A video from a faceless financial motivation page showed up on my FYP on my commute home. I obviously had nothing better to do, so I watched the whole video.
Immediately regretted it.
But it did confirm something for me.
Look, I’m not going to tag the video or comment on the guy who was reposted in the video because, one, this kind of misinformation is harmful. And two, this isn’t a slight against him. He was a young guy, likely just regurgitating what he saw in someone else’s video.
But for context, here’s what the video says in a nutshell:
Step 1. Open a Trust
Doesn’t specify what kind of trust. Nor the barriers to entry: finding and affording the attorney, administrative costs, etc.
Step 2. Buy a $1M life insurance policy
Doesn’t specify what kind of policy. But let’s assume he means a whole life policy with a death benefit of $1M based on where this is going.
He also says this insurance will cost you ~$100/m, which he was likely referring to a term policy for a young person, which very well could cost you $100+/- a month. But that’s not what this is.
Step 3. Put the life insurance inside the Trust you just opened
Step 4. “Now the Trust fund is worth $1M”
Now this is where it gets harmful and deviates far from the truth.
Neither the trust or the life insurance policy is “worth” the value of the death benefit. Unless it’s a fully paid-up policy, if you stop paying the premiums on said policy, you’ll quickly find out how much it’s “worth.”
Step 5. Do what the ultra-rich do — borrow against your $1M trust fund
Let me stop you there.
This is why I hate “Generational Wealth.”
Not the idea of parents wanting more for their kids. Not the act of saving, investing, and passing something on. Those things are good—essential even.
I don’t hate generational wealth.
I would argue that most things I do are in the pursuit of financial freedom and being someone my future children can look up to. Not to mention, as young men, we’re often told our value in this world is contingent on our financial success. So I’m not immune to the idea.
It’s not the concept I take issue with.
What I hate is the way the term has been hijacked. It’s morphed into a sort of marketing buzzword used as a tagline to sell you some bullshit strategy.
A slogan used to sell unsuitable financial products, quick-fix strategies, and empty promises—especially to the very communities least equipped to fact-check it.
It’s the manipulation of people’s dreams. The false binary that you’re either “creating wealth” or “stuck in poverty”—as if there’s no progress, growth, or nuanced middle ground in between.
How many know a $10,000 Roth IRA left to your child is generational wealth—but that rarely gets talked about in that way.
As a financial advisor, and as someone who comes from one of these communities, I’ve seen firsthand how this vague, overhyped phrase can do more harm than good. And usually to the exact people it claims to help.
After seeing this trend and cringing every time I saw someone blatantly lie was how I decided to blend my curiosity with my personal experiences to learn how it was actually done.
Who’s In Your Ear Matters
Only ~33% of adults worldwide are financially literate.
That gap matters.
Because when people don’t understand the mechanics, they rely on nontechnical cues like stories and fearmongering.
Jason Zweig writes, “Your feelings blind you to the financial reality of the situation.”
And when your feelings take the driver’s seat, you become an easy target. People from our community are sold unfitting insurance policies, coated with the word “investment” and “be your own bank”, or come across some get-rich-quick courses under the promise of “generational wealth.”
Who we listen to about money makes a huge difference.
Just because your Uncle Mike invests in stocks doesn’t mean he should be giving financial advice.
No offense, but your parents and family members may not always be the best people to give advice about money. To be fair, they likely have your best interests in mind more than anyone. Yet more and more people aren’t just getting advice from their family—they’re getting their information from social media.
If I had to guess, anyone who’s a millennial or younger is primarily getting their information from TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram over the news or even the WSJ, NYT, etc.
The Philadelphia Fed reports that a majority of Gen Z (76%) and 65% of millennials seek financial advice on social media; other surveys peg ~10% of all U.S. adults as active followers of fin-creators. Their publication How Americans Use Social Media for Financial Advice states:
“Surveys indicate that people, especially those in younger generations, are increasingly turning to social media platforms for advice on various financial topics, including budgeting, saving, and investing. For example, TikTok has been rapidly growing as young adults’ go-to source for financial information, with content tagged with the hashtag #FinTok reaching more than 1.4 billion views.”
Will this be harmful going forward?
I once heard that if you want to make money, be really good at selling one of three things: fast weight loss tips, how to make more money, or advice on how to live longer.
It may become more difficult to discern what’s good, effective advice from bad advice based on followers and likes alone. Real-time data on search trends and AI automation tools will allow the ones looking for a quick buck will be able to capitalize on what the people think they want to hear and distributing across multiple platforms with the click of a button.
There are no state troopers on the internet. Generally speaking, registered financial professionals have a ton of compliance and regulatory hoops to jump through. And if we’re being honest, the unfortunate truth is that many of us in this industry who have the credentials are terrible content creators.
It’s a tough question.
I think yes and no. It would be hypocritical for me to say all financial content creators are bad. Some are great, and I look up to them. I think as the RIA industry progresses and regulations around social media use laxes, more and more advisors will tap into posting all forms of media (blogs, podcasts, TikToks) and building a community around it. These nuggets shared will be much more accurate and beneficial for that specific target audience.
We’re experts, not showmen.
Where, on the other hand, unregistered content creators have mastered the art of capturing attention. They have much more control over what they can say.
For me, it goes back to incentives and credentials. What do they stand to gain by giving you this information?
How to Actually Create Generational Wealth
My personal distaste for the term, which was overused and oversold, influenced my decision to marry my personal experiences with understanding how it was actually accomplished.
Which is through effective estate planning.
It looks like:
- Teaching your kids how money works
- Leaving a paid-off car
- Funding a 529 plan
- Modeling healthy financial behaviors
Intergenerational wisdom is just as powerful as intergenerational assets.
In the end, I don’t think #estateplanning is going to blow up on TikTok. It’s just not sexy.
Probably because the words “estate” or “inheritance” are foreign words to the average person.
For those of us striving to leave some sort of inheritance, our goal isn’t just to leave an inheritance and an estate behind. It’s to avoid creating a monster. Because if you hand your kids wealth without wisdom, you’re not setting them up for success—you’re setting them up for self-destruction.
This is where tools like (more on this in a future post) an Ethical Will—passed down values, stories, and lessons about life and financial decision making written for the next gen—matter just as much as the assets themselves.
Generational wealth done right isn’t just about what you own. It’s about education, protection, and intention. That’s the actual blueprint for sustaining wealth across generations.
Everything else? Noise.
