Intergenerational wealth management

Intergenerational wealth transfer is about to move significant asset values from the accumulators to the next generation.  How will they cope?

Wealth transfer is one of the most difficult financial transitions for those with limited financial literacy or wealth management experience.  Management of new-found assets and wealth, from modest wealth means can be challenging.  Intergenerational wealth is comparable with a lottery win in this respect.

Have you prepared your beneficiaries for the financial dilemma that awaits them when your estate passes to them?

Do you ever reflect on what wealth management skills you learned from your parents?

Can you identify the important financial lessons you have had during your life’s journey?

Are you passing on wealth management skills to your family?

Key intergenerational wealth management topics:

Intergenerational wealth transfer is a growing topic of discussion.  As the ‘baby boomer’s’ life expectancy clocks wind down that level of discussion intensifies.  In Australia, between 2011 and 2030, several billion dollars in financial assets will transfer to next generation(s).  These will come in the form of cash, shares, property and other assets.  Will they be ready to manage what will generally come to them as a lump sum?  For some, it will come as a blessing.   A blessing in the form of financial pressures from raising their families, being relieved.

Such pressures may include servicing a heavy mortgage, funding children’s education, entertaining and caring for their ever-increasing demands.

This naturally leads in to considering the oft-debated issue of financial literacy.  Financial literacy is the knowledge to understand a ‘balance sheet’ and to manage the money that causes it to grow (or diminish).  The academic curricula our schools are delivering rarely pay any attention to this extremely practical and important life lesson.  How much more confident would you feel if your prospective beneficiaries had mature financial skills (i.e., were financially literate?

We learn best from those we love and trust

We would all like to see the education system providing more of the financial life skills that we have acquired through experience.  Most of us feel incapable of passing such skills on to our children and other dependants.  One problem is that teaching financial skills is not compatible with the early development priorities of the education system.  Another is that we are not all capable of ‘teaching’.  In this environment this particular task falls on their parent(s)/ carer(s) – and probably will, for the foreseeable future – to muddle through in many cases.

One of the issues is that children learn from their role models.  They mimic what they observe in the people they love and most trust.  Children see how easily or challenging financial decisions are for you – and they need to learn from you.  They need to learn how to position themselves to make financial decisions more easily.

This is intergenerational wealth management skills learning in practice.

Interceding with financial literacy training

We encourage starting the ‘intergenerational wealth transfer’ process by engaging those financially dependent on you in how you use your money.  An ideal time to start is when they come with financial requests (particularly the less-reasonable requests made from time-to-time).  How do you teach your family the value of money and the relevance of prioritising immediate needs versus longer-term goals?

We each have our own set of circumstances that form the basis of the teaching process we employ for passing on financial skills.  Some possible scenarios include –

• a family unit whose assets abound but cashflow is tight;
• for another, cash flow is being managed to provide for the growth in an asset base;
• for others it may be that cashflow is just tight –

and there will be a range of variables around all of those situations.

So how do we use relevant circumstances to give a positive and constructive experience?

Working to a plan most likely to succeed

Consider your objectives for the lesson.  Take into account the level of understanding of the ‘pupil’.  Be aware of the alternatives that can be present. A plan formulating all of that information will assist in the ‘teaching’.  Over time, you will need to be teaching the pupil about a range of matters.  These might include goal setting, cash flow, capital adequacy, asset characteristics, earnings rates, risk management, and debt management.  You might even perhaps include taxation matters.  It would also be to their advantage to learn how to use the services of professional advisers at relevant stages of their learning journey.  Advisers such as lawyers, bankers, accountant/ tax agents and financial planners should be included in this process.,

There are a number of sources available for you to get a background on these and many other financial topics.  Some are on our own website.  Others include the Commonwealth government’s National Financial Capability Strategy website (https://www.financialcapability.gov.au/) – that is dedicated to the topic. That site has links to another government website: Money Smart Teaching that has excellent tools for this process. It is worth searching around that site for the very valuable material it offers.

The tools are available: it is up to you to set the plan and for intergenerational wealth management skills to be developed by your children and other dependants.

We can assist in teaching the wealth management process

An ideal part of the learning process is for family members to be involved at relevant times in the presentation and explanation of the strategies that you engage your professional wealth advisers to implement. The experienced advisers at Continuum Financial Planners Pty Ltd welcome opportunities to have intergenerational members sit in on the implementation phases of advice.  This is particularly pertinent/ relevant when estate planning strategies are being finalised, but is also beneficial in other circumstances.

To make an appointment to discuss therse matter with one of our advisers –

• phone our office, on 07-34213456, or
• at your convenience, use the linked Book A Meeting facility.

Some of the articles referred to above are linked below:

• goal setting (the articles that include this topic are strategy-related and specific: we suggest searching our Library Page for these key words);
• cashflow, (also family budgeting);
• asset characteristics,
• earnings rates,
• risk management – both personal and investor; and
• debt management.

(This article was originally posted by us in October 2013.  We occasionally update/ refresh it, most recently in June 2025.)