Several years ago, a speaker at a conference asked a question I’ve never forgotten.
How do you want to allocate your wealth?
At first, I thought he was talking about the very wealthy. If you have more money than you could possibly spend, what do you do with the rest?
But I’ve come to think that’s the least interesting version of the question.
Most of us spend a good part of our lives accumulating. We work. Save. Invest. Buy a house. Pay for college. Build a business. Contribute to retirement plans. Try not to make too many expensive mistakes along the way.
And then, if things go reasonably well, something interesting begins to happen.
The money starts creating choices.
Not unlimited choices. But enough. Enough to begin asking a different question.
What do I want all of this to do?
Ultimately, wealth goes to one of three places: Lifestyle. Family. Community.
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Lifestyle doesn’t have to mean bigger houses, expensive cars, or luxury vacations. Although it certainly can.
Years ago, Steve Harvey did a bit about Michael Jackson’s wealth. His point was that Jackson wasn’t merely rich. He had what Harvey called “giraffe money.”
Michael Jackson actually owned giraffes.
I love the phrase because it establishes an entirely different category. Most of us don’t have giraffe money. I’m not even sure who you call when you decide you need a giraffe.
But lifestyle doesn’t have to mean extravagance. It might mean time. The ability to work less. To travel while you’re still healthy enough to enjoy it. To live near people you care about. Or to spend a year doing something that makes absolutely no economic sense but matters enormously to you.
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Family can mean leaving an inheritance. But it can also mean using money while you’re alive. Education. A first home. Helping a child start a business. Taking the entire family somewhere none of you will forget.
When I think about allocating wealth to family, I think of a different kind of inheritance: my grandparents’ home on Route 2 outside Albany, New York.
I spent nearly every summer there as a kid and eventually moved there for my senior year of high school. It was a humble house with well water and one bathroom. The front of the house looked out to the Poestenkill, across the road. Behind the house were hundreds of acres of dairy farmland.
My favorite thing to do was walk in the hills.
I was almost always accompanied by a dog or two. They would run ahead, bounding through the grass and disappearing into the brush, then circle back to find me before tearing off again. If you’ve ever seen the look on a dog’s face running unbounded through an open field, you know what joy looks like.
The path climbed slowly: pines on one side, an overgrown field on the other. By late summer, the grass rose past my waist, and I’d push through it to keep walking. The air smelled of sun-baked soil and grass gone to seed. Where the trail leveled off and curved, wild blackberries grew along the edge. The best ones grew low to the ground, half-hidden, worth hunting for.
We had a Saint Bernard named Sebastian who learned to pick the berries himself, right off the bush. I’ve never known another dog who did that.
There were cornfields and fallow fields. Marshes thick with cattails. At the right time of year, you could pick one, smack it against a rock, and watch the seeds disappear into the wind.
Some of the happiest days of my life were spent there. Some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten were around my grandparents’ table.
I didn’t think of any of this as wealth, or a family legacy, at the time. I was a kid. It was simply where I spent the summer.
But those walks have stayed with me for more than sixty years. When I’m anxious or feeling a little low, I can still return to them. I can see the fields, smell the landscape, feel a dog walking beside me.
My grandparents’ home was modest. But I don’t have a better word than wealth for what they gave me: the smell of late summer grass, homemade blackberry jam, a dog tearing off into an open field. I don’t think they ever knew what they’d left me.
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Community can mean writing a large check to a university or hospital. Or buying a forest.
I recently read about Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games — the company behind Fortnite. Over the past fifteen years, he has used part of the fortune he made creating video games to buy tens of thousands of acres of land across North Carolina. Not to develop it. To make sure much of it never gets developed. In some cases, he buys environmentally important land and holds it until a conservation group or the state can permanently protect it.
I love the unexpectedness of that. A man who made his fortune creating virtual worlds is using some of it to preserve the real one.
Community doesn’t have to mean putting your name on a building. It can be a local food bank. A scholarship. A museum. Or a piece of forest that may still be there a hundred years from now.
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The interesting thing about these three categories is that there is no correct allocation. And the allocation changes. At 45, most of the money may still be going toward building the life and financial independence you want. At 65, the questions look different. At 85, different again.
Which is perhaps why that original question has stayed with me.
How do you want to allocate your wealth?
Not someday. Now.
Because wealth isn’t just something we accumulate. Eventually, we have to decide what we want it to do.
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Let’s connect to discuss your thoughts on your legacy. You can reach me here.
Warmly,
David
