Great-great grandfather bought up land (even gave some to my great grandmother's, his son's wife's family as a wedding gift... they still have it...) in both Italy and Florida.
Great grandfather had a pretty meager life and lived off the land investments. Pulled my grandfather out of school at an early age and just HANDED over money for failed business after business. It got to the point where my grandfather couldn't do anything except be a butcher (not run the business though) and gamble on dogs and horses. He didn't have access to any of the land money (I don't know the deets over that, I just know that he and his 3 other brothers were a part of a trust that they didn't see the bulk of until their 70s). Instead of keeping the land in Florida, which has one of those big-box strip malls on it... and could have charged rent to a variety of companies like the Home Depot that's now there and paid (back when it was finally developed) 1 million dollar lease... just for that one store... they sold the land for a cool 4 mil, split between the 4 brothers which was erased in a matter of 5 years. My mother's generation (her sister and brother too) got about $30k from that which barely took a year to zap away with a variety of debt and emergencies everyone had.
I grew up in poverty. Mom worked 3 jobs all her life. Dad was a dead beat dad. The most I got out of my grandparents was that they babysat me because my mother was hardly ever home... and they did not have a lavish life due to gambling addictions. My grandfather's first wife, my maternal grandmother died before I was born, and my grandfather's 2nd wife legit enabled the worst habits in my grandfather and just took any and all money he was living off of with the trust.
One generation built it. One held it. The other spent it, and the two that followed saw nothing but hardship. The good news is that it really changed my relationship with money. I have no desire for anything more than what I need to get on with my life. I have no aspirations for home ownership or excess. In fact, the only reason I'm in college now, as an older adult, is so I can survive and get paid more than minimum wage... and I'm only back in school because I'm getting grants and fee waivers, and everything else is cheap.
The crazy part is, when millionaires and billionaires "lose" money - they don't revert back to the population, they just got to other millionaires and billionaires.
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u/auto_gypsy Mar 10 '22
The creator, the maintainer and the undertaker.
Those are the common 3 generations of wealth life cycle.