Posted on 03/20/2014 7:38:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Speaking on stage yesterday at the TED 2014 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Bill and Melinda Gates gave a revealing answer to a question about how they're raising their kids with respect to money, reports Wired. The couple has enough money to make each of their three children billionaires if they should want to do so, but as they answered, that's not the plan at all.
"We want to strike a balance so they have the freedom to do anything, but not sort of a lot of money showered on them so that they can go out and do nothing," said Bill Gates. "They need to have a sense that their own work is meaningful and important."
Wired calls it the "anti-Paris Hilton approach."
The Gateses came to this attitude on child-rearing after reading an article by Warren Buffet before they were even married. The takeaway from it was that you don't do your children any favors when you make them instantly rich.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Warren Buffett said he was going to do this back in the late 1980s.
" so they have the freedom to do anything"
I’d be interested to hear others’ hypothetical plans...
Trustees are notoriously untrustworthy, especially if it is a financial institution. Their goals seem to be “spend it down to nothing as quickly as possible”.
So, some sort of perpetual entity would be necessary, with dividends paid to heirs, but not too much at once. I’d set aside some for the first generation, second, third, etc.
I forget who it was, but they said they wanted their kids to have the freedom to do anything, but not the freedom to do nothing.
This will be interesting.
I'd like to see the specifics of how that plan is implemented.
BTW, our legal and regulatory system is moving toward the complementary outcome.
What’s wrong with Paris Hilton?
Paris — if you’re lurking — I’ll help you spend your money any time!
Nothing, it's quite a nice hotel.
Then they shouldn’t live in the lap of luxury and get “soft” to being with. Send them to a low cost boarding school, or to really give them a dose of “life” experiences send them to reform school.
Tell me how that works out for ya, Billy boy.
That was Bill Gates- the whole quote:
“We want to strike a balance so they have the freedom to do anything, but not sort of a lot of money showered on them so that they can go out and do nothing,” said Bill Gates. “
If Bill isn’t going to see his kids do as well or better than he had it (and he benefited from his own parents’ wealth) then he’d better damn sure not cheat the IRS out of all of that “inheritance tax” by stuffing it in the “Gates Foundation”.
I’ve never been in the Paris Hilton, but I hear a lot of other guys have.
Even if your payments are annual, aren’t there firms now that leverage against that (buy your check out for a lower rate) whether it is an insurance payout or a lottery winning?
Parent who become nut jobs like to control EVERYTHING.
Many years ago, when I saw the headline “Paris Hilton Sex Scandal”, I wondered just what was going on in French hotels that could possibly be that shocking ...
IOW he failed so he is using the excuse of leaving them in poverty as a fig leaf for his failure.
I believe they were leaving $10 million to each.
That's nonsense.
Trustees get paid fees based on a percentage of the assets they are holding.
They are incentivized to avoid allowing a trust to be "spent down to nothing" by its beneficiaries.
If anything, they are incentivized to reinvest the trust and make it grow while doing their best to minimize withdrawals from the beneficiaries.
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