[_the_special_]

I don't know how to put this in a formula, but my observations about my family's wealth disappearing is the following:

Great grandpa had tons of land, dies and leaves it to his children who then left it to their children when they died to split as heritage (so my parent and uncles and their cousins) which they ended up selling and splitting it between around 60 heirs. They bought things that are not really an investment like cars, new furniture, vacations...So all the wealth from my great grandpa has vanished because his great children like to spend money rather than invest.

Edit: typo.

[Misdicorl]

I wonder how wealthy your great grandparent was. Cars aren't relevant purchases for the types of wealth I'd consider under examination for this type of article.

It's tough because a multi millionaire family certainly has wealth worth discussing. It's just such a different ballgame from a family worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

[_the_special_]

I understand this is all relative. I come from an African country but even there around 250 acres of both residential and agricultural land is significant money. I'd say only about 20 acres are left where the owners are one of the ancestors.

My dream is to one day repurchase some of the lands and have financially sounder children that could take care of it ;)

[Misdicorl]

It's a good point. I can I imagine a family having the local purchasing power (homes, a night on the town, etc) of a hundred millionaire family but that wealth diminishing quite quickly when used to consume luxury goods marketed to very expensive countries.

[whimsicalism]

Regression to the intellectual mean is a law of nature