A valuable tool for those concerned about leaving a legacy, financial and otherwise.
In this practical and thoughtful financial guide, a financial adviser who’s worked with many wealthy clients offers advice for passing along a family’s wealth.
Orlando’s debut promotes the idea that while “capital” is generally perceived as meaning financial capital, other capitals—including spiritual capital, human capital, intellectual capital, and social capital—are valuable forms as well. Spiritual capital is one of the most powerful to pass along, he writes, because it drives decisions involving all the other kinds. He compares spiritual capital to a GPS system that helps a driver chart his course and arrive at a desired destination. Solid legacy planning, he believes, is “not about leaving a legacy, but about living our legacy.” The questions he discusses provide an excellent starting point for any family considering its future financial decisions. For instance, do all children get an equal share of the inheritance, regardless of who actually worked in the family business? Do all receive the money at a certain age? Do they receive the inheritance before or after the parents pass on? His wealthy clients have included professional athletes and business owners, and while disguising the details to preserve their privacy, he uses their stories to show how different families make financial decisions. The author’s compassion is evident as he urges clients to consider their values when passing along their money. He writes of one professional athlete whose wife wanted to donate more money to charity. After consulting with the couple, the author realized the athlete was already contributing to various charities by autographing memorabilia and supporting events. When the wife saw the value of these activities and the husband agreed to a “giving budget” his wife could use, it was a win-win for the couple. The well-written book features clear, accessible advice that, though it may be intended for the wealthy, could apply to anyone interested in financial planning.
A valuable tool for those concerned about leaving a legacy, financial and otherwise.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989481007
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Legacy Capitals Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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