Preparing your children to create and manage great wealth won’t be easy, but the right mental toolbox can give them a massive advantage. If you want your children to be truly wealthy, they’re going to need a mental framework that goes far beyond the education an average child receives.
While far from exhaustive, these 7 things will provide a rock solid foundation for your kids:
1. Financial Literacy–While this one should go without saying, you need to teach your children about the intricacies of money right from the start. From basic principles like interest and public markets, to more advanced topics like holding companies and other asset protection strategies, their financial education should be both broad and deep.
If this isn’t your forte, never fear. People like Thomas J. Stanley, Robert Kiyosaki, Charles Munger, and even Tony Robbins have done an excellent job covering these things thoroughly and intelligently.
2. A Love of Learning–I’ve yet to meet a wealthy person who wasn’t well read and intensely curious. While some elements of this may be innate, you can foster a love of learning by introducing your children to new places and ideas (both of which books can easily satisfy), and by answering their questions thoughtfully.
Never resort to answering a question with “just because” when you could make it a teaching opportunity instead. If you can’t answer a question, go search for the answer together. If your children learn that questions are met with answers or the pursuit of answers instead of dead ends, they will be infinitely more likely to remain curious, and curiosity is at the heart of a love of learning.
3. Systems Thinking–Very little in life is black and white, and understanding the intricacies of business, society, and life in general is extremely helpful in the pursuit of wealth. Help your children to become strategists, people capable of seeing how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, because those are the people who tend to achieve the greatest success.
Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Leonardo da Vinci; history remembers strategists for a reason. Introducing your children to chess or brain teasers at an early age can help immensely with this (IQ isn’t set in stone, and can be positively influenced with the right mental training.)
4. Risk Taking–Your brains evolved in an era when your day-to-day physical safety was the most important thing to focus on, so you’re all wired for a healthy dose of fear and risk aversion. But if you want your kids to become truly great, they’re going to have to overcome their fears and almost certainly take significant risks.
The real trick is teaching them to walk the line between smart risks and foolish ones, in a world where that line is often blurry. In my experience, the best antidote to fear is mindfulness and an analytical mind. Teach your kids to live in the moment, and when they feel non-life threatening fear, to pick it apart and make decisions based on analysis instead of animal instinct.
5. Employer > Employee–When it comes to billionaires, I know of no exceptions to this rule. You simply don’t become a billionaire by being “just” an employee. If you’re a billionaire, you were either a founder, a co-founder (whether in title or function), or a inheritor.
As noted author Nassim Taleb says, “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” Your most valuable asset is time, and wealth comes from leveraging your time wisely and valuing highly. As an employee, someone else is always going to be making multiples on your time, leaving you with a fraction of your true value, so teach your kids to make multiples on their own time without the middleman.
6. Add Value at Scale–The bigger the problem, and the more people it impacts, the larger the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Facebook, Amazon, Walmart, take your pick; the wealthiest people on the planet tend to have founded the companies that impact the largest number of people.
To become a billionaire, you need to add value to a large number of people. Pick a big problem, something that seems impossible, and tackle that. Nothing is impossible, unless you perceive it as such.
7. Money is a Tool–Never, ever let your children forget this: money is a means to an end, not the end itself. It is a tool to be used by you, but like all tools it can be either beneficial or destructive. Help your children to understand what they want from life, and how money might help or hinder that desire. I believe the reason that so many wealthy people seem to crash and burn is this: they acquire money without a clear end in mind, and without mentally preparing for the responsibility that comes with it, and are thus overwhelmed by it.
I could probably add 100 more things to this list, but this is a solid foundation. If you teach your kids these 7 principles, they will be vastly ahead of their peers in the game of life. And if you want a more exhaustive list of thoughts on this subject, there’s a fantastic thread on Quora.
