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The Canadian Money Roadmap
Managing and Transitioning Generational Wealth: Keys to Success with Steve Willems CFP®
Are you on the path of creating generational wealth, or perhaps in the throes of navigating a family business transition? If so, this episode holds keys to unlock some of your biggest challenges. I had the pleasure of hosting CFP® Professional and Wealth Advisor, Steve Willems, who expertly guides us through the journey of managing and transitioning generational wealth. Our conversation extends from the use of the three-circle model, designed to surmount communication challenges, to the intriguing case of 'missing billionaires'.
Ever thought of how your children would handle the wealth they inherit? We dive into this fascinating topic, introducing the concept of 'starter funds' to initiate your children's journey into financial awareness without inducing apathy. Steve and I show the ways a proactive approach towards a life starter fund can make a world of difference for your child's perspective on wealth.
Finally, we believe it's not just about passing on the wealth, but the values that accompany it. Our discussions take a deeper look at the importance of instilling financial and personal values in the younger generation, preparing them to handle wealth without feeling burdened. We stress the significance of having intentional, contextual discussions about money, hard work, and planning for the future. This episode is a goldmine of wisdom for anyone interested in generational wealth, family business transitions, and imparting children with financial values and communication skills.
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Hello and welcome back to the Canadian Money Roadmap podcast. I'm your host, Evan Neveld. On today's episode, I am joined by Steve Willems, a Certified Financial Planner and Wealth Advisor at the Willems Wealth Planning Group, which is part of Asante Financial Management. This is an episode that I haven't really done anything like before. We have a conversation about all things generational wealth. Often times that looks like a transition of a family business, but also we talk about some things that one could think about if they're transitioning their own personal wealth or their values and thoughts around money to their kids. Really cool conversation. I hope you'll enjoy it. Here's my conversation with Steve Willems. Steve, thanks so much for joining me today on the Canadian Money Roadmap podcast. Thanks, Evan. As we're getting into the topic here, I've just kind of noticed in general, either from people sending me emails or sometimes I get from clients, but the idea of generational wealth I'm seeing almost as a theme continue to come up. I see it in my world a little bit on the business side of things, where it could be a business owner thinking about their kids and how to transfer their business or even the wealth that they've built in their business, but also from people to use it maybe a demographic term here of mass affluent people that generally have some comfortability around their financial situation wanting to transfer that to their kids. I know that you have a little bit more expertise in this area. Specifically, I thought maybe we should start high level and just talk about generational wealth, and maybe you could define that for us in simple terms.
Speaker 2:Right, Sure. Yeah, it's a bit of an obtuse term and certainly not something that we'd be talking about on a Saturday evening with our friends over. I think when most people think about generational wealth, they're thinking about the idea of what do I have and how do I pass it on to the people that I care about? Often that would be their family right, I'm immediate, or extended, something like that they're thinking about how do I pass on these assets to my kids? I think the term generational wealth and think about transferring that wealth. It does tend to come up more probably with families who have some type of entrepreneurship or business or enterprise in their DNA. The reality is about 45% of families in the top 10% of net worth. They have business equity of some sort on their balance sheet. Nearly half of the quote unquote wealthiest families have some type of business equity, Certainly the greater your balance sheet that you're probably thinking about. How do I transfer, not just the dollars in the sense, but the business is like a living and breathing thing. How the heck do I transfer that on? I've done this my whole life, for 30, 40 years. This is my baby. How do I even imagine someone else on behalf of the family. It's a really tricky topic and it can take a ton of different shapes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm hoping that today we can talk about some of those things as far as businesses, but for those of you listening that are maybe not part of a business or a second generation business owner or anything like that, there's going to be a lot of takeaways here from our conversation. I'm anticipating that'll be relevant for you in terms of how you can communicate with your family better and maybe some practical tips along the way too. Maybe we should start with that business side of things a little bit more. Maybe can you break down the business aspect of building generational wealth and maybe some key considerations for business owners.
Speaker 2:Sure, business is the backbone of so much of our society. We don't even have to look that far back in history to come up with examples. Historical examples of ways that this has failed actually probably come to mind even easier. Think about the Rockefellers, the Thompson newspaper chain. Of those three, only one of them actually retained their wealth. Often say how many of you have received your Eaton's catalog in the mail as we think about Christmas coming up? Most haven't. Another example here in Canada of one of the ways that a couple generations later in this massive empire, eaton's used to be one of the largest employers of Canadians and now they're gone. There are certainly ways that you can do this. Well, there's ways that you can get tripped up. I think that there are some businesses that have clearly cracked the code. There's a business in Japan. It was founded in 578 AD their construction company. They've lasted over 1,500 years. It's just absolutely remarkable.
Speaker 1:And they're just getting started.
Speaker 2:Just getting started, right, solving problems and fixing things and creating value for people. Walmart, probably the biggest public family business. I checked they do seven or four hundred dollars a year of revenue. Cargill, their private family business, probably one of the largest private family businesses around to, and I think for someone who's kind of thinking about this, maybe for the first time from the outside, this could seem family business. It might seem like the Brady Bunch, right? If we're giving a metaphor to a show, right? Oh, it's all chummy and happy. For many of these businesses, and you spent enough time with them, it actually looks a lot more like the Adams family, right? So we've got skeletons in the closet and there's a legitimate fear here within these business families that their next generation will kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Right, and the odds are that very few of these Canadian family businesses will actually survive.
Speaker 1:So maybe let's talk about some of those things specifically in terms of what some businesses or family transitions get right versus ones that get wrong. I was reading some or I was listening to a podcast recently where it's some more academic folks that more academically minded than me, I'll say that have done some studies on what they're calling the missing billionaires and the idea of these. You know family business businesses from days gone by. They are largely not creating the billionaires of today, right? So if you look at the family wealth from 100 years ago and if they would have just made very basic financial decisions, there should be thousands and thousands of billionaires based on that wealth that has not been transferred over here. You know there's many, many reasons for it and they wrote a whole book on it, but maybe that speaks to some of your experience here on in terms of what some people get wrong when transferring to the next generation.
Speaker 2:Right, and I mean just to just you know, in terms of the statistics, like what are the odds of a business actually succeeding onto an incoming generation? One in three will survive a one generational transfer. The stats from family business reviews say one in eight will survive two generations and in three in 100 will survive three generations. So this, you know, this Japanese construction company having survived for 500 years is, I mean, it's like odds, are that they probably better that they had won a lottery ticket, right, like there's so much inertia that would have been in effect to stop that from happening. And I guess, if we're looking at why, typically, like, what are the things that are happening that make those statistics come to effect? Right, and there's probably, you know, you could probably boil it down to a series of communication failures, right, so often there might be, you know, a shareholder conflict, a conflict between different generations. Sometimes there's rivalry between the siblings. I mean you think about passing a business from from mom or dad down to brother or sister. I mean they may, they might have shared a bunk bed together right Now they're business partners. Like you bring a lot of stuff into that, into that now business relationship. You might have, you know unsupportive end laws. You could perhaps have this scenario where you, you don't share a common vision or purpose. In some cases this could be straight up, you know, lack of competence the next generation just might not be which might bring in the view of, perhaps, nepotism, perhaps a perceived lack of fairness from from one of the members of the family. There might be a straight up violation of rights or boundaries as well. As, as you're kind of navigating this, this challenge, I mean, I think it's, there's a, there's a lot of work then that you can do to to try to resolve these, these things, and most professional advisors will try to do that right, like they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll. You know, advertise or or bring in, you know, succession planning as a, as a way to start to grapple with these challenges. What we find is, most of the time, succession planning is kind of like a checklist, right? So like business owner comes in, says, hey, I want to, I want to pass down my business to my kids, how do I do that? And the lawyer, the accountant or whoever they're working with, you know the pull out to the checklist and here's the things that we need to do. It tends to be like a business or an asset first focus. It tends to be well supported with legal and accounting kind of underpinnings and and it tends to be done for maybe a segment of the family, right. So it's certainly not a conversation that's involved with the entire family. It's often led by the patriarch, maybe alongside one of the incoming, you know, g twos or next gen's, but the the stats on that approach are really really terrible. They're really really bad. Research was done on the correlation between effective succession planning wouldn't you know, walking through this kind of technical exercise of passing a business down and successful succession, like, is there a relationship between these two things? And the study was repeated multiple times. They looked at 18,000 different companies and they found no correlation between zero and completing. Yes, yeah, 18,000 companies who had engaged in professionally assisted succession planning. And was was the outcome? What they wanted? What was there? A successful succession, right. So the new lens? I think today to your point of what, why do we not see this happen successfully? Very often, the new lens needs to be on managing continuity, not just planning for succession events. This isn't just like a lightning bolt thing that comes in and okay, we had the lawyer in and we drafted these documents and this thing happened Like. This needs to be a much broader conversation that happens probably a lot earlier and goes on a lot later, if we're actually caring about seeing this done successfully.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, so you're talking about timelines there instead of you know these point in time events. This is an ongoing thing all the time, right? So, like you could potentially make the case that someone is always succession planning in their business, if they're doing it the right way, kind of thing, looping in the right frame of mind and the right types of conversation and things like that with the next generation, maybe that's you know, maybe you and me with our kids, even right now, even if that's not related specifically to the business right, yeah, totally, and and I think part of part of what helps here is when you think about.
Speaker 2:You know when folks are thinking about, you know Generational wealth and you know how do I pass on certain assets to to my kids, or you know people I care about. I think creating like a framework really really helps them Think through the dynamics that are at play here and and add some more nuance to their thinking, right, so there's there's great research and and work done by Harvard Business School and they developed what what's you know, we've come to now know, is the three-circle model, right, and so it essentially takes your life, you know, as a person, and it splits it up into three kind of overlapping spheres, kind of like a. You know the Venn diagram that you might remember having to do an art class back in high school, right? So so the three circles essentially says that, as a, as a, as a person who finds themselves in this situation, they wear three hats, right, like there's a family hat, and that family hat is is typically quite private. They're quite accepting that. They carry emotional responsibilities, they're quite concerned with tradition, right. Then they wear a business or a wealth or a finance hat. This is, quite by nature, businesses, public. It's competitive, it's objective, it's adaptive, like change, quick, survive, right. There's these, these characteristics or traits that you have to have to be successful in business. And then there's the third circle, which is like ownership right, and this has to do with management functions, marketability, information, profit and all, and people will exist within a family in different parts of these circles, right. So you might have one person who, who is both in the family circle, the business circle, and they are also own the business, so they're also an owner. You might have a spouse who might be in the family but might not work in the business and might not own a part of the business. You might have a manager who's in the business, doesn't own it and isn't in the family. And so using this framework to think about the positions or the or the ways that people are interacting with the family enterprise kind of as a system, is a really, really helpful tool for thinking through their different perspectives that they're bringing so how do we use that model Practically in thinking about generational wealth?
Speaker 1:is the goal to move people into different sections of the Venn diagram, or Is it to adapt to the inevitability of people moving into different sections, perhaps as the transition happens?
Speaker 2:right. It probably starts like with anything, with just an awareness of where are we Right. I think you know it need to need to bring this into your consciousness. So what when you realize that perhaps part of your communication Challenges that you're facing, which you might see is kind of subliminally running under the surface, have to do with the fact that you have all of these different cast and crew that are operating From a sense of what they think makes sense. But they're really just doing that because of the circles that they are operating from within, we can really understand our. You know these, these people, whether they're our management team or for our family or Spouses or, you know, as siblings, we can actually understand them a whole lot better. So the first step is is is just you know, take everyone in your life, if this is you, if you find yourself kind of stewarding one of these generational, you know transfers and plotting, you know where are those people on these diagrams, like, are there some people that are overlapping in these different circles? And then just pause, just reflect to say, okay, what does that help me make sense of what I'm, what I'm dealing with right now? It's not necessarily a goal like, okay, we need to get everyone into the middle, three overlapping circles. That's not, that's not the fix, that's not the goal, but the point, though, is just to probably start with an awareness of where are we today, and this is a tool that you can use to kind of self assess a Self not diagnosed, but self assess where, where everyone is at, and then see if that helps you understand, maybe, why you're facing the challenges or roadblocks that you might be facing currently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine a business owner looking at the, the next generation or their kids or their spouse or Key people in their business who aren't necessarily family members, and you kind of expect everybody to see things the exact same way that you do, because you know we're all in this together, right Like we aren't. We kind of rowing all in the same direction. But you, I think you make a great point there of the awareness factor actually being Relevant in terms of guiding next steps or the action items, instead of that being an action item in and of itself. I kind of like this, this three-circle model for just identifying the, as you put it, like the cast and crew of your whole family, enterpised, for lack of a better term there right, and even in Situations where maybe you don't have a business, right.
Speaker 2:So it's still helpful thinking through perhaps part of your you know, your, your, your life, as you think about generational wealth. Just take the business circle out of it, right. So, like, what are the issues that are family issues, what are the issues that are like financial or asset issues? And then where, where, where do certain people in your life Overlap between those, those two circles? It's a little bit more of a simple, you know, schematic, obviously, and and you might not have quite as much of the Level of complexity that those with kind of business assets might find themselves in, but it still can be a helpful framework to figure out, like, what, what's a you know where are people approaching this challenge, through what lens? Right, because all we want to do is everyone. We have to assume that everyone's acting rationally. They're just acting rationally from the perspective that they find themselves in. And so if you've got, if you've got a Child, or if you are, in fact, the you know, the g2 of, you know, in a family business, like you, you live in the wake of a giant in some cases. Right, let's say, your parent ran a successful business for 20, 30 years and like you've got, you've got questions of legitimacy, right and and, and, whether you like it or not, your, your, your parent. The g1 has questions of you know, do do my kids have the drive, the grit to actually carry this, this thing on, like these are all Everyone's everyone. They still love each other, they still care for each other, but they are coming there. They're thinking through the same problem, but through their own perspective, which is entirely valid, entirely valid.
Speaker 1:So the whole concept that that we've kind of been scooting around here largely revolves around first establishing what is today and then perhaps what you want it to be, and, and alongside that overarching, that is communication with all parties within there. Do you ever find an unwilling second generation that's getting kind of like obligated into a succession here, and I cannot imagine that ever going. Well, you know, I even see that outside of the business context of like the parent you know you've got a cabin up at the lake, so, yeah, we want to make sure we keep the cabin in the family and the kids behind the closed doors are saying I don't want deal with the cabin, like it's nothing but maintenance and headache and I live five hours away. Like I don't want to deal with that, I want to check right, like I'd rather just you know. Or I saw someone on Twitter the other day was like yeah. I'm gonna accumulate all these shares in XYZ company and I'm gonna pass along the shares to my kids, tax problems not withstanding there, do the kids want these shares of these companies or they rather just have a check and do whatever they want with it? You know, the same thing kind of applies in a business setting. Probably it's like hey, mom and dad, maybe you should sell this and then give me a check instead of, you know, square peg around whole situation. You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and heaven forbid we actually have a straight up, purposeful, thoughtful discussion around around this and be okay with the things that we might hear, right, yeah, so I think G2's tend to probably find themselves in one of two, maybe three camps. Right, so there's, there's probably the G2 that is running from the light. Right, like they want to be in the shadows. They don't really like, just let me do my own thing, like I don't really care. Like to them, being for born into a prominent family is, it's not they're not thankful, but they, they're just not interested in continuing that. On right, there's probably a second group that is, or would be, those that would be attracted to the light. Right, so they're the ones that are interested in in finding their own, their own path within the enterprise. They'll still carry with them a sense that they can never measure up. Right there there might actually be a sense of pain of having grown up in a storied or a prominent family, perhaps financially or reputationally. Right, like, they're on their own quest to get outside the wake. And and and that second group who is gonna try to solve that quest? They're gonna do it by staying within, kind, of the family ecosystem. There's probably a third, but for for intent our discussion, let's just say that there's two right, like those that run from the light not run, but like they just don't want to have any part of it and those that will kind of reconcile this quest for legitimacy by maintaining, still within, within, that family ecosystem.
Speaker 1:Okay, before we got started here, and actually the other day when we were chatting, you mentioned something about the idea of a life starter fund. I hadn't heard this specific language before here, but let's just kind of put some maybe more practicality around the idea of creating generational wealth and everyday folks and you know people that look around and say, my goodness, like the cost of living here is just getting out of hand and but I've done pretty well for myself, I've been gonna savor whatnot I want to make sure my kids are. You know that maybe they've got an easier path than I had, or something like that. So maybe can you explain your idea of a life starter fund and some things that you might want to consider in that regard.
Speaker 2:Right so. So the tension is apparent is, on the one hand, they want to see what's best for their kids, right, like they want. They want to see them thrive, they want to see them experience, you know, blessing. They want to see, you know, their, their kids really do well, right. And on the other hand, they don't want their kids to lose the grit or fall into a state of apathy where they get caught up with what some might call afluenza, right, and so there is this very real tension in in the G1, in the patriarch's mind of wanting to do the first thing without causing the second thing, and it's a very real, real tension for them. So what we've, what we found some parents do well, is they'll essentially set up very kind of structured and thoughtful what they'll call like life starter pathways for their kids, so as their kids kind of age through their teenage years, they're, they're actually kind of completing, kind of a rite of passage as they pass through those teenagers like these aren't, these aren't disengaged parents who are just gonna, you know, chuck their kids out of the nest and off to university when they, when they graduate and turn 18, right like these. These parents are quite engaged there. For some people might be uncomfortably intentional, right, something where you know we can probably aspire to just grab a handful of the nuggets that these folks are doing. So with these, with these intentional G1s, what? What they're kind of painting a pathway for their kids. These life starter strategies is they're. They're kind of committing upfront to funding specific activities that they think will help to put their kids on on a path that will see them, for them to define their own definition of success, right. So typically this would come with a commitment to fund a percentage of their, of their, their post-secondary schooling, right, maybe, maybe not in all, but in part, right. So maybe cover the tuition but not the room and board, because you don't still want them to be able to have the drive to work and earn some income through through school. Another phase in this kind of life starter pathway would be, perhaps for some, a commitment to fund, you know, wedding costs, perhaps a portion of the their first vehicle, perhaps, at a certain checkpoint, a commitment to assist with the purchase of some type of housing. Again, this is this is not like the game of life where we're kind of going through and systematically it's, it's, it's got to be laid on top of kind of what is right for for the kid and the child and kind of where they're at in their, their own growth and personal development, but kind of mapping out like, hey, as parents, here's what we're thinking we want to be doing to support you so that way you can give that information to the child, so they can actually make life choices with awareness of those financial realities. And and I think that's where many G1's struggles is is having the proper conversation with their kids to allow their kids to integrate that reality into their own personal planning, as opposed to it being accidental or a surprise like oh, you just did this thing, so we're gonna give you this. It almost seems like it's like a reward, then right, like a perk, for doing the right thing and finding favor with their parents. I think the parents that are intentionally kind of mapping this out start to finish here's how, here's the arc of how we want to envision supporting our children as they, as they pursue, you know, fulfilling work and and life.
Speaker 1:Those are the ones that that, I think, kind of stumble on it to a fair bit of success part of the thing that stood out to me and what you described there is the idea of proactivity versus reactivity, right? So in your description there, proactively deciding what format or what things you're gonna help fund doesn't necessarily put exact dollars to it, but it's around concepts and events and things that you want to, you know, provide the leg up on, because a reactive thing could be like you know well, dad, I need another 10 grand for this, or, you know, it's just, it's that's more of an asking for money, and then in the moment, you kind of have to come up as like, well, am I gonna do this or am I not gonna do this? Right? Whereas if you have a proactive plan in place for these life starter events that kind of takes those, those awkward decisions off the table a little bit, they'll still come up, I'm sure. But it largely addresses some of the elephants in the room before they get there yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean the, the ones who are reactive, that the the secondary effect of a reactive decision is equalization, right? So how are you gonna reconcile you know being perceived as as a fair steward of family resources when, when you're divvying out, you know dividends to one dependent child and and not allocating that, that resource to others who perhaps are further along in their journey, right? And? And then the relational knock-on effects of that type of perceived inequality might feel like the right thing to do in that moment and in that time but can create a series of kind of dominoes that when you're in the moment, you struggle to see that there are dominoes behind the first domino. But having worked with families who are kind of grappling through these quandaries, we can full well see the number of dominoes that are behind the domino that they're looking square at, right.
Speaker 1:Maybe a practical story here in this regard was just how my folks helped cover the cost of post-secondary education for me. They told me, in my later years of high school anyways, that they would cover my first year of post-secondary 100%, then 75%, 50%, 25% and then anything after that I'm on my own. And so, lo and behold, I had a pretty serpentine path towards my eventual degree where I did a couple of different schools and I did one program that was actually in Greece. I lived on a sailboat for a while, kind of sailing around, believe it or not. It was a school adjacent program but it was expensive. But my parents stuck to that percentage system and so if I was taking longer to complete a traditional degree, guess who had to come up with the money? Because that was the deal. And so if I wanted to have the cheapest route to my economics degree that I could have had and just kind of stay in the seat and kind of plug away and you know how much money you have to come up with over the period of time. But I decided I wanted to get creative and whatnot. But because that conversation was had well in advance, I knew that it was on me to kind of come up with that money, and so maybe it's another podcast for another day how many different jobs I had to keep going at any given time to fund my my fund 20s, but anyways, that was. That was something that was really beneficial for me in terms of my ability to plan my early adult years.
Speaker 2:Right, and I mean, I think that looking back, we kind of see the, the tasks or the things that occurred. But I think the other thing that most parents want to communicate is it's not just the dollars, it's the values behind the dollars, right so, and that is just much, much harder to actually transfer and it certainly doesn't happen accidentally, right so. So what we find is is that families who are doing this well, they're leading very intentional again, that's like our keyword here today. Intentional like family meeting conversations where they actually have, perhaps to someone from the outside, an uncomfortable amount of structure to them, right so these, these conversations typically are kind of stood up on, kind of like maybe four pillars. There's like a family development angle where they're, they're you know that they're accomplishing kind of a degree of assessment or learning or planning or skill training. Often philanthropy falls into that bucket of family giving maybe to a foundation or something like that. There's family cohesion, like what's the glue that holds us all together? What are we all aligned behind? What are our history, traditions, aspirations? There's often the business components, like a family enterprise, like this idea of entrepreneurship, you needing to go and do the work to fill the gap, finding problems, committing yourself to solving those problems. Like that. That's kind of that's a value that parents are wanting to pass on to their kids. If there is an incumbent business that's being operated, you know you're looking at tours and bringing the family into that. Like my first job. I grew up in a family business as well. My first job when I was five, I was in charge of shredding, right, so like, I got paid a tunie I think the tunie was a new form of currency at the time taped to the bottom of a box and there would be a thousand pieces of paper that needed to be shredded. And when I got to the bottom of the box, I would be able to collect my day or my boxes pay. Right, I collect my tunie. Right, so like, right from early on. I was five years old and I was already seeing what was happening inside our family business, right, and then all that could sound pretty like a dry. So there needs to be a fun component in these meetings as well. Right, a reason for people to keep on coming back games, activities, humor, celebration of, like key milestones. So families who are kind of very intentional in passing on not just the dollars but the soft stuff that comes with their identity. They're actually thinking through, like, how do we do this, what does that look like? And these types of family meetings they might not call them family meetings, right, but like maybe you're going off to a cabin in the woods and you're going to go skiing for a couple of days and then on one of the evenings you're going to have like a deliberate conversation and you're going to talk about whatever you're going to talk about, right, but it's again, it's not accidental. These things take a ton of effort and most won't do it, which is what, for those who do, will kind of put the odds in your favor in terms of being able to kind of continue seeing these values through to, you know, successive generations.
Speaker 1:So what other strategies do you have in terms of you know how families can deal with. You know this tension associated with the Silver Spoon kids and just generally speaking to kids now, like how can parents implement these things to ensure the kids will grow up with a healthy relationship to wealth?
Speaker 2:Right. So, like, let's start, like at the very, very start, right, often we're thinking about these conversations when we have adult kids, but, like, if we're honest, like a lot of the seeds for this stuff is planted when our kids are much, much younger, right, so we need to like acknowledge number one where we are right, like for most of us, we can give our kids everything that they need and much of what they want, right, and kids ask a lot of questions. And so I think, as we're thinking about like strategies to pass on or things about money and our families and our kids, like because kids ask a lot of questions, it's very easy just to give flippant, really simple responses that suggest like, before you answer, learn the context of the question that they're asking. So ask, like, why do you ask? Right, so kids ask me dad, like, why, why can't we go and get that thing that I want? Like, I'll say like, okay, oh, that's interesting question, bud, like what's on your mind? Why? Why are you wondering about that? Right, and the tone here is very important, right? Like, I don't want to be dismissive, but I want to be curious. Why do you keep asking me that? Yeah, is that a good tone. Yeah, I told you yesterday no, like, let's, let's, let's, let's create a space where, where we foster creativity and creativity like curiosity, right, Like we want, like questions are okay, questions are okay. And so some of the questions that the kids will bring up, like younger, especially as they start to go into school and see what their, their friends, parents do and all this stuff, like they'll ask questions about income, right, like, how much money do we make? Or why can't we do that thing, and and and. If you're uncomfortable answering questions about income, you can always reframe that question to answer through the lens of spending, right, like, walk them through a journey about what it looks like that that your family has to spend every month. Like, what are the non-negotiables? Like the cost of living to put the roof over your kids' bedroom, right, and then, what are the things that you choose to spend on? Right, what's left? So you're answering his question, but through the lens of expense, not income, and you're showing him again that these are things that we have no problem talking about, right, like these are good conversations. The other thing I mean that comes up often, probably on a weekly basis, is you know, homelessness, right Like I care a lot about teaching my kids compassion and empathy for others. And in my mind and people might agree or disagree with this but to ignore the you know, the homeless guys is to teach our kids to ignore other people who are hurting, and this is a lesson that we face like every single day when you're driving around town. So, whether we know it or not, we're teaching our kids money lessons by how we respond to these situations right Like they're learning something. And so from the earliest days here, like all of these experiences that we have in our day-to-day weeks, can become little micro lessons for our kids. But we have to be willing to kind of steer into them, be uncomfortable a little bit ourselves and take the high road or the longer path to get them to kind of a proper understanding of why things are the way that we are. We want to stoke the instinct in them to find these answers. And with regards to like work like my experience when I was shredding paper, a thousand documents by hands were covered in carbon because everything was carbon copy back then we want to stoke the instinct to work and solve problems. We want to see how far their natural born industriousness can take them and then with kind of the edgier or the more challenging conversations, just being willing to kind of steer into them. Those would be kind of some ideas for those with kind of younger kids and obviously kind of go up from there as they grow up into adulthood.
Speaker 1:I think that kind of encapsulates the main three ideas that we've talked about here in a variety of different contexts. Of number one establish where you are, whether that's just you know, talking about your own family circumstances or who the people are involved in the business and all the different contexts that people may find themselves in. Anyone listening can have a good, can prepare for a good outcome by first establishing where you are, then from there the overarching concept of communication, open communication, not veiled secrets, you know, especially things that are important, all those kind of things asking good questions, you know, being curious about that. And then finally preparing for things that you know that you can prepare for through the lens of communication as well. And establishing not necessarily where we are, but looking at where you want to go and preparing for those things in advance, especially when the next generation or your kids actually do want to be part of that. And you'll find that out in step number two, by communicating there. Is that a pretty good summary of kind of some of these themes that we've talked about today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. I mean, I think a lot of this. There's the what and the how, right with all of these conversations. So I think it's helpful for us to break apart the what you want to deal with from the how you'll deal with it. Right, like I gave the idea of family meetings, right, like that's a how right. So in these conversations there's the like, the what we want to be talking about, like updates, learning, passing on lessons, you know, values, policies, like, whatever the heck those things might be. But probably equally important, maybe even more important, is the how we will choose to deal with each other. Right, like, how will we make decisions together as a family? Like are we going to go on that vacation or not? How do we make those decisions? Like, is that, is that? Is that a consensus? Is this a delegation? Like you're going to go and make a decision and come back to us. Is it autocratic? Right? How will how will disagreements be handled? Like, how will we ensure that everyone feels heard? How will we keep the energy up around certain decisions? Right, like the what is important and probably a good starting point. The how is just as important, and I think because we often struggle to put the same amount of energy into the how as the what. I think that's probably one of the biggest barriers that stops families from having good relationships with money within the context of their family.
Speaker 1:Steve, this was a great conversation here and lots of cool little nuggets that that I'm going to take away with my own clients and my own family and things like that too. But if people want to hear more about the things that you're into and things that you believe, perhaps how can people track you down?
Speaker 2:Sure. So websites. Willemswealthplanningca, quite active on LinkedIn. Also have a YouTube channel at Willems Wealth that you can track us down. They're really available through a lot of those different avenues.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate you taking the time to share this with us. This is great.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Evan.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of the Canadian Money Roadmap Podcast. Any rates of return or investments discussed are historical or hypothetical and are intended to be used for educational purposes only. You should always consult with your financial, legal and tax advisors before making changes to your financial plan. Evan Neufeld is a certified financial planner and registered investment fund advisor. Mutual funds and ETFs are provided by Sterling Mutuals Inc.
