The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions. Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.

Choose from a great selection of digital coupons and use them up to five times in one transaction. Check our app for details. Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone. Imagine waking up one morning to learn you had won the lottery. You are informed that the jackpot is $10 billion. You, the sole winner, have become the richest person in the world.

The lottery officials tell you that you will receive all of the prize money in one lump sum, tax-free, that morning. As a condition of receiving the money, you must never give away any of it to charity. A close approximation of this unlikely event occurred an astonishing number of times during the Gilded Age, that heady time from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, when great fortunes were made and spent overnight in a way that had never been seen before and will probably never be seen again.

The nation's first great industrial fortune was won by the Vanderbilt family, and for a while this family could claim the title of the richest in the world. Subsequent fortunes surpassed it, but by then great wealth was decried. The unique opportunity that confronted the members of this particular family was the freedom to use their fortune just as they damn pleased, to create whatever reality they wanted, to give free reign to their every impulse without any sense of the social responsibilities that great wealth confers.

For the Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one's money was not only accepted, but celebrated. What may have started as play-acting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairy-tale palaces, soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility.

The bits and pieces of history that chronicle the four-generation saga of the Vanderbilt family are scattered everywhere like a broken string of pearls, in wills and court transcripts, letters, memoirs, journals, newspaper clippings, magazines, scrapbooks, photographs, and auction catalogs. But nowhere is that curious combination of magnificence and absurdity that was the Gilded Age more palpable than in the great country homes that still stand today as monuments to their dreams and fantasies.

Idyllower, Marble House, The Breakers, Biltmore, Florham. These country estates were not just bigger or more ornate than other millionaires' mansions. They rivaled the most magnificent country houses of England and the chateaus of France that had been passed down to titled descendants generation to generation since the Middle Ages. They were built to become precisely the American equivalent of these old world palaces, great ancestral homes that would proclaim for centuries, for all time, the prominence of the Vanderbilts.

But it did not work out that way. Far from becoming ancestral homes, these monuments to limitless wealth, built for eternity, were hardly used for a lifetime. None was occupied by the next generation. These great estates were but the family's country retreats, built after the Vanderbilts had achieved social prominence.

Their main residences on Fifth Avenue in New York City were designed to so startle the world with their size and splendor that they would secure the family's preeminent position of social leadership. Dominating the prime real estate of what was, even then, one of the greatest cities of the world, the ten Vanderbilt mansions that lined Fifth Avenue were examples of epic extravagance.

Yet these homes too failed to become the family seats their builders had envisioned. One by one, the Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue fell to the wreckers' ball, their contents to the auctioneer's gavel. The first of these Fifth Avenue mansions was completed in 1883, the first was demolished in 1914, and by 1947, every one had been broken to rubble.

This fabled golden era, this special world of luxury and privilege that the Vanderbilts created, lasted but a brief moment. Within 30 years after the death of Commodore Vanderbilt in 1877, no member of his family was among the richest people in the United States, having been supplanted by such new titans as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frick, and Ford.

48 years after his death, one of his direct descendants died penniless. Within 70 years of his death, the last of the great Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue had made way for modern office buildings. When 120 of the Commodore's descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them.

What had happened? What had gone wrong with the Vanderbilts' plans to found a family dynasty? There is no easy answer. The ratification in 1913 of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave Congress the power to tax incomes, rising property taxes, the imposition of estate taxes, the Depression, the fecundity of a family, all splintered the fortune.

But taxes, depressions, and reproduction had posed no burden to the establishment of other family dynasties founded in the same era. The most recent listing in the Forbes 400 of the richest people in the United States includes three Fords with combined fortunes of over $1.5 billion, five Rockefellers holding net assets of over $3 billion, with another $2 billion spread among the rest of the family, and 20 DuPonts worth a total of $5 billion, in addition to another $2 billion held by other family members.

What happened to the richest family in the world is a remarkable story that no novelist would dare invent. What began as that peculiarly American dream of rags to riches, in this case the dream of a Staten Island water rat, who turned his ambition and energy, his frugality and hard work, into an astounding fortune, became for the Commodores' descendants an unusual nightmare as they discovered what they could do with the money and what the money could do to them.

If ever Scott Fitzgerald needed evidence to substantiate his aphorism that, "The very rich are different from you and me," it was here in spades in this portrait gallery of extravagant crazies that is the unique saga of the Vanderbilt family. Today you can wander through some of the remaining architectural relics of this other world, these homes of baronial opulence whose extraordinary lack of human proportion and perspective says so much about the Gilded Age and listen to the echoes of the past.

What did you think, Alva, as you were building Marble House? Did you think that the world you created would go on forever? That the ball would last past dawn? As they sat in the quiet of the upper loggia of the Breakers and watched the sun rise over the ocean, what dreams did Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt dream?

What was the power of the dream that led to the creation of their summer cottage? Did this bizarre monument to a fortune make them happy? How did it feel to be rich enough to build Biltmore, that 250-room French Renaissance chateau set on 146,000 acres in the hills of Asheville, North Carolina, a house so large its proud architect noted that the surrounding mountains "are in scale with the house"?

What was it like to have more money than anyone else? The Fifth Avenue mansions, alas, are long gone. But today, if you stroll down Fifth Avenue, and if the light is just right, and you half-close your eyes, you might spot a red carpet being unrolled from the door of a limestone chateau down the steps to the curb.

Watch as a burgundy Rolls-Royce stops in front, and guests walk up to the door flanked by maroon liveried footmen, and hear coming from inside the faraway sounds of an orchestra. The Commodore, 1794-1877 That Wednesday morning, May 10, 1876, reporters from every New York City newspaper gathered in front of the townhouse at 10 Washington Place, waiting for some sign that 82-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore, as he was called, had passed away.

During the last few days, no one had seen the aging millionaire at any of his favorite haunts. He had not come to his office to oversee his railroad empire. He had not driven his fine team of trotters in the warm spring afternoons while nursing a tumbler of gin laced with sugar.

He had not gone to the Manhattan Club for an evening game of whist. Something was wrong. Something had happened. All morning, the reporters paced up and down Washington Place, a fashionable street until the city's elite had begun moving up Fifth Avenue. Some ate sandwiches and drank beer. Others played cards.

Now and then, one would leave to file a bulletin. "The Commodore was dead!" the stock market plunged. "The Commodore was still alive!" Wall Street rallied. Finally, Frankie, the Commodore's ravishing 37-year-old wife, invited the reporters to come in, leading them over threadbare rugs to the large parlor. As they milled about, admiring a bust of the Commodore and an oil painting of the Commodore in a road wagon driving his favorite team, and the small, solid gold model of one of the Commodore's steamships, a voice roared down from the upstairs hall, spewing forth a string of obscenities mixed with a message for the reporters.

"I am not dying!" The house shook. The reporters froze. "The slight local disorder is now almost entirely gone! The doctor says I will be well in a few days. Even if I was dying," the voice bellowed, "I should have vigor enough to knock this abuse down your lying throats and give the undertaker a job!" It was vintage Vanderbilt.

The reporters quickly departed, convinced the richest man in the world was alive and obviously well. Alive, yes, but not feeling very well. After the reporters left, the Commodore summoned Dr. Jared Linsley, his physician for the past 40 years. "Doctor," he told him, "the devil has been after me!" "Well, don't let him catch you, for if you do, you will not be Commodore Vanderbilt anymore, for Commodore Vanderbilt never suffered anybody to catch him!" "Doctor, if all the devils in hell were concentrated in me, I could not have suffered anymore.

I want you to make a thorough examination of my case. I think I have neglected myself too long already. I have difficulty in urination, the effects being protracted and painful. I have hernia, and I have piles." He was also suffering from chronic indigestion, he told his elderly physician, accompanied by excessive belching and flatulence.

After examining him, Dr. Linsley advised the Commodore that the difficulty in urination, which was causing the excruciating pain, was the result of an enlarged prostate gland. "And what had caused that?" the Commodore asked his doctor. "The authorities considered it might be due either to stricture, gonorrhea, horseback riding, or excessive sexual intercourse," Dr.

Linsley answered. "It drives the victim of it into venereal excesses. It produces a species of lascivious-mindedness. That is what the authorities give as the tendency of that disease." Well, that explained a lot. The Commodore winked at his doctor and asked no more questions about the cause of his troubles.

Now all he had to do was get better. He told Dr. Linsley that he "and the Lord were fighting the devil, and were going to whip him." Every day, Dr. Linsley stopped by to visit. When the crusty Commodore was in pain, he lashed out at his physician in terrible fits of temper.

"Has the old doctor come?" he yelled to Frankie. "Is the old doctor here? Is the old granny here yet? Blatherskite!" he exploded as Dr. Linsley entered his bedchamber, hurling his favorite epithet for anyone the Commodore considered adult, "Blockshead, do something for the pain!" Uneducated, barely able to read (if a letter was longer than a paragraph or two, he would throw it down in disgust and have his clerk read it to him), superstitious, the Commodore believed in mysticism and the occult, and much to Dr.

Linsley's dismay, was willing to try anything suggested by anyone promising a cure. Believing they were "health conductors," he even had four pans of salt placed under the four posts of his bedstead, just as a spiritualist advised. The Commodore had frequently told his friends that he never made a business decision without advice from the spirits, so it was not surprising that now he summoned mediums to his aid.

"I have a communication from your dead wife," a spiritualist murmured to him during a seance in his darkened bedchamber. "I don't care for that now!" the Commodore snapped. As long as he had made contact with the other side, he wanted to take full advantage of the practical aspects of the opportunity.

"I want to know about the price of stocks," he told the medium. "Business before pleasure. Let me speak with Jim Fisk." He was clearly feeling better. The spiritualist obediently conjured up the wraith of his deceased business rival, who began forecasting the prices of railroad stocks. Not agreeing with the predictions he was hearing, the Commodore argued with the spirit, though the medium convinced him he was interfering with the communications from the other world.

Reporters, Wall Street operators, doctors, and occultists were not the only ones interested in the state of the Commodore's health. His ten children had grown old waiting for this moment. His oldest child was sixty-one, his youngest forty. Now, like vultures, they swooped around Ten Washington Place, consumed by the vision of picking over his sumptuous estate.

The Commodore was not keen to see any of them, for when they entered his room, each one inevitably asked about his will. He told them he "had done the best he could for all" in his will, and that if he had made a hundred more wills, he could not make a better one.

When he refused to see them, these birds of prey would gather in an adjoining room, and, scared to death of the sick old man who was their father, peeked through the crack in the open door, staring, waiting. He felt especially indifferent toward his eight married daughters. They were all right as women went, but he complained, "They're not Vanderbilts.

They do not bear the name of Vanderbilt." One of his daughters had sold her house, and given her father the money to invest for her. After he had doubled it, he refused to give any back to her. "Women are not fit to have money anyway," he explained. And he wanted nothing to do with his namesake, Cornelius, the younger of his two sons.

Two or three times a day, Cornelius would stop by the house, asking to see his father. "Your son Cornelius is downstairs and wishes to see you," a servant would tell the Commodore. "Where is he?" "In the reception room." "Well, let him stay there. Why does he come down here?

He ought to stay home in Connecticut. He has no business here. I don't want to see him. Go down and tell him not to come in here again while I'm living or after I am dead." Only 55-year-old William, his older son, was permitted to enter the Commodore's room unannounced when he stopped in to see his father twice a day.

When Dr. Linsley told the Commodore he was well enough to see all of his children, the Commodore responded in a sudden rage, "No, damn them! They're all bastards but Bill!" Alone in the large, sunny, second-floor room at the southeast corner of the house, propped up in his bed in the middle of the chamber where he could gaze out the window, or at his safe in the corner, the Commodore dozed and dreamed, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Fantastic recurring visions disturbed the octogenarian's sleep. He felt himself falling, falling to the bottom of the sea. Only the full power of one of his old steamships, the Vanderbilt, was able to pull him slowly to the surface. In another dream he had a vision of a roadway, shaped like a horseshoe, stretched around his bed.

At one end of it gathered a large number of his acquaintances, his business associates and rivals from his steamship and railroad days. He traveled with them along the road around his bed, watching as on occasion one of them walked to the edge of the road and dropped off, never to be seen again.

Several times during the journey he recalled going to the edge of the road, and coming back again, and then continuing on. Now he felt he was standing on the edge once more. He could not tell in what direction he would go. Now for a limited time at Del Amo Motorsports.

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Visit Del Amo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon. See dealer for details. The passages that I have just read to you are the introduction in the first part of Chapter 1 of a book entitled "Fortune's Children, the Fall of the House of Vanderbilt" written by Arthur T.

Vanderbilt II. 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. In the end of Chapter 1, if you are interested, you can read about the death of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore. The original man who gathered together the fortune that has continued past him.

I myself find the book quite riveting in terms of its lessons. Lessons of, in some cases, what to do and lessons of what not to do. There's no question that the Commodore was a remarkable man in the fullest sense of the word. Starting with nothing at an early age, he built the world's largest fortune and then passed it along.

And yet, something went dramatically wrong. Very, very wrong. In his financial planning and certainly in his family planning. I want you to imagine yourself on your deathbed. I want you to imagine yourself in that bed, in that room, just like the Commodore was. And think about what that scene would be like.

If you have ten children, are you going to see them? What's the atmosphere in the room going to be like? Think about that. The podcast episode that I'm sharing with you now is the conclusion of a long series that has been called "How to Invest in Your Children at a Very Young Age." 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 into your children at a young age in addition to, and in some cases in replacement of, setting aside money into a college fund.

In the simplest sense, my argument has been that parents often neglect and ignore some of the things that they can do that would really be profitable if they focused on investing in their children while young. And they're trying to see to the success of their children, so they set aside money for college.

And they feel like, "I've done my duty. I've paid for the education of my children." My argument has been that there's a lot more you can do and that the return on investment is much more significant than just setting money aside in mutual funds. The concept of a college fund is largely a concept that has been packaged up by a consortium of financial advisors and wealth management companies mixed together with a little bit of tax incentives and decent marketing effort on behalf of colleges, etc., to create the modern system.

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. But it's not fine to save money for your kid's college if you neglect your children. College funds are great. But they are the icing on top of the cake.

They're not the cake itself. Money, a great job, a great income, a great career, it's not going to solve the problems of human beings. Listen to one other passage from the end of chapter 2 when talking about the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, his son William Vanderbilt. And I don't want to spoil the story for you, but in Cornelius's will, he left the vast majority of his fortune to his son.

And this caused horrific issues in the family. But it meant that William Vanderbilt basically woke up in that $10 billion inheritance. He inherited a total of $95 million. Remember, this was the day before income taxes, when a dollar was actually worth something. Listen to what William's words were at the end of his life after inheriting this fortune from his father.

"What did it mean to be the richest man in the world? To William Vanderbilt, it meant very little. He was constantly concerned about preserving his wealth and was obsessed with scrutinizing his smallest expense. Just after he had invested $50 million in government bonds and was sorting them into stacks on his desk, he called for his private secretary, Isaac Chambers, to come into his office.

'Was I here last Thursday, Mr. Chambers?' he asked. 'No, for I remember having been up to your house that day.' William Vanderbilt picked up a bill from the janitor, who supplied him with lunches for 40 cents a day. 'Well, do you know that the janitor has charged me with a lunch on Thursday?' He took his pen and made a correction on the bill, eliminating the 40 cents for the lunch he had never eaten and handed the corrected bill to Mr.

Chambers to be paid. 'The sheer magnitude of his fortune,' he told Chauncey DePue, 'gave him no advantages over men of moderate wealth. I have my house, my pictures and my horses, and so do they. I can have a steam yacht if I want to, but it would give me no pleasure and I don't care for it.' On another occasion he spoke of a neighbor, saying, 'He isn't worth a hundredth part as much as I am, but he has more of the real pleasures of life than I have.

His house is as comfortable as mine, even if it didn't cost so much. His team is about as good as mine. His opera box is next to mine. His health is better than mine, and he will probably outlive me, and he can trust his friends.' Being the richest person in the world brought him, he said, nothing but anxiety.

He enjoyed having some fine horses that grazed in a pasture he could see from his office in the Grand Central Depot. One friend noted that he was so fond of horses that he, quote, 'probably would have slept with them' and did not, only through fear of the newspapers criticizing his eccentricity.

And he was beginning to collect works of art. Other than that, there was nothing he wanted. His fortune was really nothing but a source of headaches. He believed that his health had been broken by the burden of managing his father's empire. 'I feel pretty well,' he would tell his doctors, 'but can't depend upon myself.

'What's the use, Sam, of having all this money?' he said to his nephew. 'If you cannot enjoy it. My wealth is no comfort to me if I have not good health behind it.' He asked his nephew if he thought he looked old, as old as the Commodore right before he died.

That was just how he felt, like an 83-year-old. By his early 60s, he was tired and worn out. 'The care of $200 million is too great a load for my brain or back to bear,' he confessed to his family. 'It is enough to kill a man. I have no son who I am willing to afflict with the terrible burden.

'There is no pleasure to be got out of it as an offset, no good of any kind. 'I have no real gratification or enjoyments of any sort, 'more than my neighbor on the next block who is worth only half a million. 'So when I lay down this heavy responsibility, I want my sons to divide it 'and share the worry which it will cost to keep it.' Direct quote from William Vanderbilt, who inherited $95 million in a very short order, something like five years, doubled the fortune that he had inherited, and was an extremely shrewd accumulator of wealth.

And yet, he, like his father, missed out on the good things of life. And so I think there is a balance. Maybe at times you have to give up the good things of life. Certainly you do. There are times in which you won't tuck your children into bed because you are doing business.

And there will be times in which you won't do business because you're tucking your children into bed. And I wouldn't try to impose on anyone an absolute standard that you should always choose one or another. Life is very much a study of balance. And yet, knowing that we have to choose, let us choose wisely.

As I close out this series, I want to simply review a few of the things that you can spend money on. First, it is fine to save money for the education of your children. Education in our age is more important than ever. It's going to be increasingly difficult in the coming years for those who are poorly educated to get ahead.

We live in a world that values education and skills. And education and skills are essential for success in the modern world. The Commodore himself may have been able to raise himself from a penniless youth to the wealthiest man in the world, even though he was virtually uneducated and barely able to read.

And he was certainly completely uneducated in the graces of society. And yet, we do not live in his world. And so, you and your children will not be able to repeat that process. Education is essential. But education is not sufficient. There are many more things that are necessary. And there are many things that you can do to help your children engage with their education in a significant way.

So, as you are going through life, recognize that the word "investment" and the concept of "investing into your children," these are words and concepts that deserve to be broadly considered. The idea that investing in your children is something that is exclusively done with mutual funds and a 529 account is a myth that has been sold to you by the financial services industry, and you've probably adopted it fairly uncritically.

The idea that investing in your children is primarily done through paying for their education is also a myth. In today's world of antinatalism, simply having children is an investment. Throughout human history, it was not that way. But today, it is. The decision to have children is something that is in and of itself an investment.

And I would encourage you to think about that term broadly. So, if you're looking at things you can do with your money, one of those things you can do is have children. The choice to have children is important. Quite literally, when you procreate, you are creating the future in a very literal sense.

I don't know how much children cost. There are all kinds of estimates that the price is very high. I think they pretty much cost about as much as you have. So, if you don't have much, they don't cost much. If you have a lot, they cost a lot. Some people say they don't have children because they don't want to incur the expense.

Not many, but it's certainly an advantage that many people are aware of, and I think it's pretty true. If you don't have children, you're going to have more free money. Dinks, dual income, no kids. You're going to have plenty of disposable income in that situation. But I think a good hard analysis of what you want at the end of your life is in order.

I think that when we think about wealth, we can't think about that exclusively in a financial sense. In the same way that we should incorporate physical wealth into our balance sheet in some way, we should also incorporate familial wealth into our balance sheet in some way. 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, never get married, and live the high life that many people seem to live.

I think any rational and sane person questions his choices, and it's good to reconsider. Am I doing what I want to do? Am I actually moving with vision and with purpose? But over the years, I've known a lot of people in that situation and been very close friends to some of them.

And the attractiveness of that when they were young seems very, very high. But there's something that seems to happen fairly naturally when people go through 45, 50, 55 years old. They start to wonder about the things that they missed. And I've spoken with enough wealthy people who had one or two children, and one of the common things has been, "I wish I had more children," because I think it adds a whole different dimension of wealth to your life.

Commodore had 10 children, didn't have a lot of family wealth in his life, so there's no guarantee. And most of the rest of what we talk about is about finding that proper balance. So the key is, if you want to have children, have them, and recognize that that act in and of itself is an investment.

You don't need to do all the crazy stuff that I talked about in this show. You can be a fairly ordinary person. You can live an ordinary life. You can send your children to ordinary schools. Your children can be perfectly ordinary, and ordinary can feel extraordinary. You don't have to do all the crazy stuff that I talked about in this series in order to enjoy those benefits.

So if your benefits of relationship, benefits of the joy of watching your children succeed. I spend a lot of time studying unschoolers, because I feel like unschoolers often demonstrate how sometimes all of the crazy stuff is unnecessary. That's a speech for a different day. My point is simply that having children is in and of itself an investment.

Now, to the extent you're able to, spend money nurturing the bodies of your children. If you're expecting to conceive a child, spend money getting your health into the best possible shape that it can. And think of it as a view or as an investment into your children. So I hereby authorize you to categorize your gym membership as an investment.

I hereby authorize you as your financial advisor to categorize your personal trainer expenses as an investment. I hereby authorize you to categorize your daily steak for dinner habit as an investment. Because I genuinely do believe these things are properly considered investments. And like all investments, you think about your diversification strategy, but they are important.

So if you're on your road to conceiving children, then do your very best to care for your body. 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. Both in a physical sense, meaning the specific act of conception and carrying the baby.

And then also in terms of the relationship. So I hereby authorize you to categorize the money spent wooing and attracting a high quality mate as an investment. An investment into your future. Spend a lot of time thinking about that. Enhance your genetic code as much as possible with good health, good nutrition, good living, etc.

Take good care of a mother when she is pregnant. Mothers bear a heavy load today. We could make the arguments that in some ways they have it easier than they've ever had it. But the truth is that mothers bear a heavy load today. 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.

We need to honor mothers and we need to honor them in word and in deed. And so take good care of the mother of your children. Provide the very best that you're capable of providing for her. Do everything possible so that her body and her baby's body have the very best childbirth experience possible.

And have the very best bonding together in those precious first weeks and months of life. As your baby grows, provide the best nutrition that you can. The highest quality and the best nutrition that you have access to. Make sure that everyone gets as much sleep as you're able to do.

A lot of the investments that you can make at this stage of life are not things that you can buy. Rather they're often foregone expenses. I've always taken a great deal of pride to know that my wife doesn't have to wake up with an alarm clock. It just makes me feel good as a husband.

I take a great deal of pride in arranging a lifestyle in which my children don't have to wake up to alarm clocks. It makes me feel good as a father. It feels like the way life should be. But that means foregone income. That means different lifestyle decisions. And so those investments are just personal things.

We could have more money if my wife had a job. But would the money be worth it? Every person has to choose. My point is that if you want those things, sometimes they're not things you buy. They're things that you choose not to buy. And that becomes an investment into lifestyle.

Help your children to be as active and busy in their physical movements as possible. Help to enhance their looks to the highest degree possible. Sometimes an investment in your child is an investment in orthodontia. Or it's an investment in plastic surgery. Or it's an investment in a haircut that suits the facial features of your child, etc.

Help to buy and surround your children with all of the things that are going to help his or her mind to develop. Good stimulation. Lots of reading. Lots of books. Lots of access to things. Invest into tutors wherever necessary. Invest into the highest quality educational products that you have access to.

And then finally, invest into the spirits of your children. Help to nurture a relationship with your children so that your deathbed looks nothing like Cornelius Vanderbilt's. I believe that giving money to your children, paying for their expenses, making sure they have an inheritance, these are good and worthy things, and that they will enhance your children's benefits in life.

But they have to come in the context of everything else. They have to be the icing on the cake, not the main thing. 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. 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.

The ideal outcome is to do both. Not easy, but worth it. Hope this series has been useful to you. Thank you so much for listening. I'm glad to get this done so we can get back to other exciting topics. I'll be back with you very soon. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new.

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