“儿孙能如我，何必留多财，
倘若不如我，多财亦是空，
不为自己求利益，但愿大众共安宁”。If the children and grandchildren can be like me, then they require not of material inheritance;
If the children and grandchildren are not like myself, then of what use is my wealth to them?
Do not seek personal interests but peace for all
Robert Kuok’s mother, Tang Kak Ji wrote these words herself and then got a small shop to inscribe them. This has become the family motto of Robert Kuok’s family.
This quote summarises the role of parents and wealth very well. As I observe and reflect, I appreciate its meaning and intention more.
About Robert Kouk
Extracted from Wikipedia: He is a Malaysian business magnate and investor. According to Forbes, his net worth is estimated at $10.6 billion as of July 2020, making him the wealthiest person in Malaysia and the 104th wealthiest in the world. His business interests range from sugarcane plantations (Perlis Plantations Bhd), sugar refineries, flour milling, animal feed, oil, mining, finance, hotel (Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts), property, trading, freight and publishing. Businesses in China include 10 bottling companies for Coca-Cola and ownership of the Beijing World Trade Centre. His biggest source of wealth is a stake in Wilmar International, the world’s largest listed palm oil trader company.
Using money to solve problems: Not a good idea
If you can fix a problem with money, it’s not really a problem.
Kim Kardashian
With rising income and standard of living, we can often witness this in play. As parents, we shower the children with the things they want; to make them happy, and to compensate for the lack of time spent with the children and what they did not have during their childhood previously. We travel to developed countries for holidays with nice hotels, food and memorable itineraries to theme parks and picturesque places. Especially being busy with careers, by spending money and providing them with what they want, we believe we have done our part as parents — a better life for the kids and family.
The kids may grow up thinking that money can solve (all or most) problems as they learn from their parents. They know that their parents have money and their lives are taken care of. Wealth can breed arrogance and social status. They may be more accustomed to branded products and services as a signal of a social cue than having products based on utility and price-quality propositions. They are oblivious to society at large and their challenges. They may pay less attention to friendships or relationships or worse, they built friendships and relationships with money. Money becomes a more important foundational component of relationships than developing a more durable and sustaining relationship with open and honest communication, respect and appreciation and being supportive and positive regardless of financial situations.
As the family gets more wealthy, more money is used more often to make sure the kids do well, to solve problems; as compensation and perhaps, to salvage situations. To make sure the kids do better, we stuff them with tuition to do well and send them to good schools. When the kids are unable to study well; we send them to universities overseas with full allowances so that they live comfortably and focus on their studies; they do not need to worry about money and work part-time. Thereafter, some may have their apartment and car fully paid for by their parents. Some may not want to work if their salary expectation is not met. Some families are perhaps wealthy enough to last through their children’s generation.
Success trap • Success Paradox
Initial success creates a comfort zone that blunts the edge of ambition and adaptability. It highlights the paradox where the very achievements that define success can sow the seeds of decline, as those who “have it all” may lose the hunger, drive, and adaptability that first led to success.
Money amplifies character
Money is an amplifier. Without the right values and character, having money will amplify a person’s bad character and do more harm to himself and the family.
After much observation of super-wealthy families, here’s my recommendation: Leave the children enough so that they can do anything, but not enough that they can do nothing.
Warren Buffett
If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.
Robert Kiyosaki
The higher the safety net, the more the kids do not fail and learn
Sense of entitlement versus the willingness to allow setbacks
Money, as a solution to problems together with protective parents, can provide a high safety net with good cushioning for children. They get what they need. The kids grow up sheltered, comfortable and educated. Life is great and smooth sailing.
If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
P.D. James
We feel pain when our kids fail (badly). We ourselves may have faced setbacks and hardships that we want our kids to avoid. Hence, we want to minimise setbacks and hope for a good future for our kids.
However, there will always be setbacks in life and we as parents cannot be with our children forever. Our children’s future will be very different from ours. There will be new ways of doing, technological disruptions, new types of jobs and new skills with a different global situation. What we have and learn now can be obsolete. This makes character-building and resilience important.
Many learn the most important lessons from mistakes, challenges and setbacks much more than from success. We learn how to cope and turn the situation around from mistakes and challenges. It is also being able to cope with the unexpected, being flexible and able to adapt. We learn about being humble, resilient and integrity. From setbacks. we appreciate success and life better. It is better to fail young while we are here with them to guide, help and mould them.
Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.
G. Michael Hopf
With wealth, character and attributes such as resilience, drive and ambition can be more difficult to develop and build. They may not understand frugality. They may lack empathy to appreciate life outside their comfort zone and people and families in different financial situations and circumstances.
Q: … Stanford has a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs; students that are entrepreneurs and maybe they’re computer science majors or engineering majors of some sort. What advice would you give them to improve their chances of success?
Jensen Huang: You know, one of my (I think) great advantages is that I have very low expectations and I mean that. Most of the Stanford graduates have very high expectations and you deserve to have expectations because you came from a great school. You were very successful; you’re on top of your top of your class; you were able to pay for tuition and then you’re graduating from one of the finest institutions on the planet. You’re surrounded by other kids that are just incredible. You naturally have very high expectations.
People with very high expectations have very low resilience and unfortunately resilience matters in success. I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.
I was fortunate that I grew up with my parents providing a condition for us to be successful on the one hand but there were plenty of opportunities for setbacks and suffering… To this day, I use the word the phrase “pain and suffering” inside our company with great glee … and I mean that this is going to cause a lot of pain and suffering and I mean that in a happy way because you want to train, you want to refine the character of your company, you want greatness out of them and greatness is not intelligence as you know. Greatness comes from character and character isn’t formed out of smart people. It’s formed out of people who suffered … If I could I wish upon you, I don’t know how to do it but you know, for all of you, Stanford students, I wish upon you know, ample doses of pain and suffering.
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, 2024 SIEPR Economic Summit
Circumstantial advantage can be a double-edged sword. It creates a good head start and confidence. However, it can create a sense of of self-entitlement, hubris and lack of grit as things comes easily.
Character, once developed, is difficult to change
Wealth gained quickly will dwindle away, but the one who gathers it little by little will become rich.
Proverbs 13:11
Values and character are developed and cultivated from young, moulded and reinforced through challenges and setbacks.
As we get older, our beliefs and character flaws can be very difficult to correct. They want their parents to continue to use money to solve their problems as they used to. They may have a sense of self-entitlement; worse if they feel entitled to their parent’s assets.
They may lack the attitude and skillsets to turn the situation around when life challenges occur. They may not listen to the parents; believing that the parents’ thinking is outdated and they are right. Family relationships may become estranged. Perhaps, they may realize and learn with a crisis. By then, this will be too late, too painful a lesson. They may resort to solving them in the wrong way. This may be a grown-up alone in denial and suffering.
If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.
Abigail Van Buren
A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
A universal truth: Wealth often does not stay.
Every culture has similar observations with its aphorisms.
American expression: Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations
It means that the older generation started with nothing, worked hard and amassed wealth, and by the time their great-grandchildren are in charge, the family is back where they started, with nothing.
Chinese saying: 富不过三代
Wealth does not pass through three generations.
A quote from the former Ruler of Dubai, United Arab Emirates:
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel”
Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, former Ruler of Dubai, Vice-President and Prime Minister of United Arab Emirates
It reflected the Ruler’s concern that Dubai’s oil would run out. Thus he worked to build up an economy in Dubai that could survive the end of Dubai’s oil boom. He also expressed his worry that Dubai may return to its original form if It does not make full use of the wealth from oil to diversify into other non-oil sectors substantively.
Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.
G. Michael Hopf
G. Michael Hopf sums up a stunningly pervasive cyclical vision of history.
Hard truth: Character is developed with scarcity and discomforts.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller
We don’t grow when things are easy; we grow when we face challenges.
Anonymous
No one can grasp the value of a dollar without experiencing its scarcity. We learn and become better with scarcity (less money and resources) — through challenging times and hardships. Character and resilience are forged in adversity. We can learn from good times (with plentiful money and resources) but the learning is shallow and worse, it may create an illusion that we are great.
By creating an environment of abundance and ease, we are not preparing our children enough for their road ahead for the plausible challenges ahead when we are not around.
Some parents choose to be stingy and strict with their children. Scarcity teaches the kids humility, character and creativity /entrepreneurship early in their lives so that they have the character built to handle wealth later.
Learning that we cannot have everything we want is the only way to understand needs versus desires. This will teach us about budgeting, saving, and valuing what we already have.
Use the difficulty.
Michael Caine
