The meaning of life is getting very rich and leaving it to your descendants

The idea that the meaning of life is to accumulate wealth and pass it on to your descendants has a real historical basis: great fortunes rarely disappear, and modern financial instruments are designed to keep them intact. But mistaking that evidence for a true religion takes the metaphor too far.

There is a line of thought holding that religions have served as a consolation for those who have nothing: detachment from material things, the promise of rewards in the afterlife, the notion that a rich man will hardly enter the kingdom of heaven. Against that, the thesis is that the true meaning of life is to become as rich as possible and leave that legacy to your children, so they move up the social ladder and settle into a class they never fall out of.

## Fortunes that span centuries

The argument has examples that stand up to scrutiny. In England, much of the great landed wealth comes from land distributions after the Norman conquest of **1066**, when William the Conqueror handed out estates to his nobles. In Spain, there are families of enormous wealth whose assets date back to the time of **Philip II**, in the sixteenth century. And the **Rothschilds** have been managing and multiplying their capital for more than two centuries.

The belief that heirs squander their inheritance is something of a myth. There are exceptions, but the norm is that family wealth is preserved and even grows. That is what instruments such as **family offices**, structures that manage family wealth, and **trusts**, legal arrangements that shield assets and organise succession, are for. They are not recent inventions: they respond to a very old logic.

## The social ladder has concrete names

Changing your family's trajectory does not require being a historical magnate. A dermatologist with a private practice from non-doctor parents, an IT professional at a big tech firm, an elite athlete like **Messi** or **Cristóbal** —sorry, **Cristiano Ronaldo**—, or a young person earning **10,000 euros net a month** in Luxembourg are all cases of people who have broken through the ceiling of their origins. Their children already start from a different position.

Even a civil-servant couple in the provinces, without reaching those levels, predisposes their descendants to fly higher. Some observe notable differences between children of civil servants and children of non-civil servants at the provincial level. The key is not the absolute amount, but the jump in social position achieved in a single generation.

## Money as faith has fine print

Presenting money as the only true religion is a provocation with partial grounds. It is true that wealth conditions access to housing, education and connections, and that great fortunes tend to perpetuate themselves. It is also true that religions have often preached resignation in the face of poverty.

But the historical evidence shows something else: fortunes are also lost to wars, inflation, taxes and bad decisions. **Trusts** and **family offices** exist precisely because continuity is not guaranteed. And reducing the meaning of life to accumulating wealth leaves out everything that is not measured in euros. As a hypothesis about how the social ladder works, the thesis is suggestive. As a religion, it has the same problems as the others: it promises something that is not always delivered.