NEXT GEN EDUCATION

The first time my wife and I visited Edinburgh, we had prepared for Scotland in the broadest sense: we knew where we were going, and that the weather could be unpredictable. So we packed layers, raincoats, and shoes that seemed incredibly sensible at the time. What we hadn’t quite appreciated was that Edinburgh is built, to put it mildly, vertically. It’s a physical manifestation of a Constable or Turner landscape painting that’s been knocked crooked on the wall after dusting, with the streets, buildings, and people still gamely carrying on inside it.

By the time Edinburgh Castle’s famous One O’Clock Gun fired, my calves had lodged numerous formal objections, and my wife had pointed out several times that we’d neglected to budget for sherpas. I hadn’t misled her, and no one had misled us; we’d simply been given information that was accurate, yet confoundingly incomplete. We knew we were visiting Scotland. We did not yet understand what walking around Edinburgh would require of us.

Something similar happens in wealthy families with surprising regularity. Parents are understandably protective of their children and private about family wealth, particularly when they worry that too much information—shared too early—could create entitlement, unwanted attention, distorted friendships, or the burden of allowing a balance sheet to become part of a young person’s identity. Those concerns aren’t imaginary, and most parents are right to be cautious.

The difficulty begins when “they don’t need to know everything yet” gradually turns into “no one should explain anything directly to them.” At that point, privacy can become a remarkably efficient way to create confusion, because a young adult may be expected to sign documents, approve a transfer, reserve money for taxes, make a quarterly estimated payment, or discuss an investment account without understanding the system that produced those tasks. When questions follow, the family may assume the young person wasn’t paying attention, even though no one ever gave them a complete enough explanation.

This is how a son or daughter can know that, say, a tax payment is due without knowing what income created the obligation, how the amount was calculated, or what would happen if the reserved money were spent. They may know that a trust exists without understanding whether a particular distribution represents income, principal, or something with tax consequences, and they may know that an investment account has been opened without understanding the role it plays in their broader financial life. They know they’re in Scotland; they just haven’t been told about the hills.

Families often try to bridge this gap through a trusted intermediary, perhaps a parent, personal assistant, accountant, attorney, or family friend who knows the family well and can make the conversation feel less formal. The intermediary may add useful context, understand the parent’s preferences, and know when the timing is likely to be good or terrible.

The complication is that trusted people naturally filter information through their own experience and assumptions about what a young person really needs to know. A recommendation that makes sense in one household may not fit another household’s tax structure, trusts, cash flows, expectations, or future responsibilities, and a carefully sequenced educational plan can quickly become a tasting menu in which a few appealing slides are selected, the awkward explanations are postponed, and the remaining material is expected to do work it was never designed to do.

A curriculum isn’t simply a pile of correct facts. Sequence and context matter, the learner needs room to ask a basic question without worrying that it will sound ungrateful or unintelligent, and someone needs to notice that a polite nod doesn’t necessarily indicate comprehension, particularly when the person nodding has spent years learning that family money is private.

The research supports a broader and more developmental view of financial education. In a 2025 study published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies, Lu Fan and Yingying Zeng examined the relationship between state financial education mandates and the financial well-being of young adults. They found that financial education was positively associated with financial knowledge and indirectly linked to financial access, healthy financial practices, and overall financial well-being. The authors also frame young adulthood as a pivotal transitional stage marked by increasing independence, responsibility, changing relationships with parents, and the need to acquire skills that will shape later life.

The study examined state education mandates rather than private education within ultrahigh-net-worth families, and because it used cross-sectional data, it doesn’t prove that one facilitated conversation will produce a particular outcome. Its practical relevance is that financial knowledge doesn’t operate in isolation, however—it becomes useful when it connects to behavior and decisions the learner can recognize in their own life.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau makes a complementary point in its 2025 Financial Literacy Annual Report. The CFPB describes adult financial well-being as developing from three building blocks in youth: executive function, positive financial habits, and financial knowledge and decision-making skills. It also emphasizes that these capabilities should be developed with age-appropriate resources and reinforced consistently over time, which is an important reminder that financial education isn’t an inoculation. We can’t provide one tasteful presentation at eighteen, congratulate ourselves on having covered the subject, and assume lifelong immunity from confusion.

The CFPB also states that education is most effective when information is actionable, relevant, timely, and connected to a decision that matters to the learner. Yet many families do nearly the reverse. They offer broad education when nothing immediate is happening, then retreat into administrative shorthand when a real decision arrives, so “please pay this by Tuesday” replaces an explanation of why the obligation exists, how the amount was determined, where the funds are being held, and what the young person should notice next time.

None of this requires complete financial disclosure. A young adult can understand why estimated taxes are due without receiving the family’s complete net worth, and they can learn the purpose of a trust without seeing every provision, knowing what siblings may receive, or being handed control of the assets. Privacy and preparation aren’t opposing choices; the real work lies in deciding what should be shared now, what can wait, and what the young person must understand in order to act responsibly today.

Let me hasten to add that parents should continue to control the values, boundaries, and pace of disclosure, because they’re the only people who can explain what the family believes money is for, which responsibilities accompany privilege, what should remain private, and what kind of adult they hope their child becomes. On an advisory level, we do something different but equally important by translating the technical system, building the educational sequence, checking for understanding, and returning to the subject when the next real decision creates a natural reason to learn.

Other trusted members of the family’s team still have an important role when they coordinate schedules, provide context, and reinforce what has been discussed. What they shouldn’t be asked to do, almost by accident, is redesign the education according to a different family’s financial reality or decide that a shorter explanation is automatically a clearer one.

Someone has to own the educational outcome, because when everyone is allowed to edit but no one is responsible for understanding, the result is usually a polished collection of partial truths. Protecting the next generation shouldn’t mean withholding every uncomfortable detail until it becomes an urgent assignment; it should mean providing the right information, in the right sequence, at the moment when it can become useful.

In essence, if you’re holding the map, you don’t need to hand it over. But for the love of all things Scottish, please let someone point out the hills before sending the unsuspecting tourist on their way.

ArchBridge Family Office is an independent, multi-family office and trust company that advises 65 clients on more than $15 billion of investment assets and more than $18 bilion of total wealth. Founded in 2002, ArchBridge Family Office provides holistic, hightouch client service including customized, independent investment management and a ful range of family office and fiduciary services. The firm serves a limited number of clients with substantial wealth in order to maintain very low client-to-employee ratios. Visit archbridge.com to explore how the firm manages complexity with unmatched expertise and a Family, Forward focus.