My son was born on September 6, 1999. That’s the day generational wealth stopped being a concept for me and became a mandate. I wasn’t taught anything about money growing up. Most people aren’t. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just what happens when money is treated like a taboo subject instead of a skill.
Here’s the fact that should scare you: most families lose their wealth within 2.3 generations. If you inherit anything and don’t structure it right, your kids might keep it. Your grandkids will blow it. There’s nothing left for the great-grandkids.
That’s not a money problem. That’s a structure problem.
Inheritance Is the Stuff. Legacy Is the Training.
Most people confuse the two. Inheritance is the money, the house, the stock. Legacy is what you install in your kids before any of that changes hands. It’s teaching the difference between a debit card and a credit card. It’s teaching them how money compounds and how debt destroys. It’s the training that makes the inheritance survive contact with the next generation.
Most parents do the opposite. They close the door, have the money conversation in private, and keep the kids out of it entirely. Ask most kids what their relationship to money looks like. You’ll hear one of two answers: mom and dad fighting about it, or a parent who’s never home because they’re working two or three jobs to avoid the fight.
That’s the legacy getting passed down right now, whether you’re planning it or not. So ask yourself: what am I actually installing in these kids?
“The inheritance is just the stuff. That’s the easy part.”
Families that keep wealth alive for generations do it on purpose. Zig Ziglar’s family kept his legacy running after he passed. Bob Proctor’s son does the same. Their kids didn’t have to do the identical work that built the wealth. But they had to do something in the same direction to keep it moving. First, you decide you want to be a generational wealth family. Everything else is sequencing.
Companies Make Money. Individuals Get Taxed.
Here’s where most people get it backward. You can save for 20 or 30 years in a job with a pension and maybe get somewhere. But if you want to amplify wealth, not just accumulate it slowly, you need an operating company: an LLC, an S corp, a C corp, or a limited partnership.
In The Millionaire Maker, I teach that every single wealthy person I know built their wealth inside a corporate structure, taking full advantage of the tax code that’s available to entities and closed off to individuals. Companies get the best tax strategies. Individuals get the worst. That’s not a loophole. That’s the system working exactly as designed, and almost nobody uses it.
Your assets and businesses sit inside the entity. The entity sits inside a trust. Trusts don’t have the tax code. Entities do. Many estate lawyers forget that part. They move assets straight into a trust and skip the entity altogether, which means the family gives up the entire tax benefit that should have been captured first.
As your wealth grows into the two-, three-, and five-million-dollar range, you add a second irrevocable trust held by a trustee. Between the two trusts and the entities underneath them, you’ve built what can become generational wealth starting from nothing.
You Don’t Need Money to Start. You Need a Company.
“But I don’t have anything yet” is not a disqualifier. It’s the starting line. Start making money as a side hustle, a hustle, whatever gets you moving. Build that inside a company from day one, not your personal name.
As that company generates enough, you form company number two, maybe a piece of passive real estate. A single-family rental. A small mobile home park. Company number one funds company number two, which funds the next asset, which funds the next company. That’s the sequence. It’s not a program you finish. It’s a lifestyle you commit to, and you bring your kids into it so they can see it happen.
Teach Your Kids the Behavior, Not Just the Balance
I have families with six, seven, eight kids, and every one of those kids has a small business by age three or four. It’s not about how much a lemonade stand earns. It’s about the behavior. Knowing how to generate money. Knowing how to spend it with intention. Knowing how to hold some back for later. Knowing how to put money into an investment account, including a Roth IRA, before they’re old enough to drive.
Think of your operating accounts as something your kids can eventually work inside. A single piece of real estate held in one LLC won’t let you employ your kids. You need an operating company with enough breadth to give them a real role, not a token one.
And when it comes to the trust itself, timing matters. Kids typically get access somewhere between their 30s and 40s, not at 18, not in their 20s. Access gets granted when they’ve demonstrated adult, sustainable financial behavior. Not before.
Start Today
- Decide you’re building a generational wealth family. This is a choice, made once, that changes every decision after it.
- Form your first operating company. Stop running income through your personal name. Start it inside an LLC, S corp, or C corp.
- Talk to your kids about money this week. Not the whole system. One conversation. What a bank account is, what a Roth IRA is, why the family has entities.
- Take the Financial Personality Quiz to find out whether you’re stuck in lazy assets, stunted cash flow, stagnant business growth, or overpaying taxes, which is where most people actually are.
I’ll meet you where you are and take you where you want to go. Go to AskLoral.com. Ask a question, make a request.
