Those at risk are inheritors, lottery winners and other disenfranchised
millionaires who suddenly, and through no effort of their own, no longer have to earn a
living. Financially successful workaholics, such as those in Silicon Valley, need not
apply.
Fortunately for the sufferers, there are people like Salzer who have
recognized the problem and work hard to provide a solution. To wit: The Wealth
Conservancy, a Boulder, Colo.-based company Salzer founded in 1983 that provides
psychological and financial counseling to help integrate you with your money.
Her services aren’t cheap, but what’s $20,000 a year when
you’ve got tens of millions at stake? Rates go up from there depending on how
hands-off the sufferer wants to be. Salzer said she has about 200 people on her client
list.
The pioneering financial therapist was in the Sun Valley area last week
checking up on three of her clients who have homes here. During an interview Wednesday,
she took time out of her busy schedule to put into perspective just how difficult it is to
go from being paralyzed by gobs of cash to being empowered by it.
"Poor people can take risks, and have nothing to lose," the
middle-aged entrepreneur said. "Whereas someone who has inherited $10 million tries
not to screw up what’s been given to them."
Working as a traditional money manager in Boulder in the 1980s, Salzer
first became aware that sudden wealth can be a real drag when a young couple wandered into
her office in a state of confused pain.
"The only source of income I have is dissipating," Salzer
recalled the husband saying.
For his entire adult life, he had lived off the earnings of a trust fund.
Now that he had turned 35, the trust fund came due, daddy cut him a check—$18
million—and the husband, who had apparently never learned anything about money
besides how to spend it, felt his world crumbling. What, after all, do you do with $18
million?
During this conversation, Salzer said, she noticed the man’s wife
nervously twiddling a "very plain looking ring." When Salzer asked about it, she
said, she discovered the woman concealed a $60,000 emerald in her palm—a bauble the
couple had whimsically purchased that day on the way to Salzer’s office.
Suddenly, the woman "burst into tears," Salzer said.
"How can I go home and show my father this ring," Salzer
recalled the woman saying, "when he can’t even make his mortgage payments?"
More than once, Salzer said she prefers not to say people like this couple
have a "problem," because she doesn’t want to encourage a "poor little
rich kid attitude."
Rather, she said, she likes to think of it as a "challenge, a unique
set of circumstances."
To help with that challenge, Salzer established a biannual series of
workshops, held all over the country, where the wealth-afflicted can go to commiserate and
heal.
Usually held at a bed and breakfast, the four-day get-together costs
$1,675, not including airfare and housing. But it does include "guided
fantasies," "experiential learning" and "exercises on their purpose in
life," she said.
The first day, "all we do is introduce each other," because
everyone is so tense, she added. But, within a few hours, "everybody’s shoulders
are a little higher. It’s wonderful. It’s magic."
Salzer said she limits the workshops to 25 people to maintain an intimate
atmosphere.
"For the first time," she said, "they’re in an
environment where no one’s going to like or dislike them because they have
money."
Salzer didn’t say what her workshop attendees do later in life.
Apparently, however, she has taught hundreds of our wealthiest citizens not to feel
uncomfortable when someone asks what they do for a living. She has instructed them how to
spend appropriately so funds won’t run out within their lifetime. And, she has taught
them not to feel obligated to be involved in philanthropic activities.
That’s a lot to learn in four days.
"I have never, ever had someone regret that this is a waste of
time," Salzer said.
Myra Salzer, founder of The Wealth
Conservancy. "When an inheritor meets someone who knows they have a lot of money, the
relation is with their money, not them. It’s not fair," she said. Express
photo by David N. Seelig