Preserve wealth, pass it to the next generation

Obituaries
My mentor took me to visit a Jewish friend of his the other day and I could not help but marvel at the fellows’ vast wealth.

My mentor took me to visit a Jewish friend of his the other day and I could not help but marvel at the fellows’ vast wealth, after having considered that he was only in his early 30s yet he boasted of a net worth of over of five million dollars.

BY ADOLF CHIRIMUTA

I was overwhelmingly intrigued as he gave a quick account of his personal balance sheet, which includes vast tracts of land in Harare’s northern prime suburbs. I was baffled and could not contain my curiosity as to how he came to such good fortune at such a tender age, hence I begged him to explain.

Technically Jewish people should be amongst the worlds’ most impoverished people, considering that they come from an area which is covered mostly by a desert, and that they have for centuries been subject to anti-semitic abuse and in some instances servitude, which has seen a considerable plunder of their resources, both material and human.

I failed to comprehend how then they could be so wealthy, as to control approximately 20% of global wealth, yet they only comprise less than 1% of the population.

After a detailed and motivating account of the Jewish fellows’ riches I was mystified and wanted to know the real secret behind his wealth. As I had anticipated the fellow attributed his success to a God given ability that the Jews are endowed with, the ability for a measure of value for quality which has also been passed on generation to generation.

I reiterated to him that as Christians we worshiped the same God as his and read the same religious texts, as part of our Bible is also made up of their Torah.

I was sad when he brought it to light that we did not read the texts the same way as Jewish people and that we opted to separate our religion from other aspects of our life, such as the social, cultural and financial, whereas Judaism was an all encompassing way of life to be practiced as such, especially when it comes to wealth.

It is a Jewish tenet to manage one’s wealth and preserve it for passing on to the next generation, as was the case with our host.

‘Let’s take a leaf from the Jewish teaching’

According to Jewish culture, you accumulate wealth and leave it for the next generation. Our Jewish friend had come upon such good fortune through inheritance from his late grandfather.

The idea of skipping a generation in-between allows for the long-term development of strategic financial plans as the book of Habakkuk implores them to do, where it talks about one developing dreams and visions and writing them down for reactivation in the future, thus strategic positioning for future benefit.

The skipping principle has proven to maximise real value as the compounding factor in calculating future values of investments especially in real estate.

This explains why the Rothschild’s have been amongst the worlds’ wealthiest people for over a century, their wealth dates back to 1818, when the Rothschild brothers first went into business.

Our host decided to bring it a bit closer to home and spoke about his great grand father and narrated how he had come to Africa with Oppenheimer.

The former invested in land and retail and the latter in gold and diamond mining in South Africa. The Oppenheimers are still legendary for their wealth today, a century later.

As I sat and pondered this, I queried what value system my ancestors had put in place for me and other descendants to follow in creating multigenerational perpetual wealth.

I could not come up with any, perhaps due to my lack of cultural education or because of its poor documentation, all I could come up with was chirere magwana chigokurerawo which I understood as, I get no or little inheritance and I have to fend for my elderly descendants in their last days from my own resources.