Sometimes when my daughter realizes that she is on the point of getting seriously upset about something monumentally trivial, she smiles brightly and says, "White girl problem!"
Which I like very much, also in the variation I've overheard a couple of times, "First-world problem."
How is one to respond to the story in today's Times headlined,
What to Tell the Children About Their Inheritance and When
For the rest of us, inheritors seem like a
democracy’s version of royalty: born into a world of privilege we would
love to know. Yet the inheritors I spoke to said they were ill equipped
to handle the windfall and found that it quickly made them feel separate
from their peers.
For example,
Jason Franklin, now 32, said he received a
call from his grandfather’s secretary asking if he wanted to serve on
the board of the family foundation. He was 21 at the time, and up until
that point, he said he thought his parents were just affluent
professionals like his friends’ parents. The invitation prompted
questions.
“If your family has enough money to create a family foundation, that
means you have to ask about issues of wealth,” said Mr. Franklin, who
works for a philanthropic consultancy. “It caused me to really pause.
The reaction I was getting from my friends — it was isolating and
confusing.”
So he had to go out and buy some new friends, right away, and they didn't have any in the right sizes. No, that's mean. Similarly,
When Naomi Sobel learned at 20 that she would receive a large
inheritance, she said she knew it was a lot of money, and for her, too,
it raised questions about a house: would it be enough to buy one? She
laughs at this today, since it would have paid for many, many homes.
“I have enough money that I don’t ever have to work,” said Ms. Sobel, now 28.
Heh heh indeed, that's a scream.
Luckily, there are consultants to help you through it all, as well as a book, by Roy Williams and Vic Preisser,
Preparing Heirs: Five Steps to a Successful Transition
of Family Wealth and Values (Robert Reed Publishers, 2003). Or there are special therapists, according to
Mother Jones, "wealth psychologists", who can assist in pulling you through.
And for the rest of you, sleep, well, adding yet another to the list of problems you don't expect to have.
