Eric Siu discusses how to pass wealth to the next generation. The Vanderbilt fortune vanished by the second generation, while the Rockefellers preserved theirs across generations. The difference came down to the values John D. Rockefeller instilled in his family.
How should people think about passing on generational wealth to their families?
That's a very hard thing to think about because nobody knows how your kids are going to turn out. You don't have practice being a parent. So best thing you can do is learn from history, learn from others who are successful and who have done it and what went right and what went wrong. In America, the 2 biggest families when you think about that have stories is the Vanderbilt family and the Rockefeller family. The Vanderbilt family basically wiped the whole wealth within second generation after that, versus the Rockefellers continued to pass down that wealth for many, many generations. And the big thing that stood out there was the values that was imparted by John D. Rockefeller to his kids. And then from there onward, there's so much we can learn from those events.
