I help wealthy families prepare their kids for inheritance. I recommend this 3-step process to any parent.

This as-told-to effort is based connected a speech pinch Ken Polk, 53, who is based successful Birmingham, Alabama. He is the laminitis of Arlington Family Offices. This has been edited for magnitude and clarity.

I judge astir families deliberation astir inheritance, but galore don't really talk astir it.

Whether your children are owed to person $100,000 aliases $100 million, it doesn't really matter. The situation is the same: if you cognize this meteor is coming into your children's universe, you request to hole them for it.

I urge a process that originates successful puerility and evolves arsenic your kids turn up. I've personally gone done it pinch my 4 children, who are now 27, 25, 23, and 21, truthful I speak from experience.

These are the 3 steps I'd urge to immoderate parent.

1. Build characteristic earlier you talk astir inheritance

People often talk astir wanting their bequest to last. Ultimately, preserving legacy comes down to a child's character and who they're becoming.

One workout I urge is asking your kid to place 8 characteristic traits they aspire to, past constitute a missive to their early self. It's astir helping them activity backward from the personification they want to become.

When it comes to preparing a kid for an inheritance, I deliberation the eventual gift is helping them find their intent successful life earlier the money arrives.

2. Teach your children financial habits

I deliberation you tin besides commencement school your children financial subject from arsenic young arsenic 6. It tin beryllium arsenic elemental arsenic school them to disagreement their money into 3 jars aliases envelopes: immoderate to give, immoderate to save, and the remainder for living. I telephone it the undefeated financial plan.

Six years aft my kids sewage their jars, they came pinch maine to unfastened slope accounts erstwhile they turned 12. By then, they were utilizing the aforesaid "give, save, live" strategy pinch their accounts.

You don't request everyone successful your family to go awesome investors, but they do request to person a shared model for making financial decisions. As children study to grip smaller financial decisions, you tin gradually entrust them pinch bigger ones. That helps hole them for the constituent erstwhile you tin commencement discussing what they mightiness inherit.

3. Explain what they're inheriting and why

If you've done that activity astatine different stages of your children's lives, you tin statesman the uncover process betwixt ages 19 and 22. That's erstwhile you statesman stepping them done the family's finances and talking much openly astir their inheritance.

It partially involves what we telephone a bequest letter, which we thief families write. It's not astir showing your big children boring trust and property documents. The cardinal is to draught a bequest missive that makes the "spirit" of the money clear.

If you springiness personification a cheque and opportunity you'd for illustration them to usage it for thing for illustration education, for example, that's the tone down the money. The aforesaid rule applies to an inheritance.

I did this pinch each of my 4 children. Their mother and I sat down pinch them and explained that location was a logic we had taught them systems for illustration give, save, and live. We were seeing whether they could handle the inheritance they were astir to study about.

Eventually, parents person to beryllium prepared to fto go. You person to fto your children make their ain financial decisions arsenic they get married, person families of their own, aliases branch off.

The cardinal is school a strategy rooted successful shared values and principles that tin beryllium passed down. Live those values yourself, walk them connected to your children, and create a bequest that lasts.