The trip from affluence to mendicancy is a short ride. Asset protection seeks to forestall backsliding into rags after one has reached the pinnacle of financial success. “My father went from rags to riches but what impressed me was how close he came to staying in rags.”
This was the revelation of Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Father, Son & Company: My Life At IBM & Beyond (1990). In a span of 60 years, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. and his son together built IBM to become one of the world’s largest and most profitable companies. The father was the child of an immigrant ScotsIrishman who made meager living cutting wood and farming in New York. He also sold pianos, organs, and sewing machines to farm families.
Sam Walton, once the richest man in America, began in Oklahoma during the Depression, where as a small boy he saw first hand the razor-thin line between sheer survival and disaster. He took an $85 a month job with J.C. Penney, and in 1945 he bought a five-and- drive store in Arkansas that became the first Wal-Mart (Trimble, Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America’s Richest Man, 1990). Before he became a billionaire, John Gokongwei, Jr. went through a tough life when his father died. At age 13, he had to take care of his mother and five siblings. “Creditors had just seized our home and business” he said. But somehow he managed to survive (Speech delivered at the Ateneo de Manila University, 2002). These are triumphant Horatio Alger stories.
But there are many more millionaires who went from riches to rags, all because they were not familiar with asset protection techniques. Take the case of Dashiell Hammett who made a fortune writing books and Hollywood screenplays, but who also knew how to squander his earnings. He died penniless when his royalties were frozen during the era of McCarthyism. Oscar Wilde suffered the same fate when incarceration destroyed his name and his sayings. He was heard to have uttered in his deathbed: “I’ll die a lived — beyond my means.”
Johann Gutenberg created the world’s first printed and most famous book (the Gutenberg Bible) but he did not get to publish it. He had gone into debt to produce the Bible and was sued for the money. After he lost the suit, he was compelled to hand over to other people his tools and presses (Asimov, Book of Facts, 1992). Ralph Waldo Emerson once advised buyers of property to learn a modicum of arithmetic. Asset protection, using a modern interpretation, may be incorporated in Emerson’s reference to the word “arithmetic.” If you are poor in numbers (just like a lot of lawyers), stop worrying and find solace in the words of Francis Bacon who wrote that “if we fasten our attention on what we have rather than on what we lack, very little wealth is sufficient.” Trust Bacon on handling finances at your own peril. He died penniless when he was found guilty on 23 counts of corruption in 1621 and fined 40,000 pounds a blow from which he never recovered (Malone, Stranger Than Fiction: A Book of Literary Lists, 1999). Asset protection is not just the exclusive domain of the wealthy. Every property owner, businessman, head of families, wage earner and many more individuals should learn the fundamentals of asset protection to survive an unforgiving society in a feeding frenzy. Once you have decided to become a smarter moving target, you may sleep soundly at night. Failure to plan for the future may lead to financial ruin. Those who have remained rich for generations have employed asset protection methods to avoid slipping back to rags.
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