”You can leave multi-generational wealth to a cat. That is money. That is not wealth.”

William C. Ade has found over a billion barrels of oil equivalent. He traces it to the day his father told him, at 14, that there would not be a farm for him.

He left corporate oil to wildcat Southeast Asia for a royalty instead of a salary. A dry hole paid him nothing. His longest royalty has now run 50 years.

The Investment Game:
→ One gift to every heir old enough, every Christmas, sized to what the tax code permits without paperwork
→ One rule: they can invest, but they can't speculate
→ One prize for the best return, and it isn't cash

In the 1980s, rates were 20% and no bank would lend his father the money to plant. Will sold all his stocks and cashed in his pensions to buy the family farm. Then he kept buying on leverage at $1,000 an acre. A friend warned him prices were falling. They fell to $800, and he kept buying. Will now puts that land at roughly $15,000 an acre.

The Cordelia Plan:
→ In King Lear, the king splits his kingdom among three daughters and disinherits the one who won't flatter him
→ In the final act, the honest daughter is the one who saves him
→ Will says he has three Cordelias. All three are honest and financially independent, and they live on what they earn

Will is generation four after all the money was gone. That's why he doesn't count money as the inheritance. What he passes down is the capital that rebuilds it. He says he could have turned his entire estate over to his daughters long ago, and it would probably have done better.

Books mentioned:
→ It's Your Life. Don't Outsource It. (Will Ade), forthcoming
→ Pioneer (Will Ade)
→ George Ade's Common Sense Advice (George Ade, compiled by Will Ade)
→ The recovered plays of George Ade (George Ade)
→ King Lear (William Shakespeare)
→ A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
→ A biography of the Hunt family
→ Biographies of John D. Rockefeller
→ The autobiography of J. Paul Getty
→ Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)
→ The Bible (Luke 12:48)

For the founder who has already solved for money and is now solving for heirs.

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