My Why, Part One

Written May 27, 2026

This is the first of many posts in which I will explore the complex world of family wealth dynamics. Because this space is intended to be of service to my clients and to my peers in the family office ecosystem, I plan to spend very little time writing about myself.

But I want to start here, more personally, with a simple question: Why?

Why am I studying family wealth dynamics and wealth therapy?

Part One: The Final Account

Today marks the end of a very long and challenging cycle. Today, I did something that, for me, felt like truly burying my father. No, today was not the actual burial — that happened a while ago. Today was the day I closed his remaining bank accounts.

That might sound superficial on the surface, but hang with me for a moment.

My father was a traditional man. The way he expressed his love was by being the best provider he could be. Easily 99% of our conversations revolved around money and business. I’ve often joked that “talking money was his love language.”

That is not a complaint from a daughter; I truly enjoyed those conversations. I learned an immense amount listening to the ups and downs he experienced across the various iterations of his career. Those conversations were the rare moments he would drop his stoic guard, allow himself to be vulnerable, and express how he was actually feeling.

From him, I learned that being an entrepreneur is often tough, lonely, and deeply humbling. But I also learned that it can be incredibly fulfilling to build a successful life out of the work you love.

He was a physician who rode the waves of massive structural shifts in the healthcare industry, including the inception of the HMO system and the emergence of corporate-managed medical practices. Like most medical professionals of his era, he had zero formal training in basic business concepts. He was flying blind. After all, who has time to study business management on top of the grueling demands of medical school?

Early on, he stalled out in a private joint practice with a fellow MD who ended up robbing him blind and leaving town. So, he started over with a private solo practice. He became a high earner — ranking in the top 5% of income in the U.S. — but the business still failed, and he and my mother had to file for bankruptcy. Looking back with what I now know as a financial professional, it was a classic cash flow problem — the exact silent killer that ruins many otherwise profitable businesses. The HMO system had just begun, and reimbursements from insurance companies started arriving significantly later than his overhead bills and payroll obligations. He simply couldn't bridge the gap.

He often described how humbling it was to start over from zero in mid-life after that bankruptcy. He had to join a managed practice, answer to a boss, and earn a quarter of what he was used to making — at least until that practice was eventually sold and he received a portion of the proceeds.

There were many financial twists and turns after that, including the market crash of 2008, but that initial bankruptcy left the deepest mark on him. Yet, he modeled absolute tenacity. He set a rigid target for what he wanted his net worth to be for retirement, and against the odds, he hit it.

His goal was a million dollars. While that is a comparatively modest sum next to the portfolios of the ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) families I serve today, the core narrative is identical: the wealth initially came from an extraordinary amount of hard work, grit, and sacrifice.

The Reality of "Economic Outpatient Care"

Like many children of the families I serve, I received the financial benefits of my parents’ efforts. Looking ahead, I see that my niece and nephew will likely never know what it means to struggle financially the way their grandparents did.

While there were a few lean years in my childhood, my adult experience became a textbook example of what the authors of The Millionaire Next Door define as “economic outpatient care.” I’ll write more on this dynamic in future posts, but suffice it to say that I lived a very comfortable lifestyle in exciting, expensive cities like New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area without having to worry excessively about my income. My low wages as a graduate student and nonprofit worker were consistently supplemented by this familial safety net.

The two strongest bonds I shared with my father were learning in real-time about his business struggles, and the quiet lifeline connecting my bank account to his. Money flowed from him to me whenever it was needed. It allowed me to pursue creative dreams and follow passions for service that I could not have easily afforded otherwise. Operating without financial anxiety in my decision-making process was a luxury I tried to treat with deep respect.

I am incredibly grateful that he recognized that respect. After he passed, I discovered several entries in his journals where he noted how much he appreciated that I used his help wisely and always expressed my gratitude. It was a massive relief to read those words, because I had spent years worrying that I hadn't been thankful enough. The appreciation he felt from me was a direct result of his willingness to share the emotional reality of his financial life—the anxieties of the famine, and the relief of the feast.

The Pivot to Caretaking

I have always devoured personal finance books as a hobby, and I eventually cut my teeth professionally in the field, working for the NYC Department of Education as a fractional CFO. But I left that role to return to school for art and design, which led to a series of low-paying, exhausting positions where I routinely logged up to 100 hours a week for less than $36,000 a year. Eventually, I hit a wall. I experienced my own version of a financial and physical crash — total burnout. Like father, like daughter: I had to step back, reevaluate, set a clear financial roadmap, and commit to doing work I loved that could actually sustain me.

About two years after that personal reset, my mother became ill, and it became clear that my father was facing the early stages of dementia. I stepped in to manage their financial lives as a conscious, active way to express my gratitude for everything they had given me.

During the four-year block between 2022 and 2026, my mother passed away, my father followed, and the complex probate process began. Throughout that window, my emotional connection to my parents was maintained largely through the administration of their money. Each bill paid, each trip to their city to handle banking or their home and possessions, each frustrating meeting with their patronizing financial advisor, and each battle to ensure their funds were used wisely was a way for me to stay tethered to them.

More Than Math

Anyone who tells you money is just math is either in denial or has never actually managed it. Yes, it is crucial to remain neutral and look at numbers objectively when making decisions. But today, as I closed their final accounts, I was acutely aware of the heavy emotional meaning behind every financial exchange. Money can be a profound symbol for love, care, validation, and encouragement. Conversely, it can carry negative beliefs about a recipient's capabilities — heavy with underlying attempts to control, manipulate, or silence.

I have felt the entire spectrum of those emotions over the years. Relationships are complicated because people are complicated. Nothing is entirely black and white.

Through the final financial cord connecting their lives to mine, the emotional weight caught up with me. I barely cried on the phone with my sibling when they sat with my father as he passed. I safely made it through the funeral. I didn't break down when I dug the earth to bury his ashes. But today, as I closed the accounts that symbolically sustained his life and linked it to mine for decades, I wept and couldn't stop. It wasn't out of fear of financial insecurity; it was because his absence finally felt permanent.

When my mother died, I felt the deep, physical separation from the body I came from. Today, I finally felt the sorrow of losing the person who devotedly protected, housed, and fed me after I left her womb.

That is why closing those bank accounts hurt more than burying his ashes. Money was his primary vehicle for expressing love. Closing those accounts was my version of watching a casket lower into the ground or scattering ashes into the wind. It was the final closure.

Where one life ends, another begins. I am moving forward into this next chapter with a commitment to help other families navigate the exact dynamics my own family lived through. My father and I faced plenty of challenges in our relationship, but his spirit of service and his commitment to sustaining family wealth live on in me.