What Four Generations of Money Taught Me About Building (and Keeping) Wealth
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Why do I think it’s so important to have honest conversations with your family about money?
It all starts with my own story.
In this episode, I take you back over 100 years to the women who laid the foundation for my family's wealth.
Join me as I walk through the four generations that grew, protected, and passed down the money my family has today.
You’ll learn what the name Sunnybranch means, what my parents taught me about money as a teen, and how everything I learned about money growing up shaped the way I show up for inheritors like you.
🗓️ Schedule a FREE call to talk more about how I can help you navigate a current or future inheritance.
Transcript:
Hey, I'm Katherine and thanks for joining me at Heir Necessities, the podcast that turns complex financial topics into real talk for Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z inheritors. Each episode of this podcast, I break down a different topic related to generational wealth and inheritance.
My goal is that you can stop trying to figure out what to do with your money by asking Google or ChatGPT what to do and come here instead. For real talk, real solutions, and real advice that you can start implementing in your life today.
In this week's episode of Heir Necessities, I'm doing something a little bit different. If you've interacted with me at all or any of my content, you know that I talk a lot about being a future inheritor, getting money from my parents while they're still alive, and the fact that I have lived experience that's very similar to a lot of the clients that I work with at Sunnybranch.
But I don't always share more than that.
So in this week's episode, I am taking a deep dive into my family money story. You're going to learn how I learned about my family's money growing up, why my business is named Sunnybranch, the history of money going back four generations in my family, and anything else that I can think of to tell you along the way.
Before I dive into it, if you are enjoying Heir Necessities, I would be so grateful if you could take two seconds to leave the podcast a five-star rating wherever you listen to it. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever. It's hugely helpful for the show and it helps me connect with and support more inheritors just like you.
Where Does My Family Money Story Start?
To start talking about my family money story, you need to go back over 100 years. My great-grandmother, Ann Belcher, was one of the first women who graduated from Cornell Medical School. She was an ear, nose, and throat doctor, and she was incredibly successful in a private practice.
Not necessarily financially the way that incredibly successful doctors are financially successful in 2026, but she had a business and she practiced medicine until she was in her 90s. She lived in New York and she was a doctor for the rich and famous of New York at the time — the Kennedys, the Vanderbilts. She helped them all with their ears, noses, and throats.
She was also a dedicated saver and a consistent investor. And she laid the framework of building my family's wealth with the same investment strategies that I recommend today. Long-term buy and hold investing.
Yeah, she got lucky with some of the investments she chose, but for the most part, she kept saving, kept investing, and built a significant nest egg that then other generations of my family would continue to grow. She didn't do anything fancy or flashy, but she kept saving, kept investing, and really started the foundation of wealth that I am still living off of and appreciating in 2026.
What Does Family Wealth Built by Women Look Like?
If you haven't already figured it out by interacting with my content, my family money story is a story about women and wealth. It shouldn't surprise you that the next person I want to talk to you about is my grandma. Her name was Kate.
She grew up in New York and then moved to Seattle when she got married. She didn't have a professional career making money, but she dedicated herself to fundraising and to being a fundraising board member for some of the largest organizations in Seattle and across Washington state. She was a force of a person who really dedicated her life to building community and to giving back.
She lived on Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle. And the house that she lived in, which when she was alive was really our family's gathering place and the beating heart of where we would come together, and my memories of her, was called Sunnybranch. I named my firm Sunnybranch to honor her.
Not only her role in my life, which was incredibly significant, but also her role in the community. She was incredibly committed and persuasive, and when she set her mind to do something, she got it done. She had a career in money before that was something that women could really do, and she never wavered in her commitment, even when she was in her 90s.
Why Is the Legacy of Trailblazing Women Central to Sunnybranch?
A lot of times people talk about passing money and wealth and values down across generations. It's the story that my family has lived. My family story three and four generations back is about trailblazing women.
It's about women who decided what they were going to do and went and did it. And they didn't listen to people who said, you can't do it, you shouldn't do it, whatever. It was get out of the way, we're going to make this happen.
And that's a huge piece of the legacy that I carry through into my work at Sunnybranch. I work with men and women, but one common thread with all of my clients is that for some reason or another, they feel like the traditional financial advice industry isn't a fit for them. And I feel that way as well.
I don't like to be constrained in this box of what a financial advisor should look like or should talk like. My vision as a founder who is building a business to serve current and future inheritors is that I can show up with my real story, my real concerns, and that my clients can do the same. You shouldn't have to dress up and code switch to talk to your financial advisor.
Why Should Inheritors Aim For Radical Financial Honesty?
I spent years doing it and it's not any fun. It's exhausting, and this is a person that you have hired. They should speak to you and you should be able to speak to them in a way that you're comfortable.
But getting back to my family money story — talked about my great-grandma, my grandma. My parents are obviously also an integral part of my family money story. My parents are still alive, hopefully no plans to die anytime soon.
The way that they talk to me about money and about family wealth is why I can be successful as a financial advisor. I talk a lot about radical transparency and radical honesty when it comes to family money conversations. And the reason that I hit these points so hard is because I have seen and experienced them working in my own life.
How Does Knowing Your Family's Wealth As A Teen Change Your Life?
Since I was 16 years old, I knew how much money I personally have. And not that long after that, in my early 20s, I knew how much money my parents had. This information was hugely helpful for me as I planned out my career path.
Knowing what resources were available to me, knowing how I could or couldn't spend them — even if that wasn't an actual requirement, it was more of an expectation — let me plan my career. It let me take risks that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to take. And it means that since I was 16 years old, I've been learning about how money works, how investments work, the basic principles of financial planning, how estate plans work.
I was introduced to these things as a normal part of life as someone with money. That's what they are. If you strip out all of the anxiety and all of the emotional pieces, kids with wealth should learn how to deal with these things.
Because these are the skills that rich kids need to develop to become competent adults. But the emotional piece — the fear, the uncertainty, all of it — means that most of us current and future inheritors, in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever, no one ever taught you any of this. And so you get to the point where you've inherited and you look forward at this new job you have managing millions of dollars and you literally don't know the first thing about it.
What Should You Do If You've Inherited Wealth and Don't Know Where to Start?
It's such a common experience, and it's something that you shouldn't have to go through alone. I've been navigating discussions about family wealth and learning how to manage money since I was literally a teenager. And it's all of those skills that come together to let me help people like you build a path forward with inherited wealth.
And find a way to reconnect money and joy, and find gratitude and excitement in abundance instead of just fear, shame, and guilt. My parents and I still talk openly about money. If you've checked out other episodes of the podcast, you know that they've given us a ton of money over the years.
They're giving us $350,000 to renovate our basement. Got more updates on how that's coming in a few weeks, which I think you're going to want to hear. If you're curious to know more about my family money story or how what I've been learning for the past decades could help you as you navigate your own money journey, I'd love to hear from you.
You can shoot me an email at katherine@sunnybranchwealth.com, find me on Instagram at @sunnybranchwealth, or if you're not ready to reach out yet, keep following along with the pod and I'll catch you on next week's episode.
Let’s take the next step together
Understanding how to protect, invest, grow, and/or give away a multi-million dollar inheritance isn’t easy. Inheritors can encounter a wide variety of different situations requiring knowledge and finesse to manage. If you need more help, reach out to Katherine Fox, CFP® and CAP®, financial planner for inheritors, to learn how Sunnybranch can help you evaluate your financial situation and build a plan for your financial future.
