by Simon Black
It’s a simple question of arithmetic.
Imagine you could go back in time to 1871 and ask one of your long lost ancestors to invest $2,500 for the benefit of future generations.
That amount of money wasn’t insignificant… but certainly not a major fortune; it would be worth roughly $50,000 in today’s money.
When placed in the right structure, and benefiting from compounding returns over the next 150 years, that $2,500 initial investment would be worth an astounding $1.4 BILLION today.
Now, sadly none of us owns a time machine. But we do have the power to be that long lost ancestor to future generations.
In other words, there’s little stopping you from setting aside some savings in a long-term structure– like a trust, or even a smart contract– that could have an enormous impact on the future.
$50,000 invested in the right structure today at, say, a 10% compounding return, will be worth $73 billion in 150 years.
Granted we’ll all most likely be long gone by then. And inflation will definitely have eaten up a large chunk of that return.
But it’s still going to be an enormous amount of money. And with the right planning, you have the power to decide, today, how that money will be spent and allocated in the future.
If you wanted to, you could leave behind strict instructions (which are legally binding) to have the assets liquidated at a certain point in the future, and donated to your favorite charity.
Or you could provide future trustees the discretion to make certain donations based on causes that are important to you today.
The point is that it’s possible to continue growing your wealth long after you’re gone, and to still exercise significant control over how it can impact the world and future generations.
This is the topic for today’s Freedom Podcast, which you can listen to here.