Commodore
Cornelius Vanderbilt was the 2nd wealthiest American ever; the first is John D Rockefeller. He was woth $200B and after 3 generations all of it was gone.
Cornenlius was uneducated and made money in shipping and trains. He controlled choke points so that they would have to pay him (as in airports, seaports and express way now)
His advice to Henry, his successor was keep it together. He gave Henry $100M to start and Henry doubled this to $200M in several years. But for the next generation, he split the fortune and gave away to his children (unlike his father who wanted to preserve wealth) and the heirs had only one goal to spend it but not bring in more wealth to the family. Is it happening to our family now.? Everybody wants to spend this
The children tried to out shine one another building mansions first in NYC and later in Rhode Island.
To preserve wealth keep this together; dont split it. It becomes smaller and weaker. Solid wealth is powerful. (as I told my olds when we sold the bank and we get our share of several millions. They wanted to split the largesse. I objectted. Lets build this up and then spend. We never got around it But my Inang did: splurged in casino, travelled abroad brought classmate and brod and sis abroad.
No comments:
Post a Comment