What is your wealth for?

The questions families skip.

Some $124 trillion is expected to pass to heirs and charity in the United States alone by 2048 (Cerulli Associates). Yet families are only part of a larger handover: pension funds, sovereign funds, foundations and companies are passing on capital, and its consequences, too. Families have a catalytic part to play. They can think in generations, move faster than institutions, and show others what is possible.

Few families decide with a spreadsheet alone. They decide with their history: what money meant in the house they grew up in, what they fear, and whom they want to protect. The questions that matter most often never reach the table: about meaning, about how the money was made, about who decides.

• What is enough, and what is the rest for?
• What do we want to be remembered for?
• What would our grandchildren thank us for, or blame us for?

Living wealth.

Money is one form of wealth, and it depends on all the others. We help families see seven, and the wisdom that holds them together:

• The living worldLand, water, soil, and the places you depend on
• PeopleHealth, skills, purpose and potential
• RelationshipsTrust, networks and the bonds within the family
• CultureValues, stories and identity
• What we buildTechnology, buildings and infrastructure
• MoneyCapital, investment and ownership
• Rules and institutionsGovernance, family constitutions, law
• WisdomKnowing what belongs together, what should stay distinct, and what might grow.

Wisdom is not an eighth form. The seven describe what a family holds; wisdom decides what is done with it.

Each form renews at its own pace: money in months, trust in years, soil and forests over generations. A decision that draws on something faster than it renews runs it down, often without anyone noticing. A fund that lifts water from an aquifer faster than rain refills it can show a fine return for years while the farm beneath it fails.

(Re)generative, not extractive.

Older models ask how much more can be taken. A (re)generative family asks what its wealth can grow into, in step with the people and places it depends on: renewing what serves the whole, letting go of what does not, and creating what is new. That may mean steadier growth rather than the fastest compounding. Families who already have enough are the ones most free to choose it.

The next generation(s) will inherit your decisions along with your assets.

How we work.

• The Whole Wealth CanvasA picture of everything your family holds and depends on, drawn with you across the seven forms of wealth: where you are today, the living state you intend, and how value flows between them. It shows what is strong, what is thin, and what is being drawn down without anyone noticing.
• Whole DecisionFor the big choices that are hard to undo: a sale, a fund, a foundation, land, a succession. Six honest questions before you commit, a written expectation, and an outside witness who checks back. wholedecision.com
• Modelling and stress testingBank-grade models that test the picture under pressure before the money moves. The result is what we call Systemic ROI: the risks, opportunities and impacts of a decision, with the financial return read inside it, because money sits inside the economy, the economy inside society, and society inside the living world. One coherent picture, never a single number.
• The right conditionsThe state a family decides in matters as much as the facts in front of it. We cultivate conditions on three levels. Inner: coherence, a steadiness that lets people hear and think clearly under pressure; and awe, the sense of standing before something vast, which widens the frame. Shared: a purpose everyone can stand behind without having to think alike, and enough trust to say what is true. Outer: a setting, pace and process that let a group reach flow, full absorption in shared work. In these conditions people do more than think well together. They notice more, sense what is starting to emerge, and see their own part in the whole. You can see it in the room: quieter voices are heard, options appear that no one brought with them, and people make decisions they still stand by years later. Our work is inspired by many, including Matt and Gail Taylor on settings in which groups think well, Otto Scharmer on presencing, Alan Watkins on coherence, and the living world itself.

Ways to start.

• FreeA first conversationAn hour, in person or by video. Tell us what you are weighing. We will tell you plainly whether we can help.
• FreeThe Whole Decision CardSix honest questions for any decision, at any table. Download the Core Edition (PDF, no sign-up).
• Fixed feeFresh Eyes ReviewOne past or pending decision, read again by people who were not in the room. You get a short record of what it touches, what it assumes, and what it could teach.
• Fixed feeA Whole Wealth Canvas sessionYour picture, drawn together at a family meeting or retreat: today, intended, and the flows between, with the path ahead and the questions it raises for the next generation(s).
• EngagementThe Whole Decision RoomA live decision of weight, taken through the full method: the Canvas, modelling and stress testing, skilled facilitation, and check-backs.

After a first free conversation we propose a fixed fee, so you know the cost before anything starts. We take on a small number of families at a time. This winter we are running our first Canvas sessions with a few families and individuals who want to help shape the work.

Who we are.

Whole Wealth comes from a small group of practitioners, each bringing what the others lack: decision practice, bank-grade modelling and stress testing, and skilled facilitation.

Gavin Peacock convenes it and is your first contact. He spent twenty-five years in institutional banking, including at J.P. Morgan, Barclays Capital and WestLB, running and improving operations and control, and holds the CISI Level 4 Diploma in Investment Advice. He convenes Earth Family Office, which works on how capital can better serve whole systems, and is writing a book, Whole Wealth.

We work alongside your investment and legal advisers, never in place of them. We do not give investment advice, and our fees are never tied to investment returns. What you tell us stays with us, under NDA if you wish.

We also welcome conversations with practitioners, delivery partners and long-term backers who share this view. Ask for our introduction, written for families, their advisers, allies and backers.