big movable mass.

Yikes!

I didn’t think much about it, but all the sudden noticed it again a couple weeks ago.

My hands couldn’t keep away from it. I found myself constantly checking to see if it was still there.

Then, it started to hurt.

I was getting nervous, so I made a house call to my doctor (my good friend Arlene is an ER doctor, so we barter concierge medicine service for personal legal services!) and she checked it out for me.

A lump. 2cm wide. She drew a picture on a prescription pad, told me to call up our friend (and client of mine) who is a radiologist at Torrance Memorial and get it checked out.

I breastfed my kids for so long that there is virtually no chance that it’s breast cancer, but better safe than sorry about these sorts of things.

So, off I went for a mammogram and an ultrasound.

Fortunately, everything checked out a-OK! But, the whole experience made me even more grateful that I had recorded my Priceless Conversation for my kids recently.

And, I found out that the guidelines for breast self exams have changed. Apparently, the circle motion is out ladies! Get more information here. For anyone that is in the Los Angeles area you can attend a free Breast Health Lecture at Torrance Memorial from 5p to 6p on December 6, 2007. Call 310-784-6335 to sign up.October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If you’re age 40 or older, join the millions of women who get mammograms on a regular basis and encourage the women in your life to get mammograms on a regular basis. You can have all the family wealth in the world, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing at all.

© 2007 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexis’ www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com”

I see a lot of families wasting their family wealth because the younger generations can’t access it without strings attached.

See, I think of Family Wealth as resources that belong to all the generations of a family, at least if you want it to grow from one generation to the next.

The single best way to stifle the growth of your Family Wealth is to hoard it and only dole it out if you can control it.If you hoard it until you die, your children are likely to be in there 50s/60s and 70s before they take control of it.

By then, they are generally far past their best and most creative earning years.Instead, if you intentionally share it while your kids are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, you’ll give them the tools to grow it and create more for your future generations.

Now, don’t think that I’m telling you to just drop your dollars on your kids and hope for the best … far from it!

What I am saying is to determine how much you can comfortably make available to your adult children.

Then, sit down with them and ideally with your Personal Family Lawyer and structure a plan for making this money available to your kids for specific purposes, such as:

1. Grandchildren’s private school education.

2. Support the creation of a business that your child would love to start, but doesn’t think he/she has the funds.

3. Getting specialized training that will allow your child to realize a dream.

4. Attend a personal development retreat or course.

Any one of these would increase your overall Family Wealth; in contrast hoarding it until you die just means more estate taxes for your family and Family Wealth that decreases at each generation.

Talk to your Personal Family Lawyer today.

© 2007 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com”

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As you might recall, I was invited to the Mike and Juliet Show to discuss the case of breastfeeding mom, Sophie Currier, who asked for extra break time so she could pump breastmilk for her daughter during her medical board exams.

Thanks for making it okay to ask Sophie!

© 2007 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com“

When I was growing up, I got at least $100 every time I saw my aunts, uncles and grandparents. In my family, love was expressed with money.

I was totally unaware of it until I went back to Florida a few weeks ago and my kids and I came home with a pocketful of loot!

The weirdest part is that I’m fairly certain I’m making a boatload more money than just about everyone that gave me money, but I realize now it was never about my need.

They give me money because, to my family, that’s how you show love.

I don’t remember my parents ever governing what I did with that money. I don’t remember any direct lessons about giving or saving; but, I learned plenty indirectly.

I never heard my parents talk about their own giving, though I did see them get dressed up for charity events. Saving was never overemphasized in my household. And my ex’s family had equally dysfunctional money behaviors.

My parents lived from paycheck to paycheck ramping up their expenses along with their income, like most people. My in-laws were 3rd generation Crosleys who lived from trust distribution to trust distribution.

Neither my children’s dad nor I learned very healthy money habits.

And I can see clearly how it set us both back. I want to help Kaia and Noah to have healthier money behaviors.

So, I spent Sunday morning helping Kaia write thank you notes, divide out her money into SPEND, SAVE, and GIVE piles, and open a bank account to deposit her SAVE pile from the Florida booty. It totaled $230, and Noah collected an even amount!

I gave her guidelines but allowed her to determine how to divide the money. She could pick any amount to SPEND, but an equal amount would go into GIVE and the rest would go into SAVE.

She chose to put $30 in each of GIVE and SPEND and $170 in SAVE. I had received a $25 account opening bonus from ING.

I explained to her that she’d be getting interest on her money, and she’s super excited that the bank is giving her money without her doing anything.

Let me tell you that doing all that was not easy – Kaia complained through most of it, but I stuck with it with the hopes that she’ll learn early that money is not to be hoarded and the more she invests in herself and gives away, the better return she’ll see on her investments.

If you missed my interview with Financial Literacy for Kids expert Lori Mackey, owner of Prosperity4Kids.com, get it; you’ll learn more strategies to prepare your kids for massive wealth.

You can download it for $9.95 here or get a CD for $19.95 here. Or, even better, you can (and should!) join your Personal Family Lawyer’s Family Wealth VIP Membership program.

© 2007 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com”

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