Navigating Abundance Foundations: The Idea of Total Family Wealth

Hello and welcome to navigating abundance. My name is Chris Tanke.

Navigating abundance is all about advancing the pursuit of total family wealth. Our mission is to encourage affluent families to both recognize and then realize their total family wealth potential. You know, there’s never been a time in human history where so many have had so much. In fact, over the last 50 years, wealth has become quite a democratic occurrence.

I have in my hands a 2024 report from the Altratus Group, what they call their World Ultra Net Worth Report, which is quite startling in the numbers. they say in 2024, 426,000 individuals across the entire globe were worth $30 million or more. 426,000. In the United States alone, the ultra-high net worth population has increased 13 % to 147,915, which means the United States now represents over a third of the world’s ultra-high net worth population. The takeaway on this is more and more enterprising families are really beginning to come to grips with the fact that with significant wealth comes significant stewardship.

The good book says, whom much is given, much is required. Now, you don’t need to be a person of faith to understand that axiom, because the truth is significant wealth opens up a world of opportunities, but it also ushers in some problems. You are not alone in that proposition. Now, I’ve jotted down a few thoughts that you might have as you consider your own abundance. You might have asked yourself before, how much is too much to give to my

children or grandchildren, right? You don’t want to ruin them. Can they handle it? Will they be able to have productive lives if they have too many resources and those sorts of things? These are the kind of questions that significant wealth causes us to ask. How do I plan on passing my faith and values along to my children and grandchildren? Because in the end, that is probably one of the most important things that matters about your life. It may be while you’re here at all at this point is to make sure you do that. Another question that might come into mind is how do we avoid a spirit of entitlement to my children or grandchildren? I mean, how much should we be giving them now? Will that cripple them if we assist them too much? I mean, if you’re a Gen 1 wealth producer, you might have started from nothing. Gen 2 might not even understand that. That creates a whole series of problems in and of itself. How do you prepare them to enjoy this wealth, to be responsible for this wealth without actually crippling them? How do you encourage a spirit of benevolence amongst your family? One of the things navigating abundance is going to be strong at helping you realize one of the most valuable things you could possibly do is to get your family and whatever generations of the family to understand how important it is to give back. I think that’s key to being successful with generational transfer of wealth.

Some other questions. My kids aren’t at all like me, right? How do I make group decisions with them? But we don’t seem to come to agreement. We come from different worlds. And sure, you might again be an entrepreneur, a business builder. Your kids aren’t. They want to be artists. How do you, and you love them, but how do you make decisions together? And you’d best learn how to do that because you’re going to be handing the baton to them in the future. Now is the time to start doing that. I know a lot of you have been thinking about that.

How often do we hold family meetings? Should we have family meetings? And if we do have a family meetings, do our children enjoy them? Or is it just a drudgery? Are they just checking a box? What is the value there for you? What’s our philosophy as a family on prenuptial agreements? Now there’s a hot topic. And boy, you could be all over the board on that one. Do you have mutual agreement on how this looks and how you’re going to communicate to somebody if they are on the receiving end of a prenup agreement?

Your family business succession plan is a big deal. You spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of thought on that. That’s something that when you didn’t have abundance, it wasn’t at all in your head. Estate taxes, right? Are you going to have a slat, a dynastic trust, an irrevocable life insurance trust? How are you going to handle that? Currently, estate taxes are at $27 million per couple. As a threshold, the unified credit, it’s scheduled to go to $12 million unless some changes are enacted or extended. It’s been all over the board. That’s a big deal. When you have abundance, how do we handle that? Family office design. Do I need a family office? Do I need a multiple family office? Should I be involved with a virtual family office? Do I not? Should I just do a DIY project family office? All sorts of things you can do. But these are things that come to mind. Of course, these are just a sampling of the kinds of questions concerns, even ideas that rise to the surface of significant wealth. And truthfully, it can be quite overwhelming. You probably feel ill prepared to address your abundance and that’s as it should be your human being and the quest to the navigation of abundance, to being a good steward of your wealth is a significant one. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the most important quest you will ever take on in your life.

And I believe it’s while you’re still here on the earth is to accomplish it. What do we do? I mean, do we stay paralyzed? Do we just like cower away and just, you know, whatever happened will happen? No, no, no. We’ve got to figure this out together. And while we don’t have all the answers, Navigating Abundance as an organization is here to come alongside you and to discover those answers together. That’s what we’d like to do. Okay, let’s clarify what we mean by total family wealth.

And you have up in front of you now, illustration of that that we can take a look at. Your family wealth is found in three different categories. These categories are specific, although there’s cross pollination, I think it’s best to think of whatever is valuable to you as to be underneath one of these three different groups. You have your ledger wealth, which is your financial capital, you have your logistic wealth, which is your functional capital, and your legacy wealth, which is your family capital. You need all three to successfully navigate abundance. You cannot say, well, I like two out of the three. You won’t get where you need to go. So total family wealth consists of all three, like a three legged stool, you can’t afford to lose a leg, it’ll all come crashing down.

So your ledger wealth is what we normally would think of as a, what are you worth, right? This is the world standard as it were. And of course, it’s your financial capital. We don’t have to go into what is unfolded in that. And that’s well and good. It needs to be managed, needs to be looked after. It’s a good stewardship. But so is your logistical wealth. And I know that you know this, guess, subconsciously, but I just want to say it out loud. Your logistical wealth is very valuable to you.

And you spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to create this. I think you need to give this, I guess, more credit. Your logistical wealth is your functional capital. It’s what makes the ledger wealth and legacy wealth work. These could be the advisory team that you put together, the financial plans, the business succession plans that you’ve created, which frankly some of you have spent millions of dollars on and thousands of professional hours to create your wills and trusts similarly so, or even your family office model, whatever you’re following from multi to single to virtual to DIY, whatever that is, you’ve put together teams of professionals in all of these areas to serve your ledger wealth needs and your legacy wealth needs. Don’t discount that. That is something really to appreciate. It is wealth to you.

And then finally, your legacy wealth, that’s your family capital. I would suggest your ledger wealth and logistical wealth is there to support your legacy wealth. That is really the whole purpose of the whole thing. These are, of course, your relationships and your family spirit and your family wellness and education and philanthropy and decision making and all that stuff. We’re going to talk more about that in the next foundational video. We’re going to expand on this. But for now know that

When we talk about total family wealth, this is what we’re going to bat for your ledger wealth, your logistic wealth and your legacy wealth. And here’s the thing. Here’s the irony. And I just want to talk to you for a second. And I know you’re going to get this right away. But isn’t it true that we spend 90 % of our time and our money and our energy and yet, 100 years from now, what’s really going to matter? Your legacy wealth.

So one of the things you’re going to see as you involve yourself with navigating abundance community is we’re going to be emphasizing maybe a little bit more of the legacy wealth than maybe you’re used to with other resources that you’re availing yourself to. That’s what we think is a really smart idea. So obviously this is not going to be very easy, but that’s okay. Your family is worth it.

At Navigated Abundance, we’re trying to provide what we would call a success formula to encourage you to actually accomplish it because human nature is, and if you’re at all like me, I might know what I should be doing, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. I need somebody to prod me to take what I know so that I can change my life with it and apply it. We don’t mean to be presumptuous upon you, we don’t even know you, but that’s going to be some of the spirit behind of what we’re trying to do. We’re looking for action, we’re looking for change.

So the success formula or success equation that we apply is this. Information plus inspiration equals transformation. Let me say that again. Information plus inspiration equals transformation. Think of it this way. If you’re heavy on information, but you’re light on inspiration, you’re only having an intellectual exercise. If you’re heavy on inspiration, but you’re light on information, you’re only having an emotional experience. So as I come in for a landing now, let me say out loud what we all know to be true about navigating abundance. The calling is noble. The execution is challenging. So how do we at Navigating Abundance encourage you to rise up to meet that challenge?

Well, I think the best illustration would be to think in terms of what a personal trainer does for you to get you into shape. We all know the odds of succeeding go up dramatically if we were to hire a personal trainer, somebody to meet us there three times a week when we meet at the gym door, right? Why is that? What does that person provide that we can’t do on our own? Well, two essential ingredients for success. Number one, they provide information.

Number two, they provide inspiration and we need both to succeed. Information, they say here’s how you use the equipment, here’s what you should be eating, here’s you should be stop eating, here’s what our progression chart is going to look like, here’s how your muscle mass will change with this exercise versus another. They provide all that for us. We need to have that knowledge.

But truthfully, if that’s all we had, if they just left us and turned around and walked away and said good luck, it probably wouldn’t happen. We need inspiration. We need that person to hold us accountable. We need that person to go to us, to prod us on, to get it done, to be our cheerleader. You need both inspiration and information. That’s the only way we experience transformation.

So I would say navigating abundance contribution to the space of total family wealth is that of that formula. Inspiration plus information equals transformation. We are going for nothing less than change lives. We’re all about seeing transformation happen in affluent families. Is that a lofty goal? Heavens yes. How are we going to accomplish it? We’re not exactly sure, but we do know that there is no other goal reasonable for us to have to even exist. We’re going to work hard to inform and inspire. So where do we go from here? Well, I would encourage you to watch podcast number two in our foundational series. In that podcast, I’ll be sharing with you the three dynamic principles you just cannot afford to ignore if you have any hopes at all at succeeding in navigating your own abundance.

Thanks for spending some time with me. This is Chris Tanke with Navigating Abundance, reminding you, your family is worth it.