Wealth Planning Across Generations

Passing on Wealth.
It's About More Than the Money.

When your wealth is meant to support more than one generation, financial planning becomes more than a focus on investment returns. It becomes about the people who will inherit what you've built. The decisions you make now will shape the lives of children and grandchildren you may be planning for decades ahead.

Some of that work is technical: the estate documents, the beneficiary designations, and the account titling that determine how assets move from one generation to the next. But the harder and more meaningful part is often the human side. What values do you want your wealth to carry? What should the next generation understand before they inherit it? How do you prepare them to steward what you've built rather than simply receive it?

At SJS, we work with families who think about their wealth in terms of decades and generations, not the next quarter. These are questions that deserve careful thought, and they are the questions we help families work through.

A Will Is Just the Start.
The Planning Runs Deeper.

Many families are surprised by how much a multigenerational financial plan involves. It extends well beyond a will and an investment account to the decisions that determine how wealth is structured, transferred, and understood across generations.

For many of the families, philanthropy is also a large focus of their financial plan. It's how they express what they care about and pass those values from one generation to the next. Giving together becomes a way to teach children and grandchildren what the family stands for.

SJS helps families give with intention, from shaping a donor-advised fund strategy to guiding the family conversations and giving strategy behind a family foundation. The goal is to make your giving both meaningful and efficient, so it reflects your family's purpose and does the most good with what you've chosen to give.

  • Working alongside your estate attorney to keep your documents current and aligned with your broader financial plan.

  • Making sure accounts and entities are titled and designated so assets pass the way you intend, without avoidable friction.

  • Helping structure trusts and family entities, in coordination with your legal team, to support how you want wealth held and governed.

  • Building an approach to giving through donor-advised funds, family foundations, and other vehicles that reflect your family's intentions.

  • Preparing heirs to understand and manage what they will receive, so an inheritance strengthens a family rather than surprises it.

  • Facilitating the conversations that keep a family aligned on purpose, expectations, and the principles behind the wealth.

The decisions you make now will shape the lives of children and grandchildren you may be planning for decades ahead.

We've Been Here for Decades.

At SJS, we don't manage investments in isolation. We build your financial plan first, then align your portfolio with it, because the plan gives every investment decision its purpose. A collection of holdings is just that. A portfolio built around a plan has a defined job to do, and a way to measure whether it's doing it.

1

Discovery Meetings

We start by getting to know you: your priorities, your risk tolerance, and your liquidity needs.

2

Design Your Plan

We design an initial financial plan and investment allocation built around your financial and life goals.

3

Ongoing Guidance

We meet regularly to review and adjust as your needs change, with a team of professionals behind you.

This kind of multigenerational planning only works with continuity, and SJS can genuinely offer it. Independently owned and fee-only since 1995, we have worked with families across generations, not just within a single client relationship, and that long view changes what we do.

Our role is to be the steady, trusted voice in a family's financial conversations. One that knows the history, understands the dynamics, and helps the family navigate change as it comes. That kind of relationship isn't built in a quarter or a year. It's built over decades, which is the timespan this work requires.

We don't do it alone. We work alongside your estate attorney, your CPA, and the other advisors you trust, coordinating a plan that reflects your family's full picture rather than a set of disconnected pieces.

Your Legacy Lasts Generations.
It Starts with a Conversation.

If you're thinking about how to protect and transfer your family's wealth with intention, we'd welcome the chance to talk. It begins with a straightforward conversation about your family, your goals, and what you hope your wealth will make possible for the people who come after you.

Call (800) 434-4406, fill out the form below or visit our Contact page for more information.