Where Are They Now? Robber-Baron Edition
A financial check-in with the Gilded Age’s richest families, several generations later
According to Time magazine, 90 percent of all rich families, from the Astors to the Ziffs, lose their fortune by the third generation. This is remarkable, considering how comparatively easy it is to retain wealth once you have it. A recent analysis suggested that Donald Trump, for example, could be similarly wealthy if he had done nothing but put his eight-figure inheritance into the stock market: “If he’d invested the $200 million that Forbes magazine determined he was worth in 1982 into that index fund, it would have grown to more than $8 billion today.”
Conversely, climbing several rungs. Making money is hard; holding onto money when you’re born with it shouldn’t be.