6 Habits to Help Preserve and Encourage Generational Wealth

Building wealth is a significant achievement but preserving it for future generations often requires a different mindset. Wealth that takes decades to accumulate can erode quickly without foresight, discipline, and structure. Risks such as market concentration, taxes, family conflict, and poor planning can all diminish what’s passed on.

Intentional habits can help protect wealth, keep it aligned with family values, and ensure a meaningful, lasting legacy. Here are six practices that can support you in preserving and extending your wealth across generations.

1. Strengthen Coordination With Your Advisory Team

Families who successfully preserve wealth across generations rarely do it alone. They rely on a coordinated team—financial professionals, CPAs, and estate attorneys—working together toward a shared vision. When these professionals operate in silos, critical details can slip through the cracks, leading to missed opportunities or unintended consequences.

Make it a habit to keep your advisory team informed of major life changes. Regular communication helps align every piece of your financial picture.

Why Your Financial Professional is the Cornerstone of Your Team

Your financial professional often serves as the central point of contact, coordinating communication and strategy across your team. They can help:

• Unify estate, tax, and investment strategies
• Identify gaps or overlaps that could impact your plan
• Facilitate conversations between family members and professionals
• Ensure each advisor’s work supports your broader legacy goals

Ready to get started? Schedule a meeting with your financial professional to review your advisory network and ensure coordination. A cohesive team today can help preserve and grow your family’s wealth for generations to come.

2. Review Diversification Annually

One of the greatest threats to wealth preservation is overconcentration. A portfolio that leans too heavily on one stock, industry, or asset class exposes you to unnecessary risk. This kind of imbalance may work in the short term, but can become a threat to sustaining wealth across decades.

A smart habit is to review your diversification annually. Spreading investments across equities, bonds, real estate, and alternatives helps balance growth, income, and preservation. An annual review can confirm that your allocation still matches your long-term objectives, tax picture, and current market environment. This discipline helps reduce the chance that one underperforming asset derails your broader plan.

Work with your financial professional to review your portfolio through key questions like:

• Are you overexposed to a single company, sector, or region?
• Has market movement pulled you away from allocation targets?
• Do upcoming liquidity needs merit a larger cash reserve?

3. Create a Family Governance Structure

For many families, the biggest challenges in preserving wealth aren’t market-related at all; they’re relational. Differing priorities, poor communication, or unclear expectations can cause conflict that undermines even the most carefully built portfolio.

That’s why it’s wise to establish a family governance framework. This can include:

• Regular family meetings
• A shared mission statement
• Documented values
• Agreed-upon decision-making processes

Creating structure around wealth discussions can keep everyone informed, reduce misunderstandings, and anchor decisions in shared values. Seek the guidance of your financial professional; they can help facilitate constructive conversations in support of your long-term goals.

4. Align Philanthropic Giving with Long-Term Goals

Philanthropy is a natural expression of values and a way to create lasting impact. However, when giving is ad hoc or disconnected from the broader financial plan, it can reduce effectiveness and create tax inefficiencies.

To bring structure to generosity, review your giving strategy annually and ensure it reflects both your personal values and long-term wealth goals. Vehicles like donor-advised funds, charitable trusts, or family foundations can formalize philanthropy, enhance tax efficiency, and model generosity for younger generations.

Consider working with your financial professional to design a charitable strategy that balances impact and efficiency while supporting the causes that matter most to you. When generosity is tied to a strategy, it reinforces your family’s legacy and demonstrates that wealth has a purpose beyond accumulation.

5. Review Insurance Coverage Annually

Affluent families often carry complex insurance needs that evolve over time. Coverage gaps or outdated policies can expose assets to unnecessary risks—from liability to property damage.

Make it a habit to review and update your insurance policies each year. Evaluate life, liability, property, business, and long-term care coverage to ensure alignment with current needs. Regular reviews protect against unexpected events and ensure coverage keeps pace as your holdings and lifestyle change.

Here is a basic insurance checklist to get you started:

• Personal liability, property, collections
• Life insurance (purpose, ownership, beneficiary designations)
• Long-term care or hybrid policies
• Key-person or business coverage

Ask your financial professional to help you review your needs, coverage, and options in these key areas.

6. Establish a Rhythm for Plan Reviews

Wealth preservation is not a “set it and forget it” exercise. Tax laws evolve, markets shift, and family circumstances change. A plan that worked three years ago may need meaningful updates today.

A beneficial habit is to set a regular cadence for reviewing your estate, tax, and investment plans. Whether annually or semi-annually, predictable check-ins can keep your strategies aligned, effective, and responsive. Think of this as a financial “rhythm”—steady, proactive, and deliberate.

Here are a few annual review essentials:

• Estate documents and beneficiaries
• Portfolio vs. investment policy statement (IPS)
• Tax-aware moves (charitable bunching, tax-loss harvesting, funding vehicles)

Your financial professional can help you bring structure and consistency to these reviews. Regular collaboration can help turn this habit into one of the most effective tools for protecting and strengthening your family’s long-term plan.

Keep Wealth Working Across Generations

Preserving wealth is about more than protecting dollars; it’s about creating habits that allow your resources to endure and serve a purpose. By reviewing diversification, building family governance, aligning philanthropy, keeping insurance current, reviewing plans consistently, and relying on your financial professional to coordinate your advisory team, you can help ensure that your wealth continues to benefit both current and future generations.

Take the next step: Schedule a meeting with your financial professional today. Together, we can strengthen these habits and put a plan in place to secure your legacy for generations to come.

 ^{A diversified portfolio does not assure a profit or protect against loss in a declining market.}

^{This material was developed and prepared by a third party for use by your Registered Representative. The opinions expressed and material provided are for general information and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. The content is developed from sources believed to be providing accurate information.}