Generational Wealth | Richard Canfield

Generational wealth is not a balance sheet. It is a transfer of values, of capability, and of capital, in that order. The families I work with who actually pull this off do not start with a number. They start with a conversation about what they want to leave behind and who they want their children and grandchildren to become. Then they build the financial structure underneath that intent. This page is the place to start if that is the kind of legacy you want to build.

I am Richard Canfield. I work with families across Canada through Ascendant Financial, and I have spent my career studying how money, mindset, and family culture interact across generations. This page pulls together the conversations and principles that have shaped my own approach.

Why Most Wealth Does Not Make It Past the Third Generation

The statistic everyone quotes is that around seventy percent of family wealth is lost by the second generation and ninety percent by the third. The reason is rarely investment performance. The reason is almost always one of two things: the money was transferred to people who were not prepared to steward it, or the family never built a shared language around what the money was for.

You can fix both of those, but you have to start early and you have to be honest. Most families wait until estate planning is forced on them by age or illness. By then, the conversations that matter are the hardest to have.

The Three Layers of a Generational Wealth Plan

Layer one: the values and the language

Before any structure goes in place, you need a clear answer to two questions. What is the money for? And what kind of people do we want to be while we hold it? Families who skip this layer end up with kids who either burn through what they receive or refuse to engage with it at all.

Layer two: the financial chassis

This is where the Infinite Banking Concept earns its place. A properly designed whole life policy on each generation creates a multi-decade asset that compounds, stays accessible, and transfers efficiently when the time comes. It is not the only piece of a generational plan, but it is the most underused one in Canada today.

Layer three: the operating rhythm

Family meetings, written guidelines for how borrowed capital is repaid, intentional involvement of children in real decisions. The families who treat this like an operating cadence, not a one-time event, are the ones whose wealth still means something three generations out.

Conversations That Shaped This Page

These interviews cover the wealth side, the family side, and the mindset side of the equation, because all three have to work together for a generational plan to actually transfer.

Where Most People Get Stuck

Treating estate planning as paperwork. The documents matter, but the conversations matter more. Wills and trusts are downstream artifacts of decisions a family has already made.
Hiding the numbers from the next generation. Children who learn about the family balance sheet at age forty-five through a probate process never had a chance to develop stewardship.
Optimizing for tax instead of intent. Tax efficiency is a tool, not a strategy. If your plan is built around the lowest tax bill, you will end up with a structure that produces a small tax bill and a fragile family.
Skipping the practice runs. Generational wealth is muscle memory. Small transfers, small decisions, small mistakes made while the parents are still alive are what build the next generation’s capacity.

Build the Plan That Outlasts You

If you want to walk through what a generational wealth plan could look like for your own family, book a conversation at coachcanfield.com. We will start with what you actually want to leave behind, then work backward to the structure that makes it possible.