'Twas ever thus

I was reading my pastor's thoughts on the novel The Emperor's Children (Have No Clothes) by Claire Messud. You can find them at :

http://drtscott.typepad.com

Part of the discussion is about young 20 and 30-somethings trying to make it in the world, and how the deck may be stacked against them like never before, along with the fear that our greatest generations are behind us and the current and future ones are too selfish and spoiled to rise to the previous levels. I'm paraphrasing because I haven't read the book--the review just inspired my thoughts below:

I heard (and can still occasionally hear) the same thing said about my generation, the "slacker" Generation X. I did believe some of it, and gave some credence to the excuses X-er's gave in advance for not making it in this world, including the economy, high prices of everything, job exports, etc. And yet, on the verge of 40, I and most people I grew up with are providing for themselves and their families, and some are wildly successful. I can't think of anyone living in their parents' basement, but I know they exist. I just don't think they exist in greater numbers than they used to.

I think we're taking longer to be independent because education seems to take longer these days, so more people are opting for college and post-graduate degrees than they used to.

As a side note, someone told me this weekend that in his family, the degree of success among the siblings turned out to be inversely proportionate to their grade point averages. This doesn't mean slackers will always win, but it does mean you probably shouldn't bet on the "most likely to be successful" polls in high school.

I also heard when I started that the Baby Boomers weren't saving enough, so there'd be a huge retirement crisis looming. And yet I also read the next 30-40 years will be the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen, from those same Boomers. The truth lies somewhere in between. And my 15 years of working with peoples' estates shows me that there are savers and spenders in each generation, and that each generation worries about the irresponsibility of the younger ones.

In our estate planning, it's difficult to know best how to pass down the parents' values to their children, especially with a wealth-transfer plan. The easier answer is that if the values haven't been passed down by the time of the parents' deaths, it's probably too late. We can help in crafting a plan that will help achieve objectives, like funds for education of the family, encouraging certain prudent investment strategies, preserving the wealth for children while allowing them freedom to start a business or freedom from large house payments, and guarding the wealth during substance abuse problems and other crippling addictions while allowing it to be used for treatment. We can also plan to avoid the wealth, if it's large enough, to help enhance beneficiaries' lives without demotivating them from working and the loss of self that comes from that demotivation.

I may still tell my children they don't know how good they have it, but I also know they probably won't realize it until they're much, much older, and I can forgive them for that--I didn't realize it myself until I was a father. I'll remind them of this when they're subjected to whatever the "slacker" term is for the class of 2016.