Family Wealth

Oct 25, 2025

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5 min read

Touching Home

I was ready to write about investing versus gambling—about funding worthwhile human activity, not just making noise. But then I sent clients their portfolio reports and talked about risk. Worst-case scenarios. 2008-style crashes. It's a weird thing to do, forcing people to stare at red numbers. But I remember those wealthy kids in 2008, carrying raw fear about losing money that had never truly been theirs. The angst had defined their lives. So I talk about risk with clients now—not to scare them, but so they can lead from strength and communicate that money is part of the story, not the whole story.

Jonathan Treussard

Family Wealth

Estate Planning, Raising Financially Fit Kids, and Getting Comfortable with Not Knowing

Jul 19, 2025

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9 min read

Estate Planning, Raising Financially Fit Kids, and Getting Comfortable with Not Knowing

Estate planning isn't just about death and taxes. Your 18-year-old is unconscious in a hospital and you can't make decisions for her care—that's estate planning. We also talk about on-ramping kids into the reality of money, thinking in probabilities instead of certainty, and why your brain tricks you into believing you know what happens next. You don't. Certainty is fragile. Get uncomfortable. But don't confuse not knowing with nihilism—choose meaning anyway.

Jonathan Treussard

Family Wealth

Your Kids Are Reading the Room: Talk to Them.

Jun 7, 2025

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7 min read

Your Kids Are Reading the Room: Talk to Them.

Your kids are ready to talk about money ten years before you are. They have eyes and ears—they're reading the room and forming their own mental models. If you're not talking to them, the silence feels like gaslighting. Fast path to losing their trust. The fix: lean into the fact that wealth is multidimensional—financial, intellectual, social, and human capital (F.I.S.H.). Ask your kids if Mr. Burns is a happy man. My conversation with Joline Godfrey on raising financially fit kids in abundance tackles the most loaded topic most families avoid.

Jonathan Treussard

Family Wealth

A Young Person's Guide to Making Life Decisions

Mar 15, 2025

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12 min read

A Young Person's Guide to Making Life Decisions

Life is three-dimensional—time moves forward, you move through space, stepping through picture frames like a movie. Your job: land in the next frame without stumbling, and stretch the frame wider to make life fuller. Money fits inside this. Assets are what you own, liabilities are what you owe. That $5 Starbucks every day? That's $13,000 in a decade you could've had for something bigger. Debt isn't evil—it's a tool that makes things bigger, up AND down. Get comfortable with not knowing what happens next. Grow your luck surface. Keep options open until it makes sense to commit. Then commit hard.

Jonathan Treussard

Markets

Jan 25, 2025

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9 min read

What Are We Going to Tell the Kids?

In 2008, I taught wealthy teenagers about risk management in a tent. They sobbed about their parents' struggles—the real estate crash, the fear, the angst. Joline Godfrey has spent decades helping families raise financially fit kids, and here's her insight: kids are ready to talk about money ten years before parents are. That's ten years of missed opportunities to talk about values, meaning, and how money is just part of the equation. Wealth makes some things easier and other things far more complex. Manage your affairs so you never have to say "What are we going to tell the kids?" Instead, aim for "the kids get it, we're good."

Jonathan Treussard

Family Wealth

Touching Home

Estate Planning, Raising Financially Fit Kids, and Getting Comfortable with Not Knowing

Your Kids Are Reading the Room: Talk to Them.

A Young Person's Guide to Making Life Decisions

What Are We Going to Tell the Kids?

WEALTH, EMPOWERED by Jonathan Treussard

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