Board Games and Charity May Teach Responsibility to Wealthy Children

Financial advisers of wealthy families say that an effective way to teach successive generations to be financially and socially responsible with money is to play board games that deal with these issues and to give children a chance to allocate a meaningful amount of money to charity, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Glenn Kautt, president of the Monitor Group, a wealth-management firm, says that first- and second-generations of families who sacrifice to accumulate wealth often worry that the following generation “is the one that has the sense of entitlement.”

In response to these concerns, GenSpring Family Offices LLC, which serves 450 families whose collective worth exceeds $14-billion, created a board game called “Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves,” based on family-wealth issues.

Steve Barimo, chief innovation officer at GenSpring, stressed that wealthy parents should also seriously consider giving teenagers about $1,000 to donate to a charity of their choice. “The catch was that the kids had to think about three things: Who were they giving it to, why that charity, and what impact would the money have,” Mr. Barimo said.