What kind of inheritance do you desire to leave for your family?
“An inheritance quickly gained at the beginning will not be blessed at the end.” (Proverbs 20:21)
What do you want to leave the future generations of your family after you’re gone? What do you want to leave your children? What do you want to leave your grandchildren? Your great grandchildren? Beyond? Would you prefer to leave them money or wisdom?
Did you know that money usually disappears 3 generations from the time it was earned? No matter how much money it is, it evaporates. Why is this? Because money without wisdom is worthless. More than that, it is a great temptation towards evil in our lives. And yet, most people simply leave money behind once they’re gone without any further instructions or strategy to future generations.
Wouldn’t it be far more wonderful to pass on your life wisdom and skills as part of the inheritance to your children than to simply leave material or monetary blessings! Indeed, I think you would rather teach them how to fish than just give them some “dry” fish. Imagine, even the fish you give them will be alive and produce many more which will fill up their ponds as well.
If you’re like most of our clients, you’d much prefer to leave your knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and values behind than simply leaving cash. God originally designed the world so that wisdom would be passed down through our seed to our children. That the growth in likeness towards God would have no end in His Sons and that all this wisdom and understanding would pass on to the next generation through this seed. However, this design was broken with the Fall and now we must each grow into the likeness of God through Christ.
But it is still our duty and pleasure to impact our family in every way that we can. They can go further if we can transfer what we have learned to them. This transfer of knowledge and wisdom is far more important than simply giving cash. That’s as far as we’ll go with that train of thinking in this section, but it’s important to say here before we springboard into the next point.
Assuming we’ve transferred all the wisdom and knowledge that we’ve acquired to our children and theirs, wouldn’t they be able to do a whole lot more with it if it came with the backing of financial resources? Of course it would.
But let me ask you this, even with the best teaching, do you think someone can be an excellent money manager if they’ve never had any, and you drop millions in their lap? Probably not! So what is the best way around this?
One family’s solution has been to create a family bank. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Rothschild’s? Beginning in the 1700’s, Mayer Rothschild created a small fortune. He taught his sons, who continued to pass wisdom, and money on. In order to preserve both, the family was required to meet once a year to reaffirm the family’s values. Any member of the family who wanted to start a business venture could then petition to borrow from the family bank. This enabled the older members of the family to give wisdom and make sure that the ideas were in line with their beliefs.
“Wealth [not earned but] won in haste or unjustly or from the production of things for vain or detrimental use [such riches] will dwindle away, but he who gathers little by little will increase [his riches].” (Proverbs 13:11)(Amp)
This strategy also ensured that there was a place for all members of the family to share experiences of successes and failures so that all members of the family could gain in wisdom from these experiences each year. And it also ensured the increase of the family bank. It provided family members with opportunity that most never have, while still maintaining direction and responsibility that those who do receive money typically never get.
Does the Rothschild family bank sound similar to the Banking Concept that we’ve been discussing? Your family would certainly want to pass different wisdom and values than theirs, but do you see the power of replication that they ensured?
As you’ve been going through life utilizing life insurance policies to make your own banking profits, these same tools become a perfect vehicle to continue your wisdom onto future generations with even more assets than you had while living.
This is Part 11 in a series on Whole Life Insurance. You might want to read the introduction to this series which will link to each post in the explanation of whole life and Ben’s story showing how whole life is used in a variety of ways in his life.
