The Short Answer: Generational wealth today isn’t just about leaving your children a significant inheritance. It’s about helping them build financial skills, confidence, and flexibility so they can make good decisions, weather uncertainty, and create fulfilling lives long before any wealth transfer occurs.
Ensuring your children become financially stable doesn’t necessarily mean leaving them everything needed for a comfortable life.
In many cases, the most durable form of generational wealth comes from helping them establish independence, build resilience, and learn how to manage money responsibly.
Post‑pandemic, we’re in the midst of one of the largest wealth transfers in history as baby boomers transfer assets to millennials.
At the same time, millennials themselves are beginning to think about how and when to incorporate generational wealth planning into their own financial lives.
Leaving behind financial resources can be meaningful but helping children develop the judgment and confidence to align those resources with their lives is what allows wealth to endure.
The New Goal of Generational Wealth Planning
Families who approach wealth intentionally today face a vastly different environment than prior generations, marked by technological disruption, economic uncertainty, and rapidly changing career paths.
Most families share similar goals: helping their children pursue education without overwhelming debt, maintain flexibility in their careers, and make confident decisions without relying on financial rescue.
The modern goal of generational wealth isn’t to prevent all hardship or deliver a one‑time windfall later in life. It’s to create options and stability earlier, providing guidance and support while children are building their own financial footing.
Start with Financial Literacy
In our work with families across generations, we see that financial literacy is one of the most impactful life skills—and one of the least intentionally taught.
Two strategies tend to make the biggest difference:
1. Involve Children in Real Financial Decisions
Hands‑on experience is often the most effective teacher. Age‑appropriate exposure to money helps normalize conversations around earning, saving, investing, and spending.
Ways to involve children include:
- Introducing the concept and value of money early
- Demonstrating why saving matters and how it supports long‑term goals
- Encouraging earned income through chores, summer jobs, or part‑time work
- Opening checking or savings accounts as teens, and helping them build simple budgets and set financial goals
- Being open about financial mistakes and lessons learned
The goal isn’t perfection—it’s familiarity and comfort with financial decision‑making.
2. Introduce Professional Guidance Early
Working with a fiduciary financial planning team early in adulthood can be a valuable learning experience, especially when those conversations are thoughtfully integrated into a broader family plan.
Participating in discussions around investing, cash flow, risk, and long‑term planning gives adult children:
- Practical financial education
- Helpful context around family financial decisions
- Confidence navigating more complex financial choices later in life
For current Plancorp clients, this doesn’t mean bringing children or grandchildren into every planning detail. We often meet with our clients’ children separately toprovide age‑ and stage‑appropriate guidance, answer questions, and give them a trusted professional connection of their own, all while respecting privacy and family boundaries.
We believe that involving future beneficiaries in planning conversations may help reduce stress for parents today and help limit the risk of wealth erosion across generations by ensuring heirs are better prepared when transitions eventually occur.
Use Education Savings Strategically
Education often plays a central role in expanding future choices. While no specific path is right for everyone, rising education costs and student loan balances have lasting financial consequences.
Education‑focused savings strategies, such as 529 plans, can help families:
- Set aside funds for qualified education expenses
- Grow assets tax‑advantaged when used as intended
- Reduce future dependence on student loans
When appropriate, involving children or young adults in the savings and planning process builds awareness around cost, tradeoffs, and long‑term value.
For families weighing different ways to save—including education accounts, custodial accounts, or newer options like Trump accounts—Plancorp CIO Peter Lazaroff recently explored the tradeoffs in an episode of The Long Term Investor.
>> Listen Here
Help Build Social and Professional Capital
Financial stability isn’t built in isolation. Introducing children to professionals, mentors, and advisors helps them:
- Gain perspective from experienced adults
- Learn how to ask informed questions
- Build comfort working with bankers, planners, and other professionals
These relationships can become invaluable sources of guidance as children navigate major life and financial decisions.
Consider Gifting Investments Thoughtfully
Parents sometimes choose to gift investments—such as stocks—through custodial or education‑focused accounts. While minors generally can’t directly trade securities, custodial arrangements allow assets to be managed on their behalf until adulthood.
Used thoughtfully, these strategies can:
- Introduce investment concepts early
- Align gifting with long‑term goals
- Provide a practical learning tool as account values change
Because gifting strategies intersect tax, legal, and long‑term planning considerations, families benefit most when these decisions are coordinated within a comprehensive wealth plan.
Support Responsible Homeownership
Real estate can play an important role in financial stability, but today’s housing market presents real challenges for many first‑time buyers. Many families choose to structure support for adult children through:
- Down payments
- Co‑purchasing arrangements
- Investment property ownership
When structured carefully, this kind of assistance can provide a strong learning opportunity around budgeting, maintenance, taxes, and long‑term obligations.
Coordination with a wealth manager can help ensure these decisions align with both the parent’s plan and the child’s ability to sustain ownership responsibly.
Help—But Don’t Enable
Honestly, this is the most important advice but the most difficult to pull off in practice. Providing support doesn’t mean removing accountability. The most effective generational wealth strategies strike a balance between assistance and independence.
Examples may include:
- Charging rent and saving or investing it on a child’s behalf
- Making adult children responsible for upkeep or expenses tied to shared assets
- Gradually transferring responsibility as capability grows
The intention of generational wealth planning isn’t to shield children from effort. It’s to equip them to manage complexity responsibly.
A Long‑Term View of Lasting Wealth
Generational wealth isn’t a single event. It’s a process—one that blends planning, education, and values over time.
There’s no such thing as starting too early. Thoughtful involvement today can help ensure that financial resources, once created, continue to support meaningful and independent lives across generations.
For families who view generational wealth as a long‑term responsibility—not a one‑time transfer—comprehensive planning may provide additional clarity, structure, and confidence across generations.
The advisors at Plancorp partner with families to design strategies that support informed decision-making and wealth stewardship across generations.
