Awhile back I wrote a post on the challenges of raising kids if you’re wealthy. Well here’s a list of 10 things kids should receive from their parents from the WSJ by Peter White, a rich guy who counsels rich people. This list was presented to rich people on how to raise their kids.
1. Necessaries
2. Affection
3. Affirmation and Support
4. Boundaries
5. Guidance
6. Respect
7. Trust
8. Forgiveness
9. Religion or Spirituality
10. Letting Go
Yeah so it doesn’t so much seem like a list for rich people as it is a list for parents in general.
The list isn’t just for rich parents. But as Peter told me, it’s helpful for wealthy parents to learn that “the first thing to be concerned with is loving children in a way that enables them to take charge of their lives as adults, so they can use wealth to enhance, not diminish, their lives.”
Rich people need to learn these 10 things? I’d be annoyed if I was rich and someone told me these 10 things were necessary to not raise some dilletante, like I didn’t know these basic kinds of parenting principles.
Warren Buffett, as usual, has a pretty good handle on it:
“[The perfect amount of money to leave children is] enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.”
Of course that doesn’t address a rich kid getting spoiled by having all the best things and thinking that he/she somehow is entitled to all of that. But for tips on that the first link (my original post) has stuff about that. Not from me, but from whatever I linked to in that piece. I’m poor, so I wouldn’t know about these things.