By: Anne Constable/The New Mexican
Do you often feel embarrassed, guilty or ashamed of your wealth?
Are you rich enough that you become uncomfortable when someone asks, "What do you do?"
Has your wealth denied you an opportunity to establish a sense of your own self-worth?
Your answer is probably some version of, "No, but I'd be willing to find out for myself what it's like to be rich."
But wealth, particularly inherited wealth, can be a huge burden, according to financial planner Myra Salzer of Boulder, Colo.
Salzer, the founder of The Wealth Conservancy, has counseled numerous inheritors since 1982. In September, she's leading a four-day workshop in Santa Fe called "Inherited Wealth and You." The cost: $1,755.
"My goal in the workshop is to help participants shift their relationship to wealth from being a burden to it being a tool for enhancement," Salzer said.
The workshop is open to a maximum of 25 people who are financially independent and who inherited their money rather than earning it. It provides a safe environment for inheritors to talk about their personal wealth. "No one is going to like them because of it or not like them because of it." Salzer said.
The participants in some of her previous workshops have stayed close, Salzer said. One group has been doing a newsletter for almost 10 years, and another group goes on an annual trip together to Belize.
And many have made life-altering decisions after attending a workshop, Salzer said. A 17-year-old who was going to inherit a substantial amount of money from his grandfather on his 21st birthday decided to put the money in trust until he was ready to handle it, Salzer said. Another participant wrote a book about his grandfather, an artist, using skills learned at a workshop. And a third, guilty that his inheritance came from a Mexican company that manufactured munitions, set up a program to provide bicycles to people who lived in the countries where the arms were used.
Santa Fe is an obvious choice for her workshops, which in previous years have been held in Aspen, Charleston, S.C., and San Francisco, Salzer said.
Although she doesn't know the exact number, Salzer said, "There are a lot of inheritors here."
There are no statistics on the number of Americans who have inherited substantial mounts of money, but the Social Welfare Research Institute projects that by 2052, $25 trillion dollars will be passed down to baby boomers, their children and grandchildren.
Thayer Willis, heir to the Georgia-Pacific timber fortune and author of Navigating the Dark Side of Wealth: A Life Guide for Inheritors, is a therapist who counsels other inheritors and will be leading workshops in Santa Fe.
The challenges of work and relationships faced by everyone are exaggerated among inheritors. If you don't need the paycheck at the end of the month, it's tempting to bail out of difficult situations rather than stick them out.
Especially among young people, the impulse is to use money to avoid experiences that help people gain wisdom, she said. "What kind of maturity do you gain from that?"
There are serious drawbacks to having everything delivered to you, said a Santa Fe woman whose grandparents immigrated to the United States and made a fortune in California. "You don't learn to trust in your own capacity or find out how strong you are, said the woman, who didn't want to be identified.
One concern of Willis' clients is teaching children to understand the power of money and to use it well.
Some parents, she said, "bring their children up on steak and send them out to live on hamburger." They raise them with an attitude of entitlement, allowing them to drift around country clubs, miss school for fancy trips and buy expensive boats, horses and cars-things many adults can't afford.
Others, often with professional help, see that their children learn to take responsibility for the privileges they were born into.
The first thing many inheritors want to talk about is the guilt they feel for having so much money, Willis said. They wonder what they did to deserve it. "Answering that question is one of the most important answers a wealthy person can work for," Willis said. "Usually that does lead people to higher concerns."
The inheritor says wealthy people often become isolated when lawyers and assistants work out problems traditionally solved through give-and-take among family members. "Wealth makes it too easy to avoid real intimacy," she said.
The woman, who said she invests her wealth in socially, economically and environmentally responsible funds, admits she leads a more private life than she would if she weren't rich.
"There's a certain secrecy I live with. I don't tell everybody my situation," she said. "It takes me time to trust."
But she admits, "It allowed me to do the things I really care about and work toward goals without being intensely stressed about bills.
For more information about the topic, visit http://www.thewealthconservancy.com
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