The Vanderbilts descended from Dutchman Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, “from the Bilt,” in the Utrecht region of Holland, who arrived on American shores as an indentured servant in the 1600s and settled in New York City, then known as New Amsterdam he later became a farmer once his servitude was fulfilled. As an example, one family member lived alone in a New York mansion with 47 servants working for her. From there, though, it was all downhill, financially speaking, as family members enjoyed the privileged life that extreme wealth afforded them. His son William “Billy” Henry Vanderbilt doubled the wealth amassed by his father. Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known as the Commodore, became the richest man in America thanks to shipping and railroad investments. The illustrious family first gained prominence during the Gilded Age with the money-hungry Cornelius Vanderbilt at the helm. “Nobody can make money disappear like a Vanderbilt,” write Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe in Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, about the family that was once among the wealthiest in the United States, before squandering its fortune across the generations.Įstate planning certainly was not on the Vanderbilt family’s radar. Stand Up to Elder Financial Abuse, by John Rotondi, educates you on the growing problem of seniors being targeted and scammed out of their savings and income-a book that everyone, regardless of their age, needs to read. Closer to the ground is Estate Planning 101: From Avoidable Probate and Assessing Assets to Establishing Directives and Understanding Taxes, Your Essential Primer to Estate Planning, by Vicki Cook and Amy Blacklock, who spell out the A-to-Zs of taking care of your future. In Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe, the authors lay out how the storied Vanderbilt family built their enormous wealth and saw it evaporate over generations, due to reckless spending and zero planning for tomorrow. We begin our list with the best overall book, a cautionary tale that reveals how even the ultra-wealthy shun estate-planning tasks-at their peril. Yet, there’s a whole publishing sub-industry that addresses those very questions. Among the reasons given are procrastination, and that respondents don’t think they own enough assets to warrant an estate plan, think that getting one is too costly, or don’t know how to get a will done. Sixty-seven percent of Americans have no estate plan, according to a survey released this year by the senior-living referral service.
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