How Will You Handle Close Family Members?
By Muhammad Ali
This is a very delicate subject and the nice thing with this long wait for the RV, I have had many years to think about and research it. So in this article, I'd like to share some ideas from my research. I too have family and I also want to help them along with some of my friends and neighbours.
On my Currency Exchange Planner website, I have a Survey and one of the questions I added was:
Who do you plan to help your immediate family, extended family (brothers, sisters, and in-laws), charities or community?
My Family
Extended Family
Charities
Community
(Choose all that apply)
I have had many people complete the survey and I look thru each result and what I've noticed by far the most prominent choices are My Family and Extended Family, then Charities and Community. So this tells me there is a lot of truth in the saying Charity begins at home. For the sake of this article I will group your family and extended families as just family members, this will also include friends or neighbours that you plan to help.
Now we all have family members that we want to help and possibly some members that we do not want to help, for various reasons, but the question is, not whether we want to help them, rather what do we tell them when they ask where did you get the money from?
This is the tricky question and will require careful thought and consideration and the answers may be different for each and every one of us especially when it comes to the amount of how much that we want to give them and how much currency we hold, but is there a general response that we can use?
If we tell them the truth that it was from a currency exchange, we may get bombarded with additional questions, such as, well how much money did you make? Or, since it was easy money, why don't you give me more money then? After all, you can just go buy more currency right? This already shows that they lack an understanding of this investment.
Chances are once the money you've given them runs out they will be back for more. So will you become the continual ATM of the family?
So these are the guaranteed challenges that we will face after the RV, and with some basic thinking and preparedness now, we can be ready for this obstacle when it faces us.
The first challenge you will face is how much are you willing to give to your family? And how will this affect your balance of exchange money? So this is something that many people don't really have a clue. I am a true believer of give and you shall receive. God is Great and Merciful, so give from your heart, but at the same token have a sense of what you're doing. Know how much you are giving out, and how much you will have left over. In your planning you should be in control of your money not your emotions controlling your money. After all, we are the ones that waited and sacrificed all of these years, reading news and hearing soon...soon...soon, not our families. They didn't wait up 'til 3am because there was a Red Alert notice for RV the same night. Did they?
So for this very reason, I added a Family Gifting section in my Currency Exchange Planner that you can list down the family members that you want to gift to and how much you plan to give them, then you can immediately see how these amounts affect your bank balance. Then if required, you can change and adjust your contributions. There is also a Charity planning section in the program so you can see how that would affect your balance too.
So I believe this is the first step, once you've determine who and how much you plan to give the next step is deciding what to say to them.
If you were giving them $500 or $1000, it's probably easy to say that you got an extra bonus at work or an old friend paid back a long overdue debt and you just want to share a little bit with them. How about if you wanted to give your family a million or more? What would you tell them, then? Also do you plan to give them in one lump sum or break it down into smaller payments over time? Questions to think about right?
So the next thing you want to think to yourself is do you want to tell them the truth or not? And if you tell them the truth, what would be the consequences of those actions? If they already know about the RV, then it's difficult to hide the fact of where the money came from, because they are going to figure it out sooner or later. Always bear in mind that their motivations may be different from yours. You may feel pressure (imagined or otherwise) to make promises to people, which will compromise your financial future. So let's assume they don't know about the RV, as you've never mentioned it to them before.
Now, from my research on this subject, I've seen various kinds of responses, some advice I have seen is to take the low profile route and avoid or be careful of family. Your lawyer, wealth manager or financial advisor will usually tell you that your new wealth may attract new friends, and estranged family members may pop out of nowhere. In fact, it is quite common for advisors to suggest directing requests for money from family to the advisor. Sometimes this can be a good idea and it puts some distance between you and the family or friend. So that is good advice to remember.
Another advice that I want to share with you is it may appear to you that your family may start acting friendlier and more affectionate than before. This show of affection often makes it worse, because you'll suspect these people are interested in the money and not in you. So please be careful to keep your emotions in check and controlled. It is one thing to be paranoid about your families gunning for your wealth but don't take it to extreme levels as you will be the one who will have the stress and psychological impact. In other words, don't let your own behaviour be part of the problem, as well.
Now the above kind of advice is fine if we plan to take the low profile route, but what if we truly wanted to open on telling our family but at the same time protect ourselves from them bombarding us with sensitive questions and exposing too much of our currency exchange to them.
I always believe that honesty is the best policy, and I teach this to my children as well. However, in this case we may need to stretch the truth a little. Keep in mind, another reason for not telling everything especially to our children, is for their own protection. When their friends suddenly come to know that their best friend is now a multi-millionaire their friendships will change. So until the point that your children transition into the wealth, best to keep them partially in the dark, for their own good.
About letting your extended family and friends know, it's best and advisable to keep your sudden wealth situation as private as possible. If you really need to tell someone, only tell really close friends or family, the fewer people who know the better. If you do tell, keep the information minimal, for example, let's say you're holding Dinar, Rial, Dong, Zim and Rupiah but you only tell them 1 currency, say Dong or Dinar, which ever it is, maintain 1 and maintain the same cover story to whoever you need to tell. This is to avoid unsolicited advice and pressure from others.
Here are some other things that you can tell them about the balance of your money, you paid off all of your debts and blocked off 40% for taxes. Then you invested in an account that you can only withdraw money from in 5 years or that you purchased government bonds with any extra cash you have and they cannot be cashed in for 7 years. Indirectly, you are telling them that no financial commitments are going to be made for some time to avoid causing them any offence.
As far as I can see it, there really is no upside to telling your extended family or friends everything - they’ll either sponge off you until all the money is gone or they’ll hate you for not giving them all your money.
The point is, when people think there is a safety net to catch them, they’re more comfortable with jumping out of the burning building instead of working their way through the fire to make it out.
I just want to clarify one last point, make a distinguishment between immediate family, extended family, and friends and neighbours. Your immediate family will be your spouse and your children, your extended family are your brothers, sisters, in-laws etc. and friends are well, friends. I, particularly, want to mention about your immediate family, depending on your age, your children could be still in school or married with their own children and working. Eventually, we will want to pass on our wealth thru our wills to our children (unless you have another plan). In my previous article called "Preparing our Children to Inherit Wealth", I talked about passing down our wealth to our children and I explained that even though we use lawyers and advisors and do the proper paper work, many times it breaks down and there are problems, and the main problem is communication. The advice that I shared was to have regular meetings with your children and share your dinar stories and experiences you had while waiting for it to happen. It is my suggestion that when you feel the time is right and you feel that your children have transitioned into the wealth, tell them everything, even though you may have held off telling them the complete truth at the beginning. As for your extended families, friends and neighbours always draw and maintain a line with them.
This subject definitely needs more research on your own. I did a search on Amazon and there are over a dozen books on Sudden Wealth and how families coped with it. I would strongly suggest taking a search thru Amazon or your local book shops and read some of the books' descriptions and reviews and then pick up a copy of a book that you feel comfortable with. The more you know on this subject, the more informed you will be and the more you can keep a handle on it and handle those around you.
​
Visit my website and get a hold of my currency exchange planner, it will help you with your family gift and charity planning.
​
Thank you and I wish you all the success in your currency exchange.
Muhammad Ali
www.CurrencyExchangePlanner.com
The No. 1 Planning Tool for the Dinar community.
Available in Desktop PC/MAC and Mobile App (Android & IOS) versions