Raised Healthy, Wealthy & Wise - by Coventry Edwards-Pitt
ISBN: 0996056300Date Read: I read it initially in 2023 and reread it 3/19/2024
Recommendation: 10/10
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While I did not inherit money, I wanted to study what are the principles to avoid screwing up my kids due to money. This book, which quotes inheritors directly, gives a lens with very practical and direct perspectives. I appreciate that honesty as it feels more authentic. It is a self-published book. The main takeaway is how to allow your children to struggle so that they develop the required personal attributes that are the base for satisfaction. The book includes specific examples of how to do that. What's lovely is all the quotes from the children themselves that express an appreciation for the specific challenges and how it has been the source of their self-worth and life satisfaction.
Don't steal your children's satisfaction by soothing your own fears
we are continually reminded that children are proudest of themselves when they feel they have achieved their success on their own.
Practice is the only way to learn, so to prepare for adult life they must be able to earn money, have personal goals, their own self of self outside of money, and experience setbacks and experience that they can overcome them
Children are well launched into adult life when they: 1- have a demonstrated ability to earn their own money 2- are motivated toward achieving personal goals 3- have a solid sense of self that is not wrapped up in issues related to wealth, and 4- can overcome setbacks.
Freedom, Mastery, and Purpose are joined with happiness, which requires occasional sadness to appreciate happiness. I also see play and flexibility.
“The good life is best construed as a matrix that includes happiness, occasional sadness, a sense of purpose, playfulness, and psychological flexibility, as well autonomy, mastery, and belonging,” wrote researchers Robert Biswas-Diener and Todd B. Kashdan in Psychology Today. “Parsing the good life into a matrix is more than linguistic trickery; shifting toward a mixed-bag view of well-being opens more paths to achieving a personally desirable life.”
Never eliminate the striving.
Love your child enough to set limits. Don’t rescue your child. Allow them to fail and/ or experience the logical consequences of their behavior and recover. Encourage them to make their own decisions and to live with the consequences. Yes, be supportive, but do so in a way that rewards them when they strive to succeed, rather than eliminates the need for them to strive in the first place.
It's too easy to eliminate your own pain, but doing that hurts your child.
“Being a parent, you have to incur the pain,” he said, “and the pain is watching your kids struggle.”
Good job SO FAR. The addition of "so far" allows for celebrating the now and allowing creating an expectation for a better future.
‘Good job so far, but we bet you can do even better,’” Dr. Taylor writes, “he is more likely to face his discomfort and attain a higher level of achievement and satisfaction.”
Sharine family history when there was no money creates a belief in Self which is more dominant than the belief in the current pile of money
the results showed that the children who knew more about their family’s history had a stronger sense of control over their lives, as well as higher self-esteem and a stronger belief in the health of their families.
Money values show up so quickly. Is it about showing up for others like showing up at the right parties or is it about spending time with family
It’s critically important for wealthy parents to work through and articulate thoughts about money values for themselves, and align themselves with their spouses, so they can proactively find opportunities to model these behaviors for their children.
Engagement in life combined with the inevitable challenges that rise is required for happiness.
“Wealthy kids don’t have to bust their asses to find the thing that will make them money, and so they have to find what makes them happy,” explained Peter, a writer in his mid-30’ s who provides promotional copy for studios out in L.A. “Obviously that’s a beautiful thing to be able to do, but the fact is, it’s also incredibly stressful.” Introspective and determined, Peter struggled to find work in the creative world early in his career, and relied on supplements from his family’s money to see him through lean times in the business. Being dependent in this way was profoundly uncomfortable for him, and he spent many years in therapy trying to untangle his relationship between making money, spending it, and using family money—and figuring out what it all meant in terms of love and life satisfaction. “There’s the perception that you [affluent kids] should have a lead in figuring this out. It [money] makes procrastination a whole lot easier; it makes being distracted a whole lot harder to fight against because you don’t have that hunger,” he said. “You just have to find it from within yourself.” Wealthy parents can help children find and use this hunger. When parents encourage children to experience the joys and inevitable aggravations of working, they are helping them learn fundamental lessons that are difficult for them to learn in any other way. As we discussed earlier, children need to experience challenge in order to grow. “Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason,” wrote research psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a scholar of the concept of flow. Flow is a desirable mental state during which you are immersed in a feeling of energized focus, involvement, and enjoyment of process—and Csikszentmihalyi stressed, “The prerequisite for happiness is the ability to get fully involved in life.”
"Key factors help individuals thrive: 1- positive emotion 2- engagement with what one is doing 3- good relationships 4- a sense of meaning and accomplishment" - Martin Seligman
Experimental psychologist Martin Seligman, who outlined the twenty-four character traits he believes contribute to making people happy and successful, wrote in his latest book, Flourish, that these key factors help individuals thrive: positive emotion engagement with what one is doing good relationships a sense of meaning and accomplishment33 Work contributes significantly to our chances of experiencing each of these. Without the opportunity to engage with the outside world in a meaningful way, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to learn about others and ourselves. Seligman also emphasizes that people of any age can be taught focus, delayed gratification, and grit—all of which are important to developing a sense of potential and purpose.
Five Challenges 1- Trust 2-Autonomy 3-Initiative 4-Industrious 5- Identity
Erikson believed that in order to develop a healthy personality, a young person must learn to deal with and overcome five basic challenges that correlate with specific developmental milestones. These challenges are: building an attitude of basic trust, developing autonomy, using initiative, being industrious, and having a clear sense of personal identity. He believed that when these challenges are met and survived, the child has a greater chance of being psychologically intact.
Although people fear failure, it is in the struggle where autonomy is born
wealthy kids often feel alienated from “regular” folks and can be distrustful as a consequence. Autonomy becomes hard to establish if inheritors do not value or take pride in their accomplishments, and attribute them to money and position rather than to ability. Feeling inadequate and dependent on others can lead to guilt (we heard a lot about this, even from our successful inheritors). Fear of failure and lack of purpose in turn diminish initiative and industry. Parents’ own successes combined with their continued interference often overshadow their children’s hopes and dreams, and can foster and even exacerbate this insecurity. And yet in our interviews we heard stories of struggle and triumph that suggest inheritors are by no means destined to immaturity and dissatisfaction because of their experiences growing up in affluence. Over and over again, we heard a strong undercurrent of pride when young people felt ownership of the money they were spending, when they were able to call the shots in their own lives, and when they felt free of meddling parental oversight. They learned from their mistakes and enjoyed their independence. These inheritors were able to form appropriate expectations about how to live independently driven adult lives. They enjoyed the feeling of self-directed striving toward individual pursuits and the satisfaction of hard-earned successes. But in order for their children to pass these valuable and necessary milestones, parents had to be willing to let them strike out on their own first.
Setting a clear distant boundary like 'after college' and repeating it over time is how to get the message across
“There was always the expectation that after college they [the parents] were done,” she explains. “I was smart enough to know that I needed to have some kind of path so I could get a job and live on my own.” By the time she graduated college, she already had a strong sense of her independence and capabilities.
Framing the gift as everything you get but money is beautiful
“As you know, you have been given a great gift from your parents—that is the head on your shoulders, your education, your humility, and your strong values, among many other blessings. The trust is a resource that you have to assist you to fulfill your goals and ambitions and to provide you with a level of financial security. It will never replace the satisfaction you will get from your own successes that I am sure you will have in life.” Parents and trustees who emphasize this message do a great service to their kids.
Fixed rules for any giving
There’s value in hard work. You may have to try a number of things before you find what you really love. While you are finding what you really love, give every effort, no matter how menial, your best shot—you’ll learn from it. And last but not least: there are established (and fixed) parameters within which we as parents will provide financial support.
Happiness comes from engagement
“We don’t find happiness by looking within. We go outside and immerse in the world,” writes Segovia. “It’s our daily struggles that define us and bring out the best in us, and this lays down the foundation to continuously find fulfillment in what we do even when times get tough.”
Love to use games and not allow the children to win. In this they learn to enjoy the satisfaction of playing the game regardless of outcome.
“Adaptive competitiveness is characterized by perseverance and determination to rise to the challenge, but it’s bounded by an abiding respect for the rules,” they write. “It’s the ability to feel genuine satisfaction at having put in a worthy effort, even if you lose.”
Being open while not allowing the money to control the child's life seems ideal. If you are not open, then when they actually get the money they don't know what to do with it.
Our interviews revealed that the optimal approach is in the middle, and that inheritors felt best launched into their own lives when the following was true: Their parents were honest about the fact that they had money. The children viewed the money as their parents’ money that they worked hard for (and not as their own). Or, if the parents inherited it, the kids understood that the money belonged to a tradition of family wealth that existed before their parents and would carry on beyond their lives. The kids knew the money would eventually come to them but not when and not how much. In the meantime, the kids were free to design their own lives and be independently productive, not overly influenced by the family wealth or by the anticipation of their inheritance.
A Thank You from Successful Inheritors to Their Parents: A Summary of the Key Messages for Raising Grounded and Successful Children of Wealth
Although we might have complained at the time, when we got older we were grateful that you set limits, held us accountable, and had high expectations of our behavior.
Although we might have asked you to do more to help us at the time, looking back we realize the most helpful thing you did was show us that you knew we could do it on our own. You were right.
Although there were times when we struggled that were really painful for you to watch, what we take most from those experiences is the pride in ourselves that we made it through. And we know we will be able to make it through when we encounter other difficulties in our lives.
We are grateful that you taught us sound money values by living them in your own lives. Watching you, we came to understand that material possessions don’t make a life, people and character are more important than money, and that just because we have it doesn’t mean that we have to spend it.
The family stories you told us helped us understand that our family didn’t always have this money, we easily might not have it again, and in the meantime we should be focused in our own lives on making sure we will be able to thrive in either circumstance.
Because you asked us to, we learned how to keep track of and be accountable for the money we were spending. By emphasizing how appreciative we should be for the things we had, you helped us develop a sense of gratitude for the opportunities you provided us in life.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for requiring us to work—in the home, outside the home, in high school and out of college.
You have given us gifts that are worth more than any money we could inherit: an internally sustaining purpose and motivation in life and an understanding of the world outside the wealth we’ve known.
Your advice that every job is worthwhile and that you can learn from every experience really helped us stick it out in those first couple of work years. We’re so glad we did because those tough experiences lead to the work we now love.
You showed us through your own behavior that work is about more than money—it’s about contribution, purpose, pride, and satisfaction.
Your expecting us to try to support ourselves out of college was key to our happiness. We feel best about ourselves when we are able to cover most of the costs of our own lifestyle. It’s been so important in our lives for us to be able show people that we can make it on our own—that we earned our success and that it’s not just the result of our parents’ influence or affluence. Thank you for giving us the chance to prove that to ourselves and to the world.