When Karson asked her father about his later-in-life plans around finances and long-term care, he gave his typical “You don’t have to worry about it” response. This time, she wasn’t willing to let it go. She was feeling a growing weight of responsibility, and even resentment, around these issues with the older generation in her life. She felt it with her father and his second wife, Meg. She felt it with her mother, who wasn’t in a relationship. And she felt it with her husband Jordon’s parents, who were 10 years older than hers.
“None of them are willing to talk about anything to do with their later-in-life planning!” she shouted to Jordon. “Why do they think it is OK to keep us in the dark?”
I have heard this sentiment from a lot of next-generation family members. Many grew up with a great lifestyle and assume their parents have some level of wealth. But families often don’t talk about it. And as parents age, this lack of conversation can lead to frustration and tension about an avoidance of planning topics connected to their wealth.
For Karson, it led to anger. She felt stuck in a parent-child hierarchy that didn’t reflect the type of relationship she wanted to have with her parents and in-laws.
All families want to have wealth-intimacy
Our “wealth” is an intimate all-of-life topic. Just think about our wealth choices and decisions day in and day out, decade after decade: the careers we choose; the sacrifices we make; the places we live; the money we spend, save, and invest; the lifestyle we offer our children; how we plan for our retirement future; and so much more.
This is why I created the phrase “Wealth-Intimacy”—with a hyphen—when talking about wealth in relationships and families. It reminds us that wealth and wealth conversations are about intimacy.
Karson was angry because she intuitively knew she wanted an intimate relationship with her parents around their later-in-life planning. And that included their wealth.
We can learn how to talk about anything
In relationships, intimacy is governed largely by what we can—and cannot—talk about. No one does intimacy perfectly. But the more things we can talk about, the higher potential we have for it.
Wealth-intimacy is the same. The more we can talk about around money, wealth, and estate planning, the more wealth-intimacy we will experience through time, particularly during the later-in-life phase of living.
So how can Karson and her family expand what they can talk about to find more wealth-intimacy? Here are 6 conversation cues that can help them know how to talk about the emotional, relational, and generational parts of wealth conversations and planning.
1. Closeness-Distance
- Guiding principle: Every decision has the power to create closeness or distance in our relationships and families.
- Reflective question: “How will this conversation and decision create more closeness or distance in our relationships?”
We all know what closeness and distance feel like. Closeness is open communication and transparency. We have a voice and our views are considered. We feel respected and there is a sense of mutuality in our relationships. Distance is silence and secrecy. We don’t have voice, and we can feel judged for even asking questions, controlled, and shut down.
Let’s ask ourselves: “Do we want closeness or distance in our relationships around wealth?” The answer is clear. Closeness.
Imagine if Karson’s father had asked her, “Am I creating closeness or distance with my approach to these later-in-life conversations?” Karson would have been thrilled. And she would have immediately felt a different level of intimacy. Then imagine if he had followed up with, “What can I do to create more closeness with you?”
When you monitor—and ask about—closeness and distance, you create new levels of wealth-intimacy. You are saying to everyone, “I care about the impact my approach has on our relationships and family,” which is a version of “I care about you.”
2. Voice-Vote
- Guiding principle: When someone is impacted by a decision, they should minimally have voice and maybe vote.
- Reflective question: “Who should have voice and who should have vote in this decision?”
Karson felt cut off from both voice and vote on topics that significantly impacted her life. It’s easy for parents to justify their actions by saying “It’s my money and my decision.” Not involving impacted people in wealth conversations not only leads to relationship tensions, but also to decision-making that doesn’t take into account the larger interests of the family.
Giving someone a voice—and at times a vote—in a decision is part of the developmental process. We do it naturally with children: “Do you want a red popsicle or a green one?” As decisions get more significant, deciding on voice and vote needs to become a standard relationship practice.
I often remind parents that giving voice doesn’t mean giving up vote. It’s my way of allaying their fears that including their children will somehow undermine their right to make the final decision. Karson was not staging a coup. She is a caring daughter trying make sense of the later-in-life experience in her family.
Offering Karson a voice and maybe even a vote on decisions that will impact her and her family would put them on a path toward wealth-intimacy.
3. Fair-Equal
- Guiding principle: Equal doesn’t necessarily mean fair, because fairness is always an individual perception.
- Reflective question: “What is your perception of fairness around this situation or decision?”
In addition to saying she didn’t have to worry, Karson’s father often said, “Everything will be equal in the end” between the siblings. That assertion didn’t bring her comfort either. She knew life with her siblings wasn’t equal.
I often coach families to consider that all things being equal, fair should be equal. But “all things” are seldom equal. The question is whether families can talk about their perceptions of the unequal circumstances that might exist.
Karson’s financial circumstances, lifestyle, and career choices were very different from her siblings. She didn’t need things to be equal. Her schoolteacher sister was a single mom with 3 children. How would making things equal be fair?
Ironically, the more there are differences within families, the more parents tend to default to “fair is equal.” That’s what Karson’s father was doing. It’s a way to simplify a complex situation and create a sense of safety by avoiding what may seem like a hard conversation.
By exploring perceptions of fairness, we can create wealth-intimacy in our families, especially over the longer term.
4. Transparency-Disclosure
- Guiding principle: Transparency helps people make sense of their lives and better care for each other through time.
- Reflective question: “What information do people need and want versus what am I willing to tell them?”
Cultivating age-appropriate transparency around wealth choices and decisions helps people make sense of their lives and avoids a series of disclosures in the future. Karson was certainly “age appropriate.”
One of the most common questions I am asked is, “When should we talk to our children about our wealth and estate plans?” My answer: through every stage of life. Family members need some level of transparency to navigate their own lives and better understand the future.
Karson experienced silence and avoidance. Her father defaulted to withholding information until future disclosures. The result? It was impossible for her to feel a sense of intimacy with her parents around their later-in-life choices. And she didn’t know how to help them. And she didn’t know how to plan for her own life. There are a lot of “ands” in this scenario.
As Karson reminds us, it is very hard to have wealth-intimacy without some level of transparency. Ongoing transparency expands what a family can talk about and increases their potential for intimacy.
5. Wish-Fear
- Guiding principle: Sharing wishes and fears helps address interests and concerns in a more intimate way.
- Reflective question: “What are your wishes or fears around this topic or decision?”
Our wishes and fears are among the most intimate parts of us. And that is why they can be so hard to share with others. It requires a level of vulnerability to talk to others about them.
There is a “flipside” relationship between wishes and fears. For example, we fear that access to family wealth will destroy our kids’ motivation, but we wish for our children to have an easier life than we did. We fear our kids will choose careers that will not support the lifestyle we want for them, but we wish for them to have passionate and fulfilling lives.
In Karson’s situation, her father was genuinely fearful of becoming a burden to his daughter. That’s what he meant when he said, “You don’t have to worry about it.” But by letting his fears determine how he engaged with her, he missed the chance to talk about his wishes as well as their mutual wishes around the later-in-life experience.
When family members can ask each other “What are your wishes?” and “What are your fears?,” they can create the conversational space they need to foster wealth-intimacy.
6. Today-Someday
- Guiding principle: Discussing whether something is a “today” or “someday” topic helps us expand our conversations.
- Reflective question: “What conversations could we be having ‘today’ versus defaulting to ‘someday’?”
When it comes to wealth or planning topics and decisions, there is an implicit “someday” or “today” question. Our planning is always for a “someday” eventuality. But that doesn’t mean our conversations need to be pushed into the “someday” category.
Wondering and waiting for an unknown “someday” is an unpleasant experience for adult children. Like Karson’s situation, it feels like hierarchy and control. She didn’t need to know everything. She just wanted to explore the topics that could become “today” conversations.
Karson had no idea how her father was planning to provide for his wife, Meg, or how that impacted his larger estate. She had no idea what she should do if something happened to her father. Or worse, she had no idea what role she might play with Meg if her father became incapacitated.
Today-Someday isn’t just about kids accessing wealth. It’s about having proactive conversations around the “today” realities and how they are part of their parents’ planning. Karson didn’t need to know her father’s balance sheet (though she assumed her father had enough to help her sister), but she didn’t want everything to be deferred to the “someday” category.
Wealth-intimacy happens when we can talk about the “today” and “someday” planning realities in our families.
Let’s expand our wealth-intimacy conversations
The conversation cues can help us expand our wealth-intimacy conversations. It is easy for us to get stuck in family patterns that keep us from talking about the topics that matter most to our generational families. If we can work to break these patterns, we have more potential to have “talk about anything” wealth-intimacy in our planning experiences. That’s all Karson wanted for her family.