5 Hints for Navigating Your Family’s Wealth Transitions

Expanding your options around later-in-life conversations.

Baby boomers like me still control 70% of investible assets in the U.S. and there is a lot of money in motion right now. In fact, it’s estimated the transition pool is around $60 trillion. My interest is that when generational money is in motion, the whole family is in motion—meaning that our relationships, roles, responsibilities, and family’s futures are impacted by baby boomer’s (my) planning choices and decisions.

Our research has found that while the majority of baby boomers say they are having conversations with their families around wealth transitions and other later-in-life topics, they often aren’t talking about the topics that are most important to them. They report not knowing how to start conversations, not feeling prepared to have them, or being worried conversations may lead to conflict.

One reason I founded the Fidelity Center for Family Engagement (FCFE) is to help families have productive and positive conversations around wealth. When that can happen, families build what I call Wealth-Intimacy. It is a hyphenated phrase I created to remind us all that in the context of relationships and families, wealth and wealth transitions are always about intimacy.

Here are a few “intimacy hints” to get you started in having conversations with your family around wealth transitions and later-in-life conversations.

1. Tease out your later-in-life choices and decisions

A wealth transition isn’t a “one and done” event. It’s a later-in-life process filled with choices and decisions, such as gifting to individuals (or organizations), dividing family heirlooms and assets, selecting a health and financial power of attorney, creating trusts, and sorting out roles and responsibilities within the family.

Who do you want to be your executor or trustee? Who are the beneficiaries to your accounts, and have you spoken to them? The process becomes even more complicated when you have a blended family like mine. As you think through these things, try to tease out the different topics and issues and view them as a series of choices and decisions (and conversations) rather than one big problem to solve.

2. Think of your family as a system

A family is much more than a collection of individuals who happen to be related by blood or marriage. I think of a family as an interconnected system that is wired together. Our choices and decisions are not just about what we want to do, but how our actions may impact the whole system, often for generations.

When we have this mindset and approach, it tends to prompt more intentional and expansive conversations about wealth transitions and later-in-life topics. Get in the habit of asking yourself a two-sided systems question: “Who will my choices and decisions impact?” … and … “Will my approach create more closeness or distance in our system?”

3. Give voice and possibly vote

When we build wealth and accumulate assets like houses and jewelry over a lifetime, we tend to think of it as “ours.” And that can lead to thinking of the choices and decisions we face as ours and ours alone. But once we understand how our choices and decisions impact the whole system, it sets up a guiding principle: When someone is impacted by a decision, they should minimally have a voice and maybe a vote.

Let’s say you are planning to downsize your home. You may want to ask your children for their feelings and wishes around everything from the change itself, to the location, to the family possessions you may want to get rid of, to the new life-stage needs. Asking doesn’t mean they have a vote on the downsizing. But inviting perspectives expands the conversation and sets you up to talk about how the decision is impacting your system. And it opens the door to other important later-in-life intimate conversations.

4. Practice peership

I write a lot about peership because I believe it is the developmental goal of families. I also view it as a critical condition for conversations around wealth transitions and later-in-life topics. Peership is simply a feeling of mutuality and respect we have when engaging in conversations. Here is the problem. Wealth transition and later-in-life topics often get locked in parent-child hierarchy and generate what we describe as hierarchy behaviors. They can look like one-way disclosures, lack of willingness to talk, deciding when to talk, or push back and shutdown.

In contrast, peership behavior is fueled by curiosity and questions. Both generations can practice peership by asking curious questions about their different views, interests, wishes, and fears around the choices and decisions that are being made.

5. Change the trajectory

One of my core philosophies around change is the concept of changing the trajectory—taking small actions now that will significantly change outcomes through time. Think about the one, two, or three small things you might do around wealth transitions that would expand the generational conversation in your family system.

For example, surprise your family with open-ended questions like, “What would bring you peace of mind around our planning?” Or “Where do you need more transparency?” Or, even more bold, “What are your wishes and fears around our later-in-life planning and wealth transition?” You’ve got to admit these are curious questions, and they could definitely change the trajectory of your family and wealth transitions.