THE SPIRIT OF WEALTH PRESERVATION

An entrepreneur and financial advisor explains his dream for generational wealth.

Polk has written this self-help guide, he says, to “foster a readiness that transcends monetary wealth” and has organized his thinking around what he call three “laws”: “The footprint of your life will become the blueprint for your legacy” (“what matters is not what we bought, but what we built”); “Your family’s collective purpose will determine its longevity” (“a purpose to develop and maintain family, thereby growing a healthy community and ultimately a flourishing society”); and “The method and means by which wealth is accumulated will shape your family’s lineage” (“when money is used to enable that which cannot be bought or sold”). Polk’s elaborations on these laws effectively highlight his determination to inspire families to use “raw introspection” while contemplating their legacies. To that end, he opens his book with the intellectual exercise of writing his own obituary. Indeed, he ably grounds his narrative in his own story, from his birth in small-town Alabama to an adulthood that would take him to places all over the country, and all over the world, where he would build and sell companies, be a wealth manager, and work toward poverty reduction in places that were financially struggling, including Haiti.At the age of 25, he founded Arlington Family Offices, a wealth management firm driven by his dream of a world where “money is only valuable if it does good.” The book has an occasional weakness for jargon that frequent business book readers will find familiar (“In that way culture is curious—having more to do with a deep-seated understanding that finds its home within an organization whose beliefs resonate”). However, Polk compensates for this with generous amounts of heartfelt enthusiasm. His descriptions of the birth and growth of his company, Arlington, is the book’s strongest dramatic thread; he tells it with such gusto that he’ll likely win over skeptical readers.

A vivid and refreshingly values-driven view of managing family fortunes.