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.
- Caleb Guilliams and I Break Down What Most People Get Wrong About Infinite Banking
- Becoming Your Own Banker for Business Owners: My Conversation with Pete Mohr on The Business Owner Breakthrough Podcast
- David Stearns on Building Generational Wealth with the Infinite Banking Concept
- Kyle Fuller: How the Infinite Banking Concept Changed My Life and Built a $650 Million Legacy
- What Caleb Guilliams Got Right About Infinite Banking That Most American Practitioners Miss in Canada
- What Jayson Lowe Taught Me About Building a Practice That Outlasts You
- Why Jay Conner’s Private Money Playbook Works So Differently for Canadian Real Estate Investors
- What M.C. Laubscher’s Cashflow Ninja Framework Misses About Whole Life as the Foundation Layer
- Scott Donnell and Jimmie Jayes: 4 Challenges Modern Families Face and How to Overcome Them
- Scott Donnell and Jimmie Jayes on Raising Resilient Kids Who Can Handle Anything
- Bill Bloom on Eliminating Debt and Designing the Retirement You Actually Want
- Kim Butler: Overcoming Financial Difficulties and Redefining Retirement
- Redefining Wealth: A Holistic Approach to Success | Dave Wolcott
- Leila Entezam: Emotional Mastery for Wealth Builders and Better Financial Decisions
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.