Wealth coach: a child who looks unmotivated may simply be unpracticed

Most parents bring a family wealth coach the same scheduling question: at what age do we tell them about the money? Fifteen years into that work with ultra-high-net-worth families, the coach treats the practical question as a stand-in for the harder one underneath it, whether knowing about the wealth will take away a child's reason to build a life, and reports that nearly every parent arrives carrying some version of that fear.

The coach has spent just as much time with the children and grandchildren of those families, and in a WealthManagement.com column describes them as the least empowered population in that practice: amply supplied with education, networks, wealth and time, and short on the ability to act on any of it. A 31-year-old gave the condition a name, telling the coach he felt like "a passenger in my own life."

The coach's proposition is that a child who looks unmotivated may simply be unpracticed.

From the outside the two are hard to tell apart, and the column lists the cases that reach a family's advisers: a young adult who cannot settle on a path and abandons projects for social activities; a young man who would rather play video games than face the consequences of going against the family business; a 32-year-old with no urgency and no interest in attending family board meetings; a man paralyzed by weighing every possibility because he worries his father will not support his choice. Each is easy to file as a motivation problem. The coach asks a plainer question first: where has this person had the chance to succeed or fail on their own?

Research on human motivation cited in the column identifies autonomy and competence, along with relatedness, meaning a sense of belonging, connection and care, as vital contributors to intrinsic motivation. Set those requirements beside the money and the result is uncomfortable: the wealth built to protect a child keeps the child from exercising the judgment the wealth will eventually require. In the coach's account, the wealth parents worked to create becomes the obstacle to providing a prepared heir.