2023-04-21_936-How_to_Invest_in_Your_Children_at_a_Very_Young_Age_FINALE-How_Cornelius_Vanderbilt_Died
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00:00:30.000 | Imagine waking up one morning to learn you had won the lottery.
00:00:34.400 | You are informed that the jackpot is $10 billion.
00:00:38.400 | You, the sole winner, have become the richest person in the world.
00:00:43.400 | The lottery officials tell you that you will receive all of the prize money
00:00:47.400 | in one lump sum, tax-free, that morning.
00:00:52.000 | As a condition of receiving the money, you must never give away any of it to charity.
00:00:59.400 | A close approximation of this unlikely event occurred an astonishing number of times during the Gilded Age,
00:01:05.400 | that heady time from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century,
00:01:09.400 | the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States,
00:01:12.400 | when great fortunes were made and spent overnight in a way that had never been seen before
00:01:17.400 | and will probably never be seen again.
00:01:21.000 | The nation's first great industrial fortune was won by the Vanderbilt family,
00:01:26.400 | and for a while this family could claim the title of the richest in the world.
00:01:31.400 | Subsequent fortunes surpassed it, but by then great wealth was decried.
00:01:36.400 | The unique opportunity that confronted the members of this particular family
00:01:39.400 | was the freedom to use their fortune just as they damn pleased,
00:01:43.400 | to create whatever reality they wanted,
00:01:46.400 | to give free reign to their every impulse without any sense of the social responsibilities that great wealth confers.
00:01:53.400 | For the Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one's money was not only accepted, but celebrated.
00:02:00.400 | What may have started as play-acting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairy-tale palaces,
00:02:08.400 | soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility.
00:02:14.400 | The bits and pieces of history that chronicle the four-generation saga of the Vanderbilt family
00:02:19.400 | are scattered everywhere like a broken string of pearls,
00:02:23.400 | in wills and court transcripts, letters, memoirs, journals, newspaper clippings,
00:02:29.400 | magazines, scrapbooks, photographs, and auction catalogs.
00:02:33.400 | But nowhere is that curious combination of magnificence and absurdity that was the Gilded Age
00:02:39.400 | more palpable than in the great country homes that still stand today as monuments to their dreams and fantasies.
00:02:47.400 | Idyllower, Marble House, The Breakers, Biltmore, Florham.
00:02:53.400 | These country estates were not just bigger or more ornate than other millionaires' mansions.
00:02:58.400 | They rivaled the most magnificent country houses of England
00:03:02.400 | and the chateaus of France that had been passed down to titled descendants
00:03:06.400 | generation to generation since the Middle Ages.
00:03:09.400 | They were built to become precisely the American equivalent of these old world palaces,
00:03:15.400 | great ancestral homes that would proclaim for centuries, for all time, the prominence of the Vanderbilts.
00:03:22.400 | But it did not work out that way.
00:03:24.400 | Far from becoming ancestral homes, these monuments to limitless wealth, built for eternity,
00:03:31.400 | were hardly used for a lifetime.
00:03:34.400 | None was occupied by the next generation.
00:03:38.400 | These great estates were but the family's country retreats,
00:03:41.400 | built after the Vanderbilts had achieved social prominence.
00:03:45.400 | Their main residences on Fifth Avenue in New York City were designed to so startle the world
00:03:50.400 | with their size and splendor that they would secure the family's preeminent position of social leadership.
00:03:56.400 | Dominating the prime real estate of what was, even then, one of the greatest cities of the world,
00:04:02.400 | the ten Vanderbilt mansions that lined Fifth Avenue were examples of epic extravagance.
00:04:08.400 | Yet these homes too failed to become the family seats their builders had envisioned.
00:04:14.400 | One by one, the Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue fell to the wreckers' ball,
00:04:19.400 | their contents to the auctioneer's gavel.
00:04:22.400 | The first of these Fifth Avenue mansions was completed in 1883,
00:04:26.400 | the first was demolished in 1914, and by 1947, every one had been broken to rubble.
00:04:37.400 | This fabled golden era, this special world of luxury and privilege that the Vanderbilts created,
00:04:43.400 | lasted but a brief moment.
00:04:45.400 | Within 30 years after the death of Commodore Vanderbilt in 1877,
00:04:50.400 | no member of his family was among the richest people in the United States,
00:04:54.400 | having been supplanted by such new titans as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frick, and Ford.
00:05:00.400 | 48 years after his death, one of his direct descendants died penniless.
00:05:06.400 | Within 70 years of his death, the last of the great Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue
00:05:11.400 | had made way for modern office buildings.
00:05:14.400 | When 120 of the Commodore's descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973
00:05:20.400 | for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them.
00:05:26.400 | What had happened?
00:05:28.400 | What had gone wrong with the Vanderbilts' plans to found a family dynasty?
00:05:32.400 | There is no easy answer.
00:05:34.400 | The ratification in 1913 of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution,
00:05:38.400 | which gave Congress the power to tax incomes, rising property taxes,
00:05:43.400 | the imposition of estate taxes, the Depression, the fecundity of a family,
00:05:48.400 | all splintered the fortune.
00:05:50.400 | But taxes, depressions, and reproduction had posed no burden to the establishment
00:05:56.400 | of other family dynasties founded in the same era.
00:06:00.400 | The most recent listing in the Forbes 400 of the richest people in the United States
00:06:04.400 | includes three Fords with combined fortunes of over $1.5 billion,
00:06:09.400 | five Rockefellers holding net assets of over $3 billion,
00:06:12.400 | with another $2 billion spread among the rest of the family,
00:06:15.400 | and 20 DuPonts worth a total of $5 billion,
00:06:19.400 | in addition to another $2 billion held by other family members.
00:06:23.400 | What happened to the richest family in the world is a remarkable story
00:06:28.400 | that no novelist would dare invent.
00:06:31.400 | What began as that peculiarly American dream of rags to riches,
00:06:36.400 | in this case the dream of a Staten Island water rat,
00:06:40.400 | who turned his ambition and energy, his frugality and hard work,
00:06:44.400 | into an astounding fortune, became for the Commodores' descendants
00:06:49.400 | an unusual nightmare as they discovered what they could do with the money
00:06:54.400 | and what the money could do to them.
00:06:56.400 | If ever Scott Fitzgerald needed evidence to substantiate his aphorism that,
00:07:01.400 | "The very rich are different from you and me,"
00:07:04.400 | it was here in spades in this portrait gallery of extravagant crazies
00:07:09.400 | that is the unique saga of the Vanderbilt family.
00:07:13.400 | Today you can wander through some of the remaining architectural relics
00:07:17.400 | of this other world, these homes of baronial opulence
00:07:21.400 | whose extraordinary lack of human proportion and perspective
00:07:24.400 | says so much about the Gilded Age and listen to the echoes of the past.
00:07:29.400 | What did you think, Alva, as you were building Marble House?
00:07:33.400 | Did you think that the world you created would go on forever?
00:07:36.400 | That the ball would last past dawn?
00:07:40.400 | As they sat in the quiet of the upper loggia of the Breakers
00:07:43.400 | and watched the sun rise over the ocean,
00:07:46.400 | what dreams did Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt dream?
00:07:50.400 | What was the power of the dream that led to the creation of their summer cottage?
00:07:55.400 | Did this bizarre monument to a fortune make them happy?
00:07:59.400 | How did it feel to be rich enough to build Biltmore,
00:08:02.400 | that 250-room French Renaissance chateau set on 146,000 acres
00:08:08.400 | in the hills of Asheville, North Carolina,
00:08:11.400 | a house so large its proud architect noted that the surrounding mountains
00:08:16.400 | "are in scale with the house"?
00:08:20.400 | What was it like to have more money than anyone else?
00:08:24.400 | The Fifth Avenue mansions, alas, are long gone.
00:08:28.400 | But today, if you stroll down Fifth Avenue, and if the light is just right,
00:08:32.400 | and you half-close your eyes, you might spot a red carpet being unrolled
00:08:36.400 | from the door of a limestone chateau down the steps to the curb.
00:08:40.400 | Watch as a burgundy Rolls-Royce stops in front,
00:08:43.400 | and guests walk up to the door flanked by maroon liveried footmen,
00:08:48.400 | and hear coming from inside the faraway sounds of an orchestra.
00:08:53.400 | The Commodore, 1794-1877
00:08:58.400 | That Wednesday morning, May 10, 1876,
00:09:02.400 | reporters from every New York City newspaper gathered in front of the townhouse
00:09:07.400 | at 10 Washington Place, waiting for some sign that 82-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt,
00:09:13.400 | the Commodore, as he was called, had passed away.
00:09:17.400 | During the last few days, no one had seen the aging millionaire at any of his favorite haunts.
00:09:21.400 | He had not come to his office to oversee his railroad empire.
00:09:25.400 | He had not driven his fine team of trotters in the warm spring afternoons
00:09:29.400 | while nursing a tumbler of gin laced with sugar.
00:09:32.400 | He had not gone to the Manhattan Club for an evening game of whist.
00:09:36.400 | Something was wrong. Something had happened.
00:09:40.400 | All morning, the reporters paced up and down Washington Place,
00:09:44.400 | a fashionable street until the city's elite had begun moving up Fifth Avenue.
00:09:48.400 | Some ate sandwiches and drank beer. Others played cards.
00:09:52.400 | Now and then, one would leave to file a bulletin.
00:09:55.400 | "The Commodore was dead!" the stock market plunged.
00:09:58.400 | "The Commodore was still alive!" Wall Street rallied.
00:10:01.400 | Finally, Frankie, the Commodore's ravishing 37-year-old wife,
00:10:06.400 | invited the reporters to come in, leading them over threadbare rugs to the large parlor.
00:10:11.400 | As they milled about, admiring a bust of the Commodore
00:10:14.400 | and an oil painting of the Commodore in a road wagon driving his favorite team,
00:10:18.400 | and the small, solid gold model of one of the Commodore's steamships,
00:10:22.400 | a voice roared down from the upstairs hall,
00:10:25.400 | spewing forth a string of obscenities mixed with a message for the reporters.
00:10:29.400 | "I am not dying!"
00:10:32.400 | The house shook. The reporters froze.
00:10:36.400 | "The slight local disorder is now almost entirely gone!
00:10:40.400 | The doctor says I will be well in a few days.
00:10:43.400 | Even if I was dying," the voice bellowed,
00:10:46.400 | "I should have vigor enough to knock this abuse down your lying throats
00:10:50.400 | and give the undertaker a job!"
00:10:53.400 | It was vintage Vanderbilt.
00:10:57.400 | The reporters quickly departed, convinced the richest man in the world was alive and obviously well.
00:11:03.400 | Alive, yes, but not feeling very well.
00:11:07.400 | After the reporters left, the Commodore summoned Dr. Jared Linsley,
00:11:12.400 | his physician for the past 40 years.
00:11:14.400 | "Doctor," he told him, "the devil has been after me!"
00:11:17.400 | "Well, don't let him catch you, for if you do, you will not be Commodore Vanderbilt anymore,
00:11:22.400 | for Commodore Vanderbilt never suffered anybody to catch him!"
00:11:25.400 | "Doctor, if all the devils in hell were concentrated in me, I could not have suffered anymore.
00:11:31.400 | I want you to make a thorough examination of my case.
00:11:34.400 | I think I have neglected myself too long already.
00:11:37.400 | I have difficulty in urination, the effects being protracted and painful.
00:11:42.400 | I have hernia, and I have piles."
00:11:45.400 | He was also suffering from chronic indigestion, he told his elderly physician,
00:11:51.400 | accompanied by excessive belching and flatulence.
00:11:54.400 | After examining him, Dr. Linsley advised the Commodore that the difficulty in urination,
00:11:59.400 | which was causing the excruciating pain, was the result of an enlarged prostate gland.
00:12:05.400 | "And what had caused that?" the Commodore asked his doctor.
00:12:09.400 | "The authorities considered it might be due either to stricture, gonorrhea, horseback riding,
00:12:15.400 | or excessive sexual intercourse," Dr. Linsley answered.
00:12:18.400 | "It drives the victim of it into venereal excesses.
00:12:22.400 | It produces a species of lascivious-mindedness.
00:12:25.400 | That is what the authorities give as the tendency of that disease."
00:12:29.400 | Well, that explained a lot.
00:12:31.400 | The Commodore winked at his doctor and asked no more questions about the cause of his troubles.
00:12:36.400 | Now all he had to do was get better.
00:12:39.400 | He told Dr. Linsley that he
00:12:41.400 | "and the Lord were fighting the devil, and were going to whip him."
00:12:45.400 | Every day, Dr. Linsley stopped by to visit.
00:12:48.400 | When the crusty Commodore was in pain, he lashed out at his physician in terrible fits of temper.
00:12:54.400 | "Has the old doctor come?" he yelled to Frankie.
00:12:57.400 | "Is the old doctor here? Is the old granny here yet? Blatherskite!"
00:13:02.400 | he exploded as Dr. Linsley entered his bedchamber,
00:13:05.400 | hurling his favorite epithet for anyone the Commodore considered adult,
00:13:09.400 | "Blockshead, do something for the pain!"
00:13:12.400 | Uneducated, barely able to read (if a letter was longer than a paragraph or two,
00:13:17.400 | he would throw it down in disgust and have his clerk read it to him),
00:13:21.400 | superstitious, the Commodore believed in mysticism and the occult,
00:13:26.400 | and much to Dr. Linsley's dismay, was willing to try anything suggested by anyone promising a cure.
00:13:33.400 | Believing they were "health conductors,"
00:13:35.400 | he even had four pans of salt placed under the four posts of his bedstead,
00:13:40.400 | just as a spiritualist advised.
00:13:43.400 | The Commodore had frequently told his friends that he never made a business decision without advice from the spirits,
00:13:48.400 | so it was not surprising that now he summoned mediums to his aid.
00:13:54.400 | "I have a communication from your dead wife," a spiritualist murmured to him during a seance in his darkened bedchamber.
00:14:01.400 | "I don't care for that now!" the Commodore snapped.
00:14:05.400 | As long as he had made contact with the other side,
00:14:07.400 | he wanted to take full advantage of the practical aspects of the opportunity.
00:14:11.400 | "I want to know about the price of stocks," he told the medium.
00:14:15.400 | "Business before pleasure. Let me speak with Jim Fisk."
00:14:19.400 | He was clearly feeling better.
00:14:21.400 | The spiritualist obediently conjured up the wraith of his deceased business rival,
00:14:27.400 | who began forecasting the prices of railroad stocks.
00:14:30.400 | Not agreeing with the predictions he was hearing, the Commodore argued with the spirit,
00:14:35.400 | though the medium convinced him he was interfering with the communications from the other world.
00:14:40.400 | Reporters, Wall Street operators, doctors, and occultists were not the only ones interested in the state of the Commodore's health.
00:14:47.400 | His ten children had grown old waiting for this moment.
00:14:51.400 | His oldest child was sixty-one, his youngest forty.
00:14:56.400 | Now, like vultures, they swooped around Ten Washington Place,
00:15:01.400 | consumed by the vision of picking over his sumptuous estate.
00:15:05.400 | The Commodore was not keen to see any of them,
00:15:08.400 | for when they entered his room, each one inevitably asked about his will.
00:15:12.400 | He told them he "had done the best he could for all" in his will,
00:15:17.400 | and that if he had made a hundred more wills, he could not make a better one.
00:15:21.400 | When he refused to see them, these birds of prey would gather in an adjoining room,
00:15:26.400 | and, scared to death of the sick old man who was their father,
00:15:30.400 | peeked through the crack in the open door, staring, waiting.
00:15:35.400 | He felt especially indifferent toward his eight married daughters.
00:15:40.400 | They were all right as women went, but he complained,
00:15:43.400 | "They're not Vanderbilts. They do not bear the name of Vanderbilt."
00:15:47.400 | One of his daughters had sold her house, and given her father the money to invest for her.
00:15:52.400 | After he had doubled it, he refused to give any back to her.
00:15:56.400 | "Women are not fit to have money anyway," he explained.
00:15:59.400 | And he wanted nothing to do with his namesake, Cornelius, the younger of his two sons.
00:16:05.400 | Two or three times a day, Cornelius would stop by the house, asking to see his father.
00:16:11.400 | "Your son Cornelius is downstairs and wishes to see you," a servant would tell the Commodore.
00:16:15.400 | "Where is he?"
00:16:17.400 | "In the reception room."
00:16:18.400 | "Well, let him stay there. Why does he come down here? He ought to stay home in Connecticut.
00:16:23.400 | He has no business here. I don't want to see him.
00:16:26.400 | Go down and tell him not to come in here again while I'm living or after I am dead."
00:16:31.400 | Only 55-year-old William, his older son, was permitted to enter the Commodore's room unannounced
00:16:38.400 | when he stopped in to see his father twice a day.
00:16:41.400 | When Dr. Linsley told the Commodore he was well enough to see all of his children,
00:16:45.400 | the Commodore responded in a sudden rage,
00:16:48.400 | "No, damn them! They're all bastards but Bill!"
00:16:52.400 | Alone in the large, sunny, second-floor room at the southeast corner of the house,
00:16:58.400 | propped up in his bed in the middle of the chamber where he could gaze out the window,
00:17:02.400 | or at his safe in the corner, the Commodore dozed and dreamed,
00:17:06.400 | drifting in and out of consciousness.
00:17:10.400 | Fantastic recurring visions disturbed the octogenarian's sleep.
00:17:15.400 | He felt himself falling, falling to the bottom of the sea.
00:17:18.400 | Only the full power of one of his old steamships, the Vanderbilt, was able to pull him slowly to the surface.
00:17:24.400 | In another dream he had a vision of a roadway, shaped like a horseshoe, stretched around his bed.
00:17:30.400 | At one end of it gathered a large number of his acquaintances,
00:17:33.400 | his business associates and rivals from his steamship and railroad days.
00:17:38.400 | He traveled with them along the road around his bed,
00:17:41.400 | watching as on occasion one of them walked to the edge of the road and dropped off, never to be seen again.
00:17:48.400 | Several times during the journey he recalled going to the edge of the road,
00:17:52.400 | and coming back again, and then continuing on.
00:17:56.400 | Now he felt he was standing on the edge once more.
00:18:00.400 | He could not tell in what direction he would go.
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00:18:36.400 | The passages that I have just read to you are the introduction in the first part of Chapter 1
00:18:42.400 | of a book entitled "Fortune's Children, the Fall of the House of Vanderbilt"
00:18:47.400 | written by Arthur T. Vanderbilt II.
00:18:50.400 | And it's a fascinating book which chronicles exactly what it has just laid out in the introduction and the first part of the chapter.
00:18:58.400 | In the end of Chapter 1, if you are interested, you can read about the death of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore.
00:19:06.400 | The original man who gathered together the fortune that has continued past him.
00:19:13.400 | I myself find the book quite riveting in terms of its lessons.
00:19:18.400 | Lessons of, in some cases, what to do and lessons of what not to do.
00:19:22.400 | There's no question that the Commodore was a remarkable man in the fullest sense of the word.
00:19:28.400 | Starting with nothing at an early age, he built the world's largest fortune and then passed it along.
00:19:34.400 | And yet, something went dramatically wrong.
00:19:37.400 | Very, very wrong.
00:19:39.400 | In his financial planning and certainly in his family planning.
00:19:46.400 | I want you to imagine yourself on your deathbed.
00:19:50.400 | I want you to imagine yourself in that bed, in that room, just like the Commodore was.
00:19:58.400 | And think about what that scene would be like.
00:20:03.400 | If you have ten children, are you going to see them?
00:20:07.400 | What's the atmosphere in the room going to be like?
00:20:11.400 | Think about that.
00:20:15.400 | The podcast episode that I'm sharing with you now is the conclusion of a long series that has been called
00:20:21.400 | "How to Invest in Your Children at a Very Young Age."
00:20:25.400 | And the primary focus that I have had in this series is to talk to you about some of the ways that you can invest
00:20:31.400 | into your children at a young age in addition to, and in some cases in replacement of,
00:20:37.400 | setting aside money into a college fund.
00:20:41.400 | In the simplest sense, my argument has been that parents often neglect and ignore some of the things that they can do
00:20:48.400 | that would really be profitable if they focused on investing in their children while young.
00:20:53.400 | And they're trying to see to the success of their children, so they set aside money for college.
00:20:58.400 | And they feel like, "I've done my duty. I've paid for the education of my children."
00:21:02.400 | My argument has been that there's a lot more you can do and that the return on investment is much more significant
00:21:08.400 | than just setting money aside in mutual funds.
00:21:12.400 | The concept of a college fund is largely a concept that has been packaged up by a consortium of financial advisors
00:21:19.400 | and wealth management companies mixed together with a little bit of tax incentives and decent marketing effort
00:21:25.400 | on behalf of colleges, etc., to create the modern system.
00:21:29.400 | And I'm not upset about it. As I've said, tried to say many times, it's fine to save money for your kid's college.
00:21:35.400 | But it's not fine to save money for your kid's college if you neglect your children.
00:21:41.400 | College funds are great. But they are the icing on top of the cake. They're not the cake itself.
00:21:50.400 | Money, a great job, a great income, a great career, it's not going to solve the problems of human beings.
00:21:59.400 | Listen to one other passage from the end of chapter 2 when talking about the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt,
00:22:06.400 | his son William Vanderbilt. And I don't want to spoil the story for you, but in Cornelius's will,
00:22:15.400 | he left the vast majority of his fortune to his son. And this caused horrific issues in the family.
00:22:23.400 | But it meant that William Vanderbilt basically woke up in that $10 billion inheritance.
00:22:28.400 | He inherited a total of $95 million. Remember, this was the day before income taxes,
00:22:32.400 | when a dollar was actually worth something. Listen to what William's words were at the end of his life
00:22:38.400 | after inheriting this fortune from his father.
00:22:41.400 | "What did it mean to be the richest man in the world? To William Vanderbilt, it meant very little.
00:22:46.400 | He was constantly concerned about preserving his wealth and was obsessed with scrutinizing his smallest expense.
00:22:53.400 | Just after he had invested $50 million in government bonds and was sorting them into stacks on his desk,
00:22:59.400 | he called for his private secretary, Isaac Chambers, to come into his office.
00:23:04.400 | 'Was I here last Thursday, Mr. Chambers?' he asked. 'No, for I remember having been up to your house that day.'
00:23:11.400 | William Vanderbilt picked up a bill from the janitor, who supplied him with lunches for 40 cents a day.
00:23:17.400 | 'Well, do you know that the janitor has charged me with a lunch on Thursday?'
00:23:21.400 | He took his pen and made a correction on the bill, eliminating the 40 cents for the lunch he had never eaten
00:23:26.400 | and handed the corrected bill to Mr. Chambers to be paid.
00:23:29.400 | 'The sheer magnitude of his fortune,' he told Chauncey DePue, 'gave him no advantages over men of moderate wealth.
00:23:36.400 | I have my house, my pictures and my horses, and so do they. I can have a steam yacht if I want to,
00:23:42.400 | but it would give me no pleasure and I don't care for it.'
00:23:45.400 | On another occasion he spoke of a neighbor, saying, 'He isn't worth a hundredth part as much as I am,
00:23:50.400 | but he has more of the real pleasures of life than I have.
00:23:53.400 | His house is as comfortable as mine, even if it didn't cost so much.
00:23:57.400 | His team is about as good as mine. His opera box is next to mine.
00:24:01.400 | His health is better than mine, and he will probably outlive me, and he can trust his friends.'
00:24:07.400 | Being the richest person in the world brought him, he said, nothing but anxiety.
00:24:12.400 | He enjoyed having some fine horses that grazed in a pasture he could see from his office in the Grand Central Depot.
00:24:19.400 | One friend noted that he was so fond of horses that he, quote,
00:24:22.400 | 'probably would have slept with them' and did not, only through fear of the newspapers criticizing his eccentricity.
00:24:29.400 | And he was beginning to collect works of art.
00:24:32.400 | Other than that, there was nothing he wanted. His fortune was really nothing but a source of headaches.
00:24:38.400 | He believed that his health had been broken by the burden of managing his father's empire.
00:24:43.400 | 'I feel pretty well,' he would tell his doctors, 'but can't depend upon myself.
00:24:47.400 | 'What's the use, Sam, of having all this money?' he said to his nephew.
00:24:51.400 | 'If you cannot enjoy it. My wealth is no comfort to me if I have not good health behind it.'
00:24:56.400 | He asked his nephew if he thought he looked old, as old as the Commodore right before he died.
00:25:02.400 | That was just how he felt, like an 83-year-old.
00:25:05.400 | By his early 60s, he was tired and worn out.
00:25:09.400 | 'The care of $200 million is too great a load for my brain or back to bear,' he confessed to his family.
00:25:15.400 | 'It is enough to kill a man. I have no son who I am willing to afflict with the terrible burden.
00:25:20.400 | 'There is no pleasure to be got out of it as an offset, no good of any kind.
00:25:25.400 | 'I have no real gratification or enjoyments of any sort,
00:25:28.400 | 'more than my neighbor on the next block who is worth only half a million.
00:25:32.400 | 'So when I lay down this heavy responsibility, I want my sons to divide it
00:25:37.400 | 'and share the worry which it will cost to keep it.'
00:25:41.400 | Direct quote from William Vanderbilt, who inherited $95 million in a very short order,
00:25:47.400 | something like five years, doubled the fortune that he had inherited,
00:25:50.400 | and was an extremely shrewd accumulator of wealth.
00:25:54.400 | And yet, he, like his father, missed out on the good things of life.
00:25:59.400 | And so I think there is a balance.
00:26:01.400 | Maybe at times you have to give up the good things of life.
00:26:04.400 | Certainly you do.
00:26:06.400 | There are times in which you won't tuck your children into bed because you are doing business.
00:26:11.400 | And there will be times in which you won't do business because you're tucking your children into bed.
00:26:16.400 | And I wouldn't try to impose on anyone an absolute standard that you should always choose one or another.
00:26:23.400 | Life is very much a study of balance.
00:26:26.400 | And yet, knowing that we have to choose, let us choose wisely.
00:26:32.400 | As I close out this series, I want to simply review a few of the things that you can spend money on.
00:26:38.400 | First, it is fine to save money for the education of your children.
00:26:43.400 | Education in our age is more important than ever.
00:26:46.400 | It's going to be increasingly difficult in the coming years for those who are poorly educated to get ahead.
00:26:53.400 | We live in a world that values education and skills.
00:26:57.400 | And education and skills are essential for success in the modern world.
00:27:01.400 | The Commodore himself may have been able to raise himself from a penniless youth to the wealthiest man in the world,
00:27:08.400 | even though he was virtually uneducated and barely able to read.
00:27:14.400 | And he was certainly completely uneducated in the graces of society.
00:27:18.400 | And yet, we do not live in his world.
00:27:20.400 | And so, you and your children will not be able to repeat that process.
00:27:24.400 | Education is essential.
00:27:27.400 | But education is not sufficient.
00:27:30.400 | There are many more things that are necessary.
00:27:33.400 | And there are many things that you can do to help your children engage with their education in a significant way.
00:27:40.400 | So, as you are going through life, recognize that the word "investment" and the concept of "investing into your children,"
00:27:48.400 | these are words and concepts that deserve to be broadly considered.
00:27:54.400 | The idea that investing in your children is something that is exclusively done with mutual funds and a 529 account
00:28:00.400 | is a myth that has been sold to you by the financial services industry, and you've probably adopted it fairly uncritically.
00:28:08.400 | The idea that investing in your children is primarily done through paying for their education is also a myth.
00:28:16.400 | In today's world of antinatalism, simply having children is an investment.
00:28:23.400 | Throughout human history, it was not that way.
00:28:26.400 | But today, it is.
00:28:28.400 | The decision to have children is something that is in and of itself an investment.
00:28:34.400 | And I would encourage you to think about that term broadly.
00:28:36.400 | So, if you're looking at things you can do with your money, one of those things you can do is have children.
00:28:41.400 | The choice to have children is important.
00:28:43.400 | Quite literally, when you procreate, you are creating the future in a very literal sense.
00:28:49.400 | I don't know how much children cost.
00:28:51.400 | There are all kinds of estimates that the price is very high.
00:28:54.400 | I think they pretty much cost about as much as you have.
00:28:57.400 | So, if you don't have much, they don't cost much.
00:28:59.400 | If you have a lot, they cost a lot.
00:29:01.400 | Some people say they don't have children because they don't want to incur the expense.
00:29:05.400 | Not many, but it's certainly an advantage that many people are aware of, and I think it's pretty true.
00:29:11.400 | If you don't have children, you're going to have more free money.
00:29:15.400 | Dinks, dual income, no kids.
00:29:17.400 | You're going to have plenty of disposable income in that situation.
00:29:23.400 | But I think a good hard analysis of what you want at the end of your life is in order.
00:29:28.400 | I think that when we think about wealth, we can't think about that exclusively in a financial sense.
00:29:34.400 | In the same way that we should incorporate physical wealth into our balance sheet in some way,
00:29:40.400 | we should also incorporate familial wealth into our balance sheet in some way.
00:29:45.400 | There have been many times where I have wondered if it wouldn't have been better for me to go and just never have children,
00:29:51.400 | never get married, and live the high life that many people seem to live.
00:29:56.400 | I think any rational and sane person questions his choices, and it's good to reconsider.
00:30:01.400 | Am I doing what I want to do?
00:30:02.400 | Am I actually moving with vision and with purpose?
00:30:05.400 | But over the years, I've known a lot of people in that situation and been very close friends to some of them.
00:30:11.400 | And the attractiveness of that when they were young seems very, very high.
00:30:16.400 | But there's something that seems to happen fairly naturally when people go through 45, 50, 55 years old.
00:30:23.400 | They start to wonder about the things that they missed.
00:30:26.400 | And I've spoken with enough wealthy people who had one or two children,
00:30:30.400 | and one of the common things has been, "I wish I had more children,"
00:30:33.400 | because I think it adds a whole different dimension of wealth to your life.
00:30:37.400 | Commodore had 10 children, didn't have a lot of family wealth in his life, so there's no guarantee.
00:30:43.400 | And most of the rest of what we talk about is about finding that proper balance.
00:30:47.400 | So the key is, if you want to have children, have them, and recognize that that act in and of itself is an investment.
00:30:56.400 | You don't need to do all the crazy stuff that I talked about in this show.
00:31:00.400 | You can be a fairly ordinary person.
00:31:02.400 | You can live an ordinary life.
00:31:05.400 | You can send your children to ordinary schools.
00:31:08.400 | Your children can be perfectly ordinary, and ordinary can feel extraordinary.
00:31:14.400 | You don't have to do all the crazy stuff that I talked about in this series in order to enjoy those benefits.
00:31:20.400 | So if your benefits of relationship, benefits of the joy of watching your children succeed.
00:31:25.400 | I spend a lot of time studying unschoolers,
00:31:28.400 | because I feel like unschoolers often demonstrate how sometimes all of the crazy stuff is unnecessary.
00:31:36.400 | That's a speech for a different day.
00:31:38.400 | My point is simply that having children is in and of itself an investment.
00:31:42.400 | Now, to the extent you're able to, spend money nurturing the bodies of your children.
00:31:48.400 | If you're expecting to conceive a child, spend money getting your health into the best possible shape that it can.
00:31:55.400 | And think of it as a view or as an investment into your children.
00:31:59.400 | So I hereby authorize you to categorize your gym membership as an investment.
00:32:06.400 | I hereby authorize you as your financial advisor to categorize your personal trainer expenses as an investment.
00:32:16.400 | I hereby authorize you to categorize your daily steak for dinner habit as an investment.
00:32:24.400 | Because I genuinely do believe these things are properly considered investments.
00:32:28.400 | And like all investments, you think about your diversification strategy, but they are important.
00:32:33.400 | So if you're on your road to conceiving children, then do your very best to care for your body.
00:32:41.400 | Like I talked about in the very first episode, pay a lot of time and attention to the person with whom you wish to parent children.
00:32:49.400 | Both in a physical sense, meaning the specific act of conception and carrying the baby.
00:32:55.400 | And then also in terms of the relationship.
00:32:57.400 | So I hereby authorize you to categorize the money spent wooing and attracting a high quality mate as an investment.
00:33:05.400 | An investment into your future.
00:33:07.400 | Spend a lot of time thinking about that.
00:33:09.400 | Enhance your genetic code as much as possible with good health, good nutrition, good living, etc.
00:33:15.400 | Take good care of a mother when she is pregnant.
00:33:20.400 | Mothers bear a heavy load today.
00:33:22.400 | We could make the arguments that in some ways they have it easier than they've ever had it.
00:33:25.400 | But the truth is that mothers bear a heavy load today.
00:33:28.400 | And women who choose to have children, especially living in a culture of so many women who commit the most horrific acts against their children.
00:33:37.400 | We need to honor mothers and we need to honor them in word and in deed.
00:33:43.400 | And so take good care of the mother of your children.
00:33:46.400 | Provide the very best that you're capable of providing for her.
00:33:50.400 | Do everything possible so that her body and her baby's body have the very best childbirth experience possible.
00:33:58.400 | And have the very best bonding together in those precious first weeks and months of life.
00:34:03.400 | As your baby grows, provide the best nutrition that you can.
00:34:07.400 | The highest quality and the best nutrition that you have access to.
00:34:12.400 | Make sure that everyone gets as much sleep as you're able to do.
00:34:15.400 | A lot of the investments that you can make at this stage of life are not things that you can buy.
00:34:20.400 | Rather they're often foregone expenses.
00:34:24.400 | I've always taken a great deal of pride to know that my wife doesn't have to wake up with an alarm clock.
00:34:29.400 | It just makes me feel good as a husband.
00:34:31.400 | I take a great deal of pride in arranging a lifestyle in which my children don't have to wake up to alarm clocks.
00:34:37.400 | It makes me feel good as a father.
00:34:39.400 | It feels like the way life should be.
00:34:41.400 | But that means foregone income.
00:34:43.400 | That means different lifestyle decisions.
00:34:45.400 | And so those investments are just personal things.
00:34:48.400 | We could have more money if my wife had a job.
00:34:50.400 | But would the money be worth it?
00:34:53.400 | Every person has to choose.
00:34:55.400 | My point is that if you want those things, sometimes they're not things you buy.
00:34:59.400 | They're things that you choose not to buy.
00:35:01.400 | And that becomes an investment into lifestyle.
00:35:04.400 | Help your children to be as active and busy in their physical movements as possible.
00:35:10.400 | Help to enhance their looks to the highest degree possible.
00:35:14.400 | Sometimes an investment in your child is an investment in orthodontia.
00:35:17.400 | Or it's an investment in plastic surgery.
00:35:20.400 | Or it's an investment in a haircut that suits the facial features of your child, etc.
00:35:25.400 | Help to buy and surround your children with all of the things that are going to help his or her mind to develop.
00:35:31.400 | Good stimulation.
00:35:33.400 | Lots of reading.
00:35:35.400 | Lots of books.
00:35:36.400 | Lots of access to things.
00:35:37.400 | Invest into tutors wherever necessary.
00:35:40.400 | Invest into the highest quality educational products that you have access to.
00:35:44.400 | And then finally, invest into the spirits of your children.
00:35:47.400 | Help to nurture a relationship with your children so that your deathbed looks nothing like Cornelius Vanderbilt's.
00:35:56.400 | I believe that giving money to your children, paying for their expenses, making sure they have an inheritance,
00:36:04.400 | these are good and worthy things, and that they will enhance your children's benefits in life.
00:36:11.400 | But they have to come in the context of everything else.
00:36:16.400 | They have to be the icing on the cake, not the main thing.
00:36:20.400 | You can leave the world's greatest fortune to your children, and if you haven't built a strong family, the fortune will quickly be gone.
00:36:29.400 | On the other hand, you can leave no financial wealth, but if you built a family, the dynasty will continue to grow through the generations.
00:36:38.400 | The ideal outcome is to do both.
00:36:44.400 | Not easy, but worth it.
00:36:46.400 | Hope this series has been useful to you.
00:36:47.400 | Thank you so much for listening.
00:36:49.400 | I'm glad to get this done so we can get back to other exciting topics.
00:36:52.400 | I'll be back with you very soon.
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