I love having my wealth. It’s very important to me; it’s central to my personality in both good and bad ways. Interestingly, nobody else in my family appears to care as much about the family wealth and its future. My father may be gone tomorrow — he may get hit by a truck — and nobody in my family would be there to pick up. I’m not fooling myself that I could step up to replace him, but I have a huge financial interest in the company, and I enjoy the money. Prominent in my thoughts is what my father said when I was younger: “If you don’t cultivate your wealth, if you don’t trust your wealth, if you don’t treat your wealth like the gem that it is, it will tarnish, it will disappear, it will leave you. And I don’t want that to happen on my watch.”
From The Legacy of Inherited Wealth: Interviews with Heirs
Please look for Part 2 of Homer’s story in a few days.
