B. Vincent McManus, CFP®, J.D., LL.M.

Welcome to new followers after @RobertMSterling's tweet on the topic closest to my heart - building a 'legacy family', whether your net worth is $1000 or $1B... TLDR re-introduction post: I will be posting regularly about the why and how of building Family Capital, with snippets from our own lives and businesses, and would love it if you would retweet to help me get the message out there. I hope you'll ask questions / share opinions on my threads, and my DMs are open! The longer version: Building a legacy family (a healthy, thriving family that continues in the long-term) is a worthy goal that doesn't get talked about enough (see @MikeBoyd, @500YearFamily, @moseskagan, @highvaluedad etc though), and I've made it my 'second act' to do what I can to change that. I would love others to experience the satisfaction of working towards a grander goal than immediate satisfaction of personal 'wants' AND to know that creating a thriving family is possible at any level of financial capital. Some background: I'm in my mid-40s, was raised as the eldest of five in a family without money, and experienced financial anxiety early and often. I went to medical school, started and sold a small business while a young doctor, decided to stick with medicine and became a psychiatrist because I'm fascinated by people, and along the way got married and was blessed with four children. Money-wise, I have not needed to work since I was about 30 by learning how to live well on a little, enthusiastic saving early in the course, and small business investments. We now have millions invested in SMBs across New Zealand (where we live on a beautiful farm with five houses earmarked for our kids) and the USA (we just returned after a 10-week trip aligned to attend @BrentBeshore's great event @MainStSummit where I enjoyed great talks from @morganhousel and @awilkinson and @david_perell etc, and caught up with tons of Twitter mutuals including family men crushing in business @SMB_Attorney and @KHendersonCo, @ConnorAbene, @stephenolmon, @CoFoundersNik etc). I still work part-time as a psychiatrist (special interests in autism, ADHD, anxiety, and perfectionism / workaholism), and spend the rest of my time reading, thinking, and working to build our own Family Capital, and a framework for others to do likewise. I'm in a unique spot to do so, as a family man with painful experience of lack and the journey from zero to financially independent without a huge windfall, and privileged through my psychiatry work to have worked with thousands of families from all contexts over the years - I've seen what works and what *really* doesn't. The Family Capital approach (follow @jd_foote and @FamilyCapClub for a fuller picture as I tweet more) to preparing a family to thrive through the generations means paying sustained attention to the six forms of Family Capital: Cultural - the ways of looking at and behaving in the world that have made and will continue to make family members 'successful' in the broadest sense of the word and effective transmission of this culture down the generations Intrafamily - healthy and mutually beneficial relationships between all family members Human - the knowledge and physical and psychological wellbeing of the individual family members Financial - property of all kinds (cash, real estate, publicly traded stocks, private investments, etc) Social - the relationships of the family with the wider world, including employees, networks, and philanthropy Structural - the systems that support the maintenance and development of all forms of Family Capital One of the key principles of the Family Capital approach, in contrast with the typical framing of the legacy family challenge, is that it does NOT require a big pile of cash, managed from the top. It's much more flexible and 'human-scale,' with each family unit in the legacy family stewarding the resources it was given and those it is accumulating, and transmitting the family's culture so that their children can go and do likewise. If this mission resonates with you, I'd love to have you follow along and engage with me… I'd love to bounce ideas around, and to help where I can (DMs are open). I'll be sharing chunks from the Family Capital 'how-to' book I'm polishing, lessons from the *many* books I read on the topic, experiences from our own journey, and insights from small business and psychology. If you could retweet this, it would be *amazing* - I would really appreciate any help in getting the Family Capital message out there. Regards, JD