The New Zealand Rich Kid

I commenced my career in 1999. From that period on I have by virtue of what I do work in the taxation then the offshore trust industry, dealt with hundreds of children who are heirs to great fortunes, most as beneficiaries of trusts. Some are impressive, disciplined beasts of business or have forged themselves a unique path from their loaded fathers (and it has always been the fathers or grandfathers). And are a dream to deal with because they are responsible, thoughtful human beings with a good sense of finance and the position they find themselves in. Most however are decidedly average people and with that averageness have a sense of entitlement and vulgarity.

The averageness comes from the genetic pool. I have noticed that almost without exception the dumbest children who do the stupidest things that the trust has to continually shell out money for (QC and rehab fees), have the hottest looking mothers. The children who do best are those who have a lesser looking mother but one with a brain, be it University educated or smart in another way such as broad ranging common sense.

Without giving away any secrets, as trustee of trusts or directors of private offshore companies the most important thing is to say "no". Always. There are courses run by private training institutes specifically training us to say "no" and distance yourself from the beneficiary. I have been on three such courses. They are quite fun, else I wouldn't attend. Children of limited intellect and common sense given hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars can be incredibly amusing to watch. Personally I don't find saying the "no" that difficult and I am very good at it, despite being younger than most of those I am saying "no" to. The client is usually the father or grandfather and they are paying you to say no so they don't have to.

And that's precisely where it all goes wrong for these kids. Their parents have never said "no" and meant it. They are now paying other fiscally sensible people like myself vast sums to say "no".

Easily the most obscene request I had was from a grandchild of a gazillionaire who wanted his own private plane. Not just any plane, but a Gulfstream. More obscene as the "child" was 48, never worked (even in the family corporation) and lived off the trust fund set up by his grandfather, with an average stipend of $US750,000 a year, poor petal, and he spent most of that! His father instructed me to say "no". It wasn't that hard. The abuse that followed was that which only a mother could understand the first time she told her infant that they couldn't have something. To see a 48 year old grown man whose never earned a cent in his life in his own name, chuck a wobbly remains one of the most amusing sights of my career. Less amusing is the constant threat of being sued by one of the brats' friends who happen to be ill-informed lawyers when you do say "no", the physical threats and being yelled at "f***king c**t" down the phone at 3am by these charmers. Oh yes to add them to the "excluded person"schedule one day when they make the terminal mistake of upsetting the client will be an absolute delight.

With the exception of the stockmarket bubble, New Zealand in the 80's wasn't very flagrant in the wealth department. Not with the children that is. Even the early 90's it was quite downmarket, but in the late 90's and early 00's has grown a group of newly-monied families completely inadequately groomed to deal with their spoilt brat offspring.

In the 1980's getting a certain brand of BMX was a sign that your family were "rich", having tennis, piano or golf lessons the same. Plenty of families had beach baches, but they were run down and not fit to be garages in the spectacles that are seen in places like the Coromandel today. We never knew there was much more to offer in the world thanks to Piggy Muldoon gently shielding us from it all due to import restrictions, tariffs and government licensing. We lived in a utopia of anti-materialism. The first sign of spoilt brat syndrome in the 80's and 90's and the child was packed off to Europe to finish their schooling well away from any New Zealand trash influence. There was a procession of generationally wealthy families in New Zealand who packed up and left. Plenty of their children sport US college or Oxbridge degrees. They simply shipped them out of New Zealand as soon as they could.

Unlike the rest of the Western world, New Zealand's spoilt brat generation is just really emerging now. So with it all the problems that other more sophisticated and wealthy countries have already faced. China is suffering the same phenomenon, but the Chinese attitude towards wealth differs from New Zealand in discipline and value. New Zealand spoilt brats are aimless, directionless and no one at home will say "no" to. In the wealth management business we have a term "ni**er rich" (the modern day equivalent of "nouveau riche" or refined definition of the UK "chav") to describe those of any race of person who has suddenly got access to a large amount of money (usually in the form of over-extending debt) and spend it on stupid things. New Zealand has its own breed emerging of the "ni**er rich".

There is probably enough demand now for private training institutes to swoop on Intermediate school age students in wealthy schools and train these youngsters before they are ruined at High School age, about the often life-threatening dangers that they will be faced with as an under-educated and under-sophisticated spoilt brat. A few celebrity tutor parents I can think of now who have faced the wrath of losing control of their own brat.

Parents of these children (almost always those from white lower-middle class and wealth backgrounds now moving to the high incomed middle classes) have over-watered them with money. Money that necessarily other children in their peer group don't have. If something is broken, they get Dad to buy another one. They are in trouble, Dad doesn't send in himself, he calls a QC. Instead of the 80's and 90's where the worst thing the child did was blown it on space invaders or fish and chips, now they are getting into little gangster groups, and with it hard liquor, drugs and knives. They drive pimped vehicles that most New Zealand adults cannot afford. Guns will be the next to follow in this culture, they are already there - I guess these kids will start shooting at each other.

New Zealanders have a terrible attitude towards talking about wealth and it trickles down to their kids unless there is a generational chain of wealth. Compare it with China where even the poorest children are educated to protect wealth from their early primary school years. Chinese parents will talk to their kids about wealth before they ever will mention sex, which could explain why there is a billion of them, but all very financially aware. To have money in New Zealand is deemed offensive, to talk about it and how you have more than other families is even worse. So rather like a 15 year old without any sex education at all, over-monied New Zealand brats are being sent out without any knowledge of the danger that being flagrantly wealthy or having high profile parents in New Zealand who are that way inclined, will bring.....attention.

And that attention means being shunned by nice people who could be good friends and attracts bludgers, gangs and other bottom feeders who are very hard to say "no" to. So what are the danger signs? Nowadays they are not at all subtle.

1. You've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a private school education for your kid. Yet all their "friends" are colour-wearing rejects from the bad part of town who they seem to know very little about - largest warning sign. These are wanna be g.a.n.g members.

2. At summer time the friends your children invite to the million dollar bach arrive and your neighbours immediately hide their valuables. The whole village can't be wrong.

3. Interest in American sub-culture. And they are a pale, skinny white kid.

4. Sudden interest in chemistry. Strange pipes, tubes or glasses in the room. These are used for d.r.u.g.s.

5. Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars on private school education, your child writes indescribable messages in a language you do not understand and it's not text messaging.

6. Shoe boxes full of cash under the bed representing more than his or her daily ATM limit. These are the proceeds of c.r.i.m.e. The bad kids can't keep this money at home or their parents will steal it.

7. Sudden popularity amongst peers. Money buys this, as does the d.r.u.g.s that money can buy.

8. Disrespect for women, small animals or the police.

9. People with silly name syndrome start inviting themselves over to your house. Some of them are no longer at school. Some seem to be dating your daughter.

10. You google search and find your child on Bebo. You do not understand anything written on the page.

Families used to wealth can spot these signs early. Particularly the friends their children accumulate. Which is why they are careful to ensure their children only mix with their own. The patriarch of the family will ensure this is controlled. It's not snobbery to vet them as much as self-preservation for their breed. One bad apple can influence their child to mix with undesirables and rot the family to the core. Grandparents will cut off money to parents if they do not control their children. Spendthrift clauses will be exercised. Whole generations will risk being sliced out of the wealth carve-up. Intergenerationally wealthy families are almost entirely self-governing.

The real danger with these new age spoilt brats is that their recently emerging wealthy parents do not know how to handle the situation that their family now finds themselves in. If the parent is blowing money left, right and centre then the child will follow suit and consider the family money as their own. They will view their mother's spending habits and consider she doesn't do anything so why should they. Most have a good point there. But all fail to realise that they are not the ones who are actually rich. Their father or grandfather or great-grandfather was. They are in their own right worth nothing truly of their own. This is detrimental to their self-worth when someone outside the bubble which they live tells them they are worthy of none of the respect that the breadwinner in their family is.

I don't think the quality or quantity of time spent with their children is in the slightest bit important to how the child turns out from what I have seen. Some of the worst examples of children turn out from parents who constantly supervise their children and spend holidays and live in each others pockets. Some of the better examples barely saw their father growing up and bonded more with a maid or nanny than either parent. New Zealand is just getting used to the levels of wealth that other countries have enjoyed for years. People always look for the excuse of "time" spent with a child over the source of every problem - money. Too much of it in this case. And the answer "no". Too little of it here.

These offending New Zealand parents have no wealth succession or wealth education plans for their children. They may have a family trust that isn't really a trust as there is no independent trustee paid to say "no". Most currently are teenagers from Auckland in expensive private schools. It will spread to Wellington and the provinces. If not already.

It all starts with turning off the money tap as soon as the child is a teenager (perhaps even earlier) and saying "no" to everything extravagant, stupid and subsidising of their friends and the lifestyle the friends want to have hanging out with the spoilt brat.



And until a parent does this then they are just as much to blame for the brats behaviour as the child themselves and deserve the consequences that this genetic stupidity brings mixing bad behaviour with unlimited access to unearned wealth.