What I’ve Been Up To

This Week in Your Wallet: Taking Care of the Family Business

That’s what you’ll find when you go to the new and improved jeanchatzky.com, which is now up and running.  Every day, you’ll find a new blog post (feel free to facebook, tweet and otherwise share them with your friends), original content created by me and my team. In addition to posting my TODAY segments and articles that appear throughout the web, you can now look forward to the following: Mailbag Monday (if you have questions, this is where I’ll answer them), Try-It-Out Tuesday (where we profile small businesses, non-profits and tech start-ups), Welcome Wednesday (an informational guest post from one of my favorite bloggers), Thought-Provoking Thursday (a look why we do the things we do when it comes to money), and Frugal Friday (the best deals and sales we could find).

For today’s Try-It-Out Tuesday post, we looked at new ways people are generating some extra cash — through odd jobs secured using apps on their smart phone. You (or your kids) may want to  “try it out!”

My focus on business is one of the reasons why my favorite story of the past week is this TODAY show profile of a family cymbal business that’s been around — and thriving! — for 390 years. For those of you doing the math, yes, that predates the American Revolution. Yet even as technology has progressed and the economy has fluctuated, the Zildjian Company has stayed relevant and solvent by adhering to a few basic (yet smart) strategies: getting professional musicians (like Ringo Starr!) to help innovate their cymbals, refusing to outsource jobs overseas, and remaining faithful to the promise they make their employees: “You take care of us, and we take care of you.” To that end, anytime part of the cymbal-making process is automated, Zildjian will train that employee to do a different job within the company, for equivalent pay.

“I’ve been here 26 years in June,” Mark Lovell told TODAY correspondent Bob Dotson, “and I’ve never seen a layoff, ever.”

Now how many businesses can say that? Better yet, how many family businesses can say that?

And now, here are the other headlines for the week:

All in the Family

While we’re on the subject of family businesses, I wanted to share two great articles on how to manage the sometimes-tricky situation of working for a relative. The first, hailing from an AARP blog, contains tips for how to make it work when you’re working for an adult child. This can be a rewarding move for both your career (if the position is right) and your relationship with your child, but only if you’re careful. Among the questions you should ask yourself: are you taking the job for the right reasons? Can you put aside your role of parental authority in order to be the subordinate? Can you keep work out of dinner table conversations during holidays?

Another tricky terrain for family businesses arises when one generation retires from the business but no one from the younger generations is interested in taking over. Sometimes, the solution is to simply sell the business, but that’s not always an easy decision. Recently, New York Times columnist Paul Sullivan profiled one family’s creative work-around to this issue: they created a holding company. Holding companies can help reduce risk for the owners, and in this family’s case allowed the retiring brothers to keep the stock in the family while hiring outside managers to run the day-to-day operations of the business.

Going to Downton For Financial Lessons

As those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter may know by now, I love Downton Abbey. And while I’m none too pleased with how the most recent season ended for my favorite fictional family, I was rather pleased to see this Wall Street Journal article that details every money lesson you can glean while watching the PBS hit. (The article does contain spoilers for season three, so only proceed if you know or are ready to know the details of what happened.) The show may take place in the 1920’s, but tips like “diversify your investments” and “sell the house” are ones that never age.

Have a great week!

Jean