Today's Minneapolis StarTribune carries the headline, "Historians help ultrarich protect legacy," and reports about financial firms digging into genealogy records and producing family history books. Why? To help millennials and GenXers understand the wealth they are about to inherit. Here's a telling paragraph from the article written by Jackie Crosby: Money managers know all too well the truth behind the proverb, "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." Research shows that affluent families lose 70 percent of their wealth in the second generation and a stunning 90 percent by the time the grandchildren die. I don't recall ever hearing the proverb before, but here's an excellent explanation a writer named "Rob" posted eight years ago on the website answers.yahoo.com: The universal cultural proverb that says "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations," is as old as writing itself. And when I say universal, I mean that it appears in every culture that I have studied. Clogs to clogs, kimono to kimono, rice paddy to rice paddy, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves. And it is a proverb that describes human behavior in terms of creating long-term families as failure. The theory of the proverb is that the first generation starts off in a rice paddy, meaning two people with an affinity for one another come together and create a financial fortune. They usually do it without making significant changes to their values, customs or lifestyle. The second generation moves to the city, puts on beautiful clothes, joins the opera board, runs big organizations, and the fortune plateaus. The third generation, with no experience of work, consumes the financial fortune, and the fourth generation goes back in the rice paddy. This is the classic formulation of the shirtsleeves proverb, which is as true today as it has been throughout evolved human history.

Financial services firms are now creating books and multi-media presentations on family history, hoping to help families rally around a common purpose. They tell stories that "put family members at the kitchen table during the Great Depression, document the first sales receipt or bring to light a harrowing passage to America." Even shameful secrets (e.g., illegitimate children, slave ownership) are disclosed so current generations can accept the "skeletons in the closet" and move on.

Here's a link to the StarTribune article: www.startribune.com/how-historians-shrinks-may-help-the-ultrarich-avoid-squandering-fortunes/380438071/. Honestly, I see this as another reason for us to document what we know about our family histories, about who we are and where we came from -- even if our legacy isn't wealth.