When the Gap Is Bigger
Than the Numbers
Record household wealth and deepening generational differences have made family financial conversations more consequential than ever. This piece examines the role a fiduciary can play in bridging that gap, and why the structure of the advisory relationship matters as much as the advice itself.
In Part 1
We examined how U.S. household wealth has reached record levels across financial portfolios and real estate, while the conversations families need to have about that wealth have not kept pace. We also looked at the deepening divergence between generations on how to invest, transfer, and give away wealth. Read Part 1
The data from Part 1 points to a particular kind of planning problem: families navigating record wealth, significant complexity, and genuinely different generational perspectives, often without a shared structure for working through any of it. The question that follows from that picture is a practical one: what does it look like when someone is actually positioned to help?
The answer depends on how the advisor relationship is designed. Most advisory relationships are structured around a single household and a single decision-maker. They are well-suited to managing a portfolio, developing a financial plan, and coordinating with tax and legal advisors. They are less well-suited to the work of bridging generational differences, facilitating family conversations about wealth, or maintaining visibility across a family’s full financial picture.
That gap in design is not a criticism of traditional advisory practice. It reflects how the relationship was originally built. But as family wealth has grown, and as the generational differences around that wealth have become more pronounced, the gap between what families actually need and what the traditional model provides has become harder to close informally.
The Broader Context
A Transfer of Wealth That Puts Planning Relationships to the Test
Cerulli Associates estimates that roughly $124 trillion in wealth may transfer between generations in the United States through 2048. The families best positioned to navigate that transition are those that have built coordinated planning relationships before the pressure is on, though individual outcomes will vary.
What Happens When Wealth Changes Hands
Statistical references are sourced from third-party research and provided for informational purposes only.
The statistic about advisor changes after a wealth transfer is instructive for what it reveals about families, not advisors. Heirs don’t leave advisors they know and trust. They leave advisors they were never introduced to. When the advisory relationship is built around one generation and one household, the transition to the next generation often means starting over from scratch, at the very moment when continuity and institutional knowledge of the family’s full picture would be most valuable.
The 60% versus 16% gap on the facilitator role tells a related story. Millennials and Baby Boomers don’t just hold different views on wealth. They hold different views on what an advisor is for. Families that include both generations are, in effect, asking one advisory relationship to bridge not just a financial gap but an expectations gap.
The Role of the Fiduciary
A Fiduciary’s Voice in a Conversation That Needs One
The Nationwide survey data captures something important about where this is heading. Sixty percent of Millennials want a financial advisor to serve as a facilitator for family financial conversations. Only 16% of Baby Boomers agree. That gap in expectations reflects the generational divide in miniature: one generation that sees an advisor as a portfolio manager, and another that wants something closer to a family-level planning partner.
A fiduciary operating in that role isn’t advocating for any particular predetermined outcome. The obligation is to the family’s interests as a whole, which means listening to what each generation actually wants, understanding where the underlying values are in tension, and helping the family build solutions that work across those differences rather than around them.
That work isn’t only financial. The most productive family planning conversations tend to surface things that were never about the money to begin with: a parent’s desire to be remembered as generous, an adult child’s anxiety about being given too much too soon, a grandparent’s hope that a business or a home stays in the family. A skilled fiduciary working across generations can help bring those conversations into the open, at the right moment and in the right context, in a way that is often difficult to achieve within the family itself.
As Translator
Bridging Genuine Differences in Values
Each generation’s relationship with wealth reflects the economic environment that shaped it. A fiduciary can name those differences without judgment, and help the family find common ground that respects what each generation actually believes.
As Facilitator
Creating Space for Conversations That Don’t Happen on Their Own
Most families know the conversations they need to have. What they often lack is a structure for having them. A neutral third party, without a personal family stake, can help create that structure, making those conversations more productive than they might otherwise be.
As Architect
Working Toward Solutions That Reflect the Whole Family
The challenge is not just to understand what each generation wants in isolation. It is to work toward a strategy, across investment, giving, and distribution, that the family can engage with together. That requires visibility into the broad financial picture, and the trust of everyone at the table.
This is the environment families are navigating today: more wealth than most have ever managed, deeper generational differences than are often acknowledged, and a longstanding cultural reluctance to talk about any of it directly. That combination is not insurmountable. But it does call for a kind of planning structure that many advisory relationships were not originally designed to provide.
The KM Circle is our approach to that challenge: one advisory team working across generations, with visibility into the broader financial family picture and the individual trust of each person in it.
The goal is not to eliminate the differences between generations, but to create a structure in which those differences can be worked through rather than deferred.
The Best Time to Have This Conversation Is Before the Pressure Is On
Multi-generational planning tends to work best when it begins before a transition forces it. The first conversation with KinneyMunro is simply a discussion: we learn about your family’s situation, share how we approach coordinated planning across generations, and explore together whether the KM Circle is a fit. There is no commitment beyond the conversation itself.
Begin the ConversationAuthors
The Wealth Is There. The Conversation Isn’t.
Part 1 looks at how record household wealth has outpaced the conversations families need to have about it, and where the generations diverge on investing, giving, and passing it on.
Part 1 — Read It HereThis material is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. There is no assurance that any investment, plan, or strategy will be successful. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.
Tax and estate planning strategies should be developed in consultation with qualified tax and legal professionals. MPS does not provide tax or legal advice.
Investment advisory services offered through Mariner Platform Solutions (MPS), an SEC-registered investment adviser. KinneyMunro Wealth Advisors and MPS are not affiliated entities. For additional information about MPS, including fees and services, please refer to MPS’s Form ADV Part 2A, available at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training.