Chapter 4 - Dad’s Company Money Became “Family Money” in Jenna’s Memory
The Mercer family company was called Mercer Packaging Solutions.
Dad started it when I was four.
Corrugated shipping supplies.
Custom packaging.
Warehouse distribution.
Very unglamorous.
Very profitable.
I worked there from twenty-two to thirty-two.
Started in:
sales.
Then operations.
Eventually owned:
twelve percent
through stock Dad sold me gradually using bonuses and seller financing.
When I left to launch my software company, keeping equity while also serving a competing logistics market created problems.
So Dad bought my shares.
Independent valuation.
Attorneys.
Installment agreement.
Total value:
about $1.4 million before taxes.
Not:
gift.
Not inheritance.
A sale of an asset I had paid for and helped increase in value.
Still, it was family-generated wealth.
I understood why Jenna saw it that way.
After taxes and startup funding, I kept roughly:
$700,000.
Years later, when my software company did well, I used part of that capital plus earnings to put:
$1.25 million
down on the Malibu property.
That was the seed of Jenna’s argument.
Dad’s company paid for the cottage.
Technically?
Partly connected.
But by that logic, every dollar anyone ever earns from a family company remains:
collectively owned forever.
Jenna had also benefited.
Dad paid:
most of her college tuition.
Helped finance her first business.
Covered two tax emergencies.
Gave both of us equal annual gifts during several good years.
The difference was:
my family-origin money had multiplied.
Hers had been:
spent.
May you like
Money people can still see often feels more “family” than money that has already done its job.
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