Philippe Depoorter continues to work with families as they think about their wealth and how it is passed on. He is also involved with the Epi Foundation, which supports young people in difficulty.  Photo: Maëlle Hamma/Maison Moderne

Philippe Depoorter continues to work with families as they think about their wealth and how it is passed on. He is also involved with the Epi Foundation, which supports young people in difficulty.  Photo: Maëlle Hamma/Maison Moderne

After “Les Entreprises familiales face à leurs limites” in 2022 and “Ce que j’ai appris de vous” in 2023, Philippe Depoorter, founder of Banque de Luxembourg’s family practice, has now published “L’Argent, poison ou trésor?,” co-written with French philosopher and psychotherapist Nicole Prieur and philanthropy specialist Étienne Eichenberger.

In his new book, published in Luxembourg by Ernster Editions, Philippe Depoorter once again tackles the subject of money. A major player in philanthropy in Luxembourg, which he helped to develop, he also founded the family practice business within Banque de Luxembourg. Although Depoorter has now left the bank, he remains committed and continues to work independently. He is also involved with the Family Business Network and the Epi Foundation, which defends the interests of young people, helps them to integrate into society and acts to prevent their social exclusion.

Maëlle Hamma: This book is not just another guide or manual on how to manage money well. How did you come up with it?

Philippe Depoorter: The origins of the book go back five years, to the time when I was beginning to think about retiring from my work at the bank, working with families. But I couldn’t leave without understanding certain things. In my career, I’ve worked a lot on the issues of inheritance and money. In the course of these experiences, certain questions or facts recurred. I wanted to explore them further. In particular, the tensions associated with holding money, and in particular the theme of dispossession.

With this book, I wanted to go further, by also tackling the issues raised by money in society. Money is a powerful social determinant--it may be trivial to say so, but I think it’s worth remembering. The growing gap between people, the compartmentalisation and problems of social justice are one of the effects. Money is an inescapable subject when it comes to today's social issues. It can quickly become an instrument of power. My aim with this book was not to give lessons or solutions, but to encourage people to ask themselves questions.

It was co-written with a philosopher and psychotherapist and a specialist in philanthropy. How did each contribute their expertise?

I’d already worked with Nicole Prieur, who has dealt extensively with money and family issues, and who has a great deal of perspective on the subject, as well as with Étienne Eichenberger, with whom I’ve worked for 20 years on philanthropy issues. It was our three experiences of discussion and exchange that gave birth to this book. The challenge was to avoid stigmatising the issue, to avoid saying that these are the problems of the rich.

How did you choose to tackle this subject without falling into caricature?

First of all, my bias has always been to base myself on my experience, on what my customers have told me, because I’m not a doctor of money! I’m a hands-on person, and that’s where my observations come from. I had the intuition that taking a problem from one extreme to the other would enable me to draw lessons that could be applied to everyone. I began by interviewing families with extreme wealth [editor’s note: several hundred million euros].

I also took part in a workshop at the International Clinical Sociology Network in Paris, with people who had more ‘normal’ incomes. In the end, the issues and questions were often the same. Today, there’s a tendency to put people in boxes because it’s reassuring. We live in a world of ready-made thinking, so the aim of the book is not to give lessons, but to encourage people to take a step back and look at things from a different angle. It’s illustrated and contains a lot of quotes from the interviews, and I think that’s also the originality of this book.

In the book, it is mentioned that Nicole Prieur, as a psychologist, finds that there is much less inhibition when it comes to talking about sexuality than about money, which causes more blockages. Is money really that intimate?

I’ve often found it difficult to talk about money. It’s a ‘hot’ subject. It’s a source of intuitions, fears, questions... It’s a total object and a totem subject, paradoxical in the sense that it gives rise to tensions between feelings that are opposed without being contradictory. Between luck and guilt for someone who has inherited, for example. Others are afraid to talk about it because they don’t want to be reduced to their wealth. It’s important to make peace with who you are as a person. And this is where the question of use is important, because in itself, money is neither good nor bad; it is neither just treasure nor just poison. It’s how we use it that can determine that.

The financial industry has put in place an arsenal of regulations: AML, KYC... But this has done nothing at all to regulate the use of money!
Philippe Depoorter

Philippe Depoorter

Money is still taboo in our society, yet in a way it’s everywhere. Why is it so difficult to talk about?

Because behind it there can be a kind of shame and fear. Money can expose you to judgement. Today, I believe that if money is problematic, it’s because it raises ethical questions. We live in a world with rules and laws that are supposed to govern everything. The financial sector has put in place an arsenal of regulations: AML, KYC, controls, the fight against money laundering, etc. But this has not regulated the use of money at all. It simply tells us that the answers to the question of how to use money wisely, if at all, lie within ourselves, in our relationship with ourselves.

Today, money is no longer really tangible. We pay with contactless technology, instant transfers, cryptocurrencies... Don’t you think this is helping to change our relationship with money?

In my opinion, it confirms above all that money is power, which is nothing until you transform it into something. That’s also the complexity of money. If it has no other use than to accumulate, it can be experienced as a punishment because it can become the source of even more questions and tensions.

In the book, you quote Georg Simmel’s “The Philosophy of Money,” which distinguishes between the economic and extra-economic functions of money. How do you explain this?

Anthropologically, money is a means of exchange, a means of action. As long as it remains that, it has a use value, and a use that is clear, that is understood, that poses no problem. This is its economic function. It starts to pose a problem in two cases: when there is an excess that is difficult to attribute to a use and can make you dizzy. The second problem is when this power to act becomes a power over others. We can see what’s happening in the United States at the moment...

How do family and societal contexts help to shape and influence our relationship with money?

As soon as we arrive on the planet, we are already burdened with all the hopes and expectations of our parents. Family history plays an important role, with unconscious family loyalties... Then there’s the doxa [prevailing beliefs, editor’s note] with all the sayings and expressions we’ve always heard and which inevitably shape us. Everything that happens during education, pocket money for example, also plays a fundamental role. It’s a long, slow process. Money is also a wonderful mirror of the self, a revealer.

Second, the place where you are born is not neutral from a regulatory, fiscal or religious point of view. In Europe, and in Luxembourg, there is also the regulatory framework of the law of reservation. So for the person who has to give or pass on, the framework is totally skewed. For the person who is going to receive, too, because they know they will be entitled to something. There is also the problem of taxation. It’s a context that prevents people from thinking about what they should or shouldn’t do with their money. In the UK and the US, there’s no such thing, and I think that avoids the problem of ‘debt’ that we find in many cases, which is a major issue that weighs heavily on some people and creates tensions.

This notion of ‘debt’ seems to be even stronger for those who have inherited...

Yes, and we could have explored this issue further. People who make a fortune over a lifetime are not people who decided at the outset to become rich. They had a passion and the money is the consequence of fulfilling that passion, an idea. In the case of an inheritance, some people feel that the money doesn’t really belong to them, that they haven’t earned it, or don’t know what to do with it. Their money can buy them anything, except the answer to this question, which lies in everyone’s inner music. It’s important to talk about it, to be accompanied, and if possible before the money arrives, because it’s something that can be difficult to conceive.

We see this with lottery winners: they are not left to fend for themselves. Your life plan should not be based on the money you receive. It’s about aligning your money with your values, not the other way round. But I’ve also seen assets pass from generation to generation without anyone touching them. It’s essential that money should be alive, that it should have a use, that it should be in motion, otherwise it can paralyse the person who owns it.

Wealth can quickly become a kind of sanctuary for parents, and in a way, the idea of cutting it up and dismembering it is not easy.
Philippe Depoorter

Philippe Depoorter

How do you get rid of these tensions?

By accepting them as a manifestation of our moral conscience, by telling ourselves that as long as we’re asking questions, everything’s fine.

In a family, money takes on a whole new dimension. And why is that?

The parent-child bond is even different from the sibling bond, where what Nicole Prieur calls the unconscious calculator can quickly be triggered. This means that throughout our youth, we unconsciously calculate what our brother or sister has had more of, what we feel we should have had, with questions about equality and fairness. This also shows that money conveys something other than its purely financial value, such as recognition, all of which is extra-economic.

Money can also be a complicated issue for couples. How do you tackle it?

It’s a subject that needs to be discussed. Even more so when the level of assets is unbalanced, if one person comes into the marriage with an inheritance and the other doesn’t, or if one member of the couple earns a lot more money. In a couple, the relationship with money needs to be co-constructed, and therefore verbalised. You have to express your views and be open to finding a consensus.

In your book you discuss the case of class defectors. Who are these people?

It’s someone who comes from a modest background, from a family that had what it took to live, but nothing more, and who suddenly, because they had an idea, a passion, a project, or a bit of luck, finds themselves with a lot of money. He or she can feel torn, never in their place. Their parents are proud of them, but he or she may feel guilty and go so far as to deliberately or unconsciously screw up their love life or something else to prove that they haven’t achieved everything and that they’re still fragile.

A related concept that is widely discussed in the book is that of dispossession. What does it mean?

It’s the feeling that a person can have when it’s time to give away their wealth or money. It’s sometimes very difficult because money, accounts or assets can quickly become a kind of sanctuary for parents, and in a way, the idea of cutting them up, of dismembering them, is not easy.

In Luxembourg, a country where finance plays a central role, do you think this influences people’s relationship with money?

Luxembourg is often singled out in the press as the richest country in the world. But I like to point out that, yes, while a large number of people live comfortably, we tend to hide the fact that there are others who don’t live comfortably at all. We don’t have fortunes here of the same size and age as in some countries abroad. But it is clear that the average standard of living is very high.

In Luxembourg, let’s say that there are two main types of fortunes; real estate fortunes and those linked to the financial industry and all the services around it, but these are at lower levels than what you see elsewhere. But this also contributes to building a relationship with money.

This article was originally published in .