The New Currency of Wealth: Educating Heirs Before They Inherit
Australia’s wealthy families are shifting focus from building wealth to preparing the next generation to handle it.
3 min
For Australia’s high-net-wealth families, the question is no longer how to grow wealth—it’s how to ensure the next generation knows what to do with it.
“Most affluent parents aren’t staying up at night worried about the next investment opportunity,” says wealth adviser Antony Selby. “They’re worried their money will mess up their kids.”
In an era marked by skyrocketing intergenerational transfers of wealth, Selby has observed a dramatic shift in his clients’ priorities. Increasingly, they’re not just seeking financial strategies—they’re seeking guidance on how to prepare their children for the emotional, practical, and psychological burden of inheritance.
“It’s one of the most common requests I get: ‘Can you help educate our children about money?’” Selby says. “There’s a growing realisation among wealthy families that simply leaving money isn’t enough. If the recipients aren’t prepared, that wealth can quickly become a liability instead of a legacy.”
Selby, who has advised Australia’s affluent for decades, says the old model of wealth management—built around transactions and product sales—is obsolete. In its place, a new approach has emerged: one that blends traditional financial advice with legacy planning, values-based education, and even elements of family therapy.
“We’ve moved from preparing money for heirs, to preparing heirs for money,” he explains. “That’s a fundamental change.”
The timing couldn’t be more critical. With Baby Boomers now well into retirement and multi-generational estates becoming more common, the next wave of wealth recipients—many of them in their 20s and 30s—face an unprecedented challenge. Unlike their parents, who often built wealth through work, these heirs risk inheriting it without the context, responsibility, or resilience to manage it.
And that, Selby says, is the real risk.
“Wealth can distort perspective. It can create dependence. It can rob young people of direction, and of the emotional tools they need to live independently,” he says. “That’s why so many of my clients now see their role not just as benefactors, but as mentors.”
What does that mentorship look like? For Selby, it often involves structured conversations about money values and family purpose. It means involving children early in philanthropic decisions, educating them about investment basics, and creating environments where financial literacy is as important as academic success. In some cases, it includes working with external coaches, psychologists, and advisers to help adult children develop their own identity outside the family’s financial narrative.
“There’s no simple formula,” he admits. “But three things make a difference: being intentional about values, developing real-life skills, and giving heirs the right mix of independence and support.”
While popular culture paints the ultra-wealthy as laser-focused on returns and deal flow, Selby says the reality is more nuanced. “Behind closed doors, it’s not about chasing more wealth. It’s about risk management, family cohesion, and the question we hear again and again: ‘How do we make sure this wealth is a force for good?’”
He points to the old proverb, “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” a warning that’s echoed across cultures. “It’s a reminder that financial inheritance must be matched with emotional and intellectual inheritance too.”
As the face of wealth management continues to change, Selby believes the industry must evolve alongside it—offering not just financial tools, but guidance through some of the most deeply personal challenges families will ever face.
“Money isn’t neutral,” he says. “It shapes families, for better or worse. The difference lies in how well we prepare the next generation to carry it.”
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
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