I'll never forget the first conversation I had with someone who came from Old Money.
Several years ago, when I was a financial advisor, it was my job to bring new clients into my wealth management firm any way I could. I was at a cocktail party in San Francisco, meeting and greeting my friends who support the performing arts. A seemingly nice middle-aged lady introduced herself to me and took my business card. With a deeply amused look, she inquired, "You're a financial advisor. Are you here to meet clients?"
Sensing a potential opportunity, I replied, "I'm always ready to meet clients. Are you looking for advice?"
Her amused smile widened. "Of course not. And neither is anybody else here. You see, they're all nouveau riche, which means they'll never talk to you." She used a common derogatory term that the super-wealthy reserve for the upwardly mobile. How cute.
"So you think I'm wasting my time?" I would have attended that party even if I wasn't in financial sales because I don't consider making friends and supporting the arts to be a waste of time.
"Yes. You shouldn't be here."
"So where would you prospect for business if you had to?" Hey, I was open to suggestions if they would have helped my career.
"I wouldn't. Business always comes from referrals, not from marketing."
She walked away. The smile never left her face. That condescending crone had no interest in helping my career because she felt I didn't deserve a career. Our conversation told me everything I needed to know about how people with serious money view someone with a work ethic who tries to build a business career from scratch.
What wasn't said in my brief exchange with Ms. Old Money is that the upper echelons of America's social caste view things like hard work, perseverance, and striving as the provenance of those too poor to be of any consequence. Old Money people don't have to work for anything because everything is handed to them from birth. Reputation, school admissions, first job, first deals, everything. Success in business comes to them as if by magic because that's what they were raised to expect.
Well, here's a big slap upside the face, fogies. Great Depression 2.0 is going to place a hell of a lot of your inherited fortunes at major risk. We've already seen how Bernard Madoff's Ponzi program has devastated family fortunes. Highly paid retainers relied completely upon the "distinguished, outstanding, superior, blah blah" abilities of their private money managers. These managers had all the right indicators: identifiable prep schools, Ivy Leaugue credentials, trophy wives, and Social Register bloodlines. And they've all failed miserably at making and keeping money. Old Money would have been better off handing their money to someone like me to put in widely-held mutual funds or ETFs. But no! They had to maintain their exclusivity all the way to the poorhouse.
Bye-bye, Old Money. A lot of you are going to be nouveau poor. Don't come to me asking for help. I don't take sales calls.
