Tips for Increasing Your Family’s Authentic Wealth
What if you could help your children (or grandchildren) appreciate not only the value of financial assets, but also how to engage with those assets with responsibility and accountability? Even more, what if they became adept at putting those assets to work to compound both cash value and KASH value?
To explain, 3 Dimensional Wealth strategies call for a balance in optimizing your Financial Dimension assets (cash, real estate, investments, insurance cash value, etc.), as well as your Foundational Dimension assets (family, health, values, talents, heritage, spirituality, etc.), and your Intellectual Dimension assets (knowledge, skills, systems, traditions, etc.).
KASH is a term I developed to encapsulate those Foundational and Intellectual Dimension assets, and it stands for Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills, and Habits.
So how can you teach your family to use your Financial Dimension assets to compound not only more cash value, but also your KASH Value?
Let’s start with a few examples from my own family, and then we’ll get into the steps you can take to guide your family.
Worldwide Ambitions
With our children’s college and professional education, we let them know early on that Dad and Mom weren’t just going to write a blank check. Instead, they would need to pay for part of their tuition with savings or scholarships, and my wife, Sharee, and I would match those funds.
So as I share in my book, “Entitlement Abolition,” when our daughter Ashley came to us hoping to do a study abroad semester in New Zealand, she filled out a tool called The Solution Formulator to work through her plans.
She outlined the opportunities and obstacles for studying in New Zealand, as well as how to overcome each obstacle.
The semester would delay graduation later than planned, but the timing would work better for entering her career anyway.
She had already used her savings on a previous study abroad semester in Israel and Egypt, so she would sell her car to raise $2,000.
She would ask for a loan from our family’s Legacy Bank for $1,500 to cover the rest. (For more on the concept of the Legacy Bank, you can read the “An Abundant Future for Your Family?” article.)
She offered a repayment schedule: She would get a job when she returns and pay us back $500 a month for three months.
We approved the loan with one change: adjusting the repayment schedule to $300 a month over five months, so she could buy another car sooner. Ashley agreed and put the plan in motion.
By the time she returned, she had grown from her incredible learning experiences in New Zealand, and true to her word, she repaid her Legacy Bank loan.
Rather than just asking for Mom and Dad’s money, she developed the strategy, proposed the solution, and fulfilled the very obligations that she designed.
Getting Ahead While Young
When our daughter Mindy was getting ready to move with her first husband to Iowa City where he would go to dental school, she had a 90-day window between his graduation from Brigham Young University and their relocation to the Midwest.
She came to us with a completed Solution Formulator and some requests.
Over the next three months, they would move to our family condo in St. George, Utah, where she would get her esthetician’s license.
In exchange for rent, they would handle the repairs and painting we’d been meaning to get to with the condo.
She would need $2,000 to help with tuition, which she was hoping to borrow from our Legacy Bank.
She had done her research and found a high-end spa in Iowa City that needed an esthetician, and she figured out a repayment schedule based on her projected income.
She also explained the bonus benefits of her plan — she would work at the spa in Iowa City for a year, gaining a clientele and valuable experience (including confidence and increased social skills) that could put them in a position to start a family during their second year.
It all played out according to her plan. But the key was, she made a plan and worked the plan, with adjustments along the way. Mindy’s career as an esthetician provided a comfortable dental school life, and empowered them to start their family.
In addition to her cosmetology skills, she also transitioned to becoming a valuable client relationship manager with our firm for some time, working from home while mothering their little daughters.
While there, they were also able to buy instead of rent a home, and by the time they left, they had a fraction of the student loans other graduates incurred, as well as the profit from the sale of their home they could put toward a new place in Utah.
Passing It on to the Next Generation
Example of a flyer Emron’s daughters share with neighbors to promote their flag business
Over the past two decades, my sons, Emron and Aaron, have devoted their careers to helping families like yours benefit from properly structured, maximum-funded Indexed Universal Life (what we call IUL LASER Funds).
In their personal lives, they’ve also been raising their own families, with Emron’s three children and Aaron’s two currently ranging in age from junior high to high school.
Together with their wives, Harmony and Heather, I’ve watched them teach their kids the value of hard work, as well as financial accountability and responsibility.
Several years ago, Emron and his son, Ethan, started a neighborhood business that has included his daughters, Taylor and Emily, as well as Aaron’s daughters, Shelby and Sienna. (For more on the impact of this venture, check out “The 20% Habit Kids Need” article.)
The kids have been setting aside 20% of their earnings over the past several years, along with matching funds from the business.
Ethan is about to graduate from high school and head out on a two-year religious mission.
He plans on contributing part of his savings to help cover mission expenses (with the rest paid for by Emron and Harmony), and he takes pride in personally investing in his mission.
The girls are all saving for college and/or missions, as well, and it’s exciting to see the next generation of Andrews adopt these 3 Dimensional Wealth values, applying prudent Financial Dimension principles to compound their cash and KASH as they move forward in their lives.
Tools for Your Family’s Abundance
As you look at your own family, I’m sure you’ve been working to help them instill similar values of responsibility, accountability, and growth over the years. To amplify your efforts, I’d like to offer a few tools that can help.
To make headway in all 3 Dimensions of Authentic Wealth, start with The Clarity Experience. Completing this worksheet can help each member of your family not only establish a big-picture vision of where they want to go in each area, but they can also set specific goals to get there within a set time-frame.
The Goal Activator is a great tool for zeroing in on one specific goal at a time. It can be used as a follow-up to The Clarity Experience or on its own.
And as mentioned above, The Solution Formulator is the perfect go-to when working through life’s transitional moments or facing new challenges. (For insights on using The Solution Formulator with your team at work, see the “Got a Challenge?” article.)
Want an easy way to encourage everyone to utilize these tools? Set aside time during Family Retreats With a Purpose (our term for vacations with values-based activities included in the itinerary — see the article “Tool Spotlight” article for examples of ways to incorporate 3 Dimensional Wealth activities into your next getaway).
We’ve found it’s ideal to start with a short introduction or devotional, then have everyone complete the tool and share their takeaways or goals (as much as they’re comfortable with, of course).
It’s increased our connection with each other, and it’s helped us follow through on our goals with the support of family members behind us.
However you decide to use your Financial Dimension to help your family compound your cash and KASH, I applaud you for caring enough to get your family on what I call the Abundance Cycle — establishing Authentic Wealth habits that can build a meaningful legacy for generations to come.
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Watch Doug Andrew explain these concepts in more detail…
Greetings. Doug Andrew here, founder of three-dimensional wealth. And, this particular video is regarding our new, spring edition of three-dimensional wealth living magazine. As of this recording, it just went out, in mass mailing today. This is the hard copy. You can also get a digital copy of our magazine. It’s, about forty pages. And I wanted to highlight, the the the key main article in this magazine titled three ways to grow your c a s h cash, the money and k a s h which stands for knowledge, attitude, skills and habits. And, this particular article talks about tips for increasing your family’s true or authentic wealth. And so, it’s on pages six through nine in the in the spring issue. So, the purpose of this video is not to tell you just what’s in the article, but to do a little bit deeper dive. So let me show you what it looks like. It covers four pages. And, in the article, I outline, three different ways that we have incorporated, capturing and depositing not only money, but knowledge, attitude, skills, and habits into our family bank. Okay. A conceptual bank for the future withdrawal and use by our children and grandchildren into perpetuity, requiring some skin in the game. So that whenever they need help with a college education or starting a business venture or whatever, they don’t just come to mom or dad or grandma or grandpa and say, hey, can I have, will you pay for? I need my share of of, you know, the family wealth or whatever. K. You empower them and, you give them equal opportunities to be able to access the resources both money and knowledge and attitudes and skills and habits to then start a new business or to enroll in in semesters or college or an advanced degree or whatever. And then they have a system where they pay that money back. Okay? It’s not just a handout. It’s it’s a hand up, not a handout. So in the article, I actually cite three different ways that we do this with our own children. Our our youngest daughter, Ashley, and how she had to come up with money, sell her car and everything like that to have a semester abroad, in New Zealand. And, so she came up with as much as she could using a tool called the solution formulator. And then, we helped with the difference and then she showed a plan of how she would pay that money back when she got back from her semester brought in New Zealand. And she went there to study and and, it was in in recreational development, was her minor. Her major was accounting and, it was incredible. Also, the there’s a story in here of our daughter Mindy, how she borrowed from the family bank and paid it back in order to get, her degree as an aesthetician to put her husband through dental school and, work at a high end spa making four thousand bucks a month at the time, which was a a very high income for students in in dental school. This was, you know, more than twenty years ago. The the third example is actually how our grandchildren, have been doing this, Raising money by setting up a patriotic flags, in five to six hundred homes every, national holiday. And, people pay fifty or sixty bucks to have the American flag mounted on on their front lawn during the daylight hours on all of those holidays. So, you can read about this in this article. Now, let me just frame it and go a little bit deeper right now. If you’re not aware, there’s three dimensions, of what I call true or authentic wealth And so this is like a three legged stool. We have the financial dimension, which are, you know, the the assets, financial assets. But there’s a foundational dimension, which includes your your family, health, values, spirituality, talents, future heritage, and so forth. And then the intellectual dimension are the, the knowledge and experiences and when you times those two together, that equals your wisdom, your education, your reputation, systems, methods, traditions, alliances, ideas and skills. So, this is the three legged stool, the three dimensions of authentic wealth. So what I teach in my books and my curriculum is that, we help people establish what we call a family bank, a legacy bank. This is a conceptual bank, not a charter bank like down the street. And this is where you deposit not only the financial assets, so that they will grow, they’ll be protected from the negative impact of taxes, inflation, and market volatility. So you’ll never run out of money, and you can borrow from the family bank or from the the repository where the money is at and the financial assets. But also, you can make deposits and withdrawals of knowledge, attitude, skills, and habits. So, let me give you an example of this. This is just like a normal bank where you make deposits and withdrawals. But I’m gonna talk a little bit more about the k a s h because, in in the metaphor we use of times, if you were playing in a professional golf tournament or any golf tournament, let’s say, and you had the choice of using a professional golfer like, Phil Mickelson’s swing or you could use his clubs, what would you choose? Well, I’d rather have a swing not as clubs. Okay. So many times, people, think they’re helping their kids or they leave behind a legacy thinking it’s a monetary inheritance. And oftentimes that ruins the children when they just get a lump sum money dumped in their lap. Okay. I’d rather leave behind how to fish or the swing to my kids and grandkids instead of dumping a bunch of fish in their lap. I want them to be self reliant, to never be unemployed because unemployment is actually a mental condition, not a physical condition. Security is in the individual, not in somebody giving you a job to do. So with that, we frame this in three dimensions. Okay. The financial, foundational, intellectual. The legacy dimensions are the intellectual and foundational. And this is where we can capture knowledge, attitude, skills, and habits and record them and put them into the family archive and record. So that down the road, when your posterity wants to learn how to develop real estate or start an orthodontic practice or whatever, they can withdraw that wisdom. And I think if I if I had to choose between leaving behind money or k a s h, I I would choose the k a s h all the time. Okay? Because leaving behind a a bunch of money doesn’t really do anything. It actually can ruin many many children and and grandkids and that’s the last thing you wanna do. So this is why at, three-dimensional wealth, we believe it’s more important that values are understood before the assets are valued. So let me sort of frame this a little bit more. When we talk about a family bank, it’s like depositing these nuggets of wisdom. Okay? Regarding education or spirituality or relationships. And, I encourage people to, have a a family motto or a slogan or an affirmation to create a set of laws of abundance, a manifesto or a values and vision statement. Now, you don’t have to have all of these. I do, but this could be some point something as simple as, you know, together everyone achieves more team or together, we’re better. Okay. But when we talk about, leaving behind the values and vision statement, I meet with a lot of people and when I ask them if they have a a trust, many will raise their hand if they’re high net worth. And and then I tell them, you know, I guarantee you your kids and grandkids will never read that document except one page that says how much they get. Okay? That’s they’re not gonna read your trust. Now, I have many tools that I can give you and that’s what I love doing. I have thirty nine empowering tools, where you could, push record on your smartphone and go down this list of questions front and back on an eight half by eleven sheet of paper in front of your your your yourself or or your mother or father or whoever in the family. And when you ask those questions and they answer them off the cuff, I I guarantee you, your posterity will, watch and rewatch, listen and relisten and read and reread what you said. They’re not gonna read your trust. I know how to get out of here and out of here, what really made you tick. Okay? So, we talk about this cash fund, a family bank and some of the tools that we empower, you with here is, how to have family retreats with a purpose. And one of the favorite activities we do is I remember when retreats. These pictures are from when I did this for six consecutive years with my, ten of my siblings and their spouses. And every year we got together just for one day and we had dinner and then everybody went around and shared an I remember when memory, where they learned a lesson or whatever that could be comical, embarrassing, close calls, accolades, awards, whatever, holiday traditions and, they had to be seven hundred and fifty words or less and they would type them up. I did that, in the evening and in the morning we had breakfast and went around and did it again and then lunch and did it again. So, with ten people, we we captured thirty I remember when memories times six years, we ended up with a hundred and eighty in our family book. Okay. And everybody in the family loves those. And so, the tools that we provide in our magazine and to you if you belong to the three-dimensional wealth community is like this, the I remember when tool that helped you jog your memory on those. Many times we will capture a a life sketch by asking the right questions. And so, have a guide on how to record a life sketch, with, someone, you know, in your family or even yourself. And then, I have a memory jogging tool that’ll help you be able to organize it from your ancestry to early childhood, to courtship years, to early married and child rearing, to empty nester stage, spirituality, service education and other other topics. I did this with my father. I I devoted a date, for him to answer these questions and I collected a a hundred and thirty page history that we printed, over five hundred copies and distributed at his funeral. Okay? So if you’re getting what I’m talking about, it just like you’d go to a bank and they have a big vault in there and then you walk in and you may have a safety deposit box or several. What I’m talking about in your family archive, in your family bank, you can collect, your I remember when memories and we have hundreds of them in our file. Okay? Or lessons on the value of hard work or what’s worth it or overcoming adversity. Okay? A better life circle, how to how to learn from your experiences and do better next time. Family retreat agendas, solution formulators, how we came up with solutions when we had an issue or a problem. Our our favorite, activity every year is is grandpa’s camp with our, twenty grandkids, business lessons, and and then our values and vision statement, which is like our ethical will. Okay? And so developing your cash fund blueprint, allows you to have rules of governance and, what that means is, we have a tool where you can go down and help your children and grandchildren into perpetuity while you’re alive and after you pass away. Not just with a handout, but with a hand up to where if if they get a scholarship, you may match it. Or if they need to borrow to get their education, they can borrow and then they come up with a plan to pay it back. If they can’t pay it back with cash, they mow lawns, they they shampoo carpets, they paint like our children did. Okay? Health and wellness, if they wanna join a gym or or hire a nutritionist, we help chip in with that type of things. Emergency needs, business ventures and loans. Okay. We can loan money or we can go into a joint venture in the family bank, but it’s just it’s not a handout. Okay. Personal loan, supplemental income and weddings. Okay. How are you gonna help them with their weddings? Per the purchase of a personal residence, family retreats and vacations, charitable distributions, religious service, humanitarian, military service, staying staying at home instead of moving out and and incurring those costs. So you go through and you have rules of governance that you can incorporate with your trust. And then you can develop your values and vision statement, your ethical will, and we have a tool for doing that. Okay? And so, I implore you to, read the article, in our recent edition, the spring copy of twenty twenty six. And you’ll gain insights into how you can make deposits and withdrawals of not only the money c a s h but the k a s h.
Click here to see magazine pg. 6 – 10 Doug is referencing in this video.
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Want to elevate your family’s abundance? Get the tools mentioned in this article (along with dozens of others) and courses that can help you put them into play by getting the Legacy Masters course or joining the 3 Dimensional Wealth Community. See which program is better for you today! Just
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With our children’s college and professional education, we let them know early on that Dad and Mom weren’t just going to write a blank check. Instead, they would need to pay for part of their tuition with savings or scholarships, and my wife, Sharee, and I would match those funds.
