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The Rockefeller Method is a comprehensive strategy for multigenerational wealth creation, preservation, and stewardship. It draws from the actual practices of the Rockefeller family and has been modernized by financial expert Garrett Gunderson, author of What Would the Rockefellers Do?.
This method has helped families preserve wealth for over six generations, while also passing down values, opportunity, and purpose. Pfister Financial Services is among the few firms authorized to implement this system.
Explore the principles behind a strategy that’s helped families preserve and grow wealth for over six generations.
The Rockefeller Method is a holistic, values-based system for building, protecting, and perpetuating multigenerational wealth. Originating from the time-tested practices of the Rockefeller family and modernized by Garrett Gunderson, this approach helps families replace confusion and fragmentation with clarity, structure, and lasting impact.
This isn’t just about protecting money. It’s about protecting people. The Rockefeller Method helps you pass on your values, not just your valuables. It ensures that your heirs are empowered to lead, not enabled to coast. Instead of creating dependency, it creates clarity. Instead of fueling entitlement, it cultivates leadership.
It’s a framework that allows you to pass on wealth in a way that actually works. It prepares your children and grandchildren to be wise stewards, not "trust fund babies," who know how to make good decisions, invest in their futures, and carry your values forward.
Family Office
A coordinated team of professionals—from legal to tax to insurance—working together on your behalf. Rather than managing multiple advisors in silos, the Family Office ensures unified decision-making that reduces risk and improves outcomes.
Family Retreat
Structured gatherings that foster open communication, transfer knowledge, and strengthen bonds. These events reinforce family values, educate the next generation, and promote alignment between purpose and stewardship.
Family Constitution
A foundational document that outlines your family’s vision, values, governance, and expectations. It guides inheritance, giving, and decision-making so future generations thrive with clarity and purpose.
The Rockefeller Method applies a coordinated system that turns your financial legacy into an enduring family mission.
The Rockefeller Method applies a coordinated system that turns your financial legacy into an enduring family mission.
The Rockefeller Method is not a product. It’s a philosophy built on strategy, intention, and structure.
Protect your assets with advanced trust and insurance structures.
Centralize control while empowering family participation.
Replace bank dependence with a family lending model.
Create privacy, cohesion, and continuity.
Fund future generations with certainty.
It is designed to prevent the default outcome of "divide, distribute, and destroy" that plagues many family estates.
It is designed to prevent the default outcome of "divide, distribute, and destroy" that plagues many family estates.
Want to pass on more than just money.
Are concerned about taxes, probate, or family conflict.
Value stewardship, impact, and intentional planning.
Want to preserve unity, not just transfer wealth.
Seek to protect and grow assets in a coordinated, multigenerational plan.
Whether your estate is $1 million or $100 million, the Rockefeller Method brings clarity, structure, and purpose to the legacy you leave.
The Rockefeller Method uses a carefully selected suite of financial tools to bring your family’s vision to life.
The Rockefeller Method weaves together a series of powerful, time-tested financial tools that work in harmony to create long-term impact. They’re designed to serve multiple generations and support every layer of your wealth plan.
Each element is carefully chosen to reduce risk, expand opportunity, and reinforce your family’s guiding values.
One of the most foundational tools is optimally funded whole life insurance, which acts as the financial engine of the trust. Properly designed policies provide guaranteed liquidity, tax-advantaged growth, and the ability to fund generational goals without reliance on market performance.
Optimally Funded
Whole Life Insurance
A financial engine that grows tax-efficiently, adds stability, and provides liquidity to the trust.
Multigenerational
Trust Structures
Protect privacy, avoid probate, minimize taxes, and guide distributions based on family vision.
Family Liquidity
Strategy
Create access to capital for family needs and opportunities through structured trust funding and properly designed policies.
Incentive-Based Trust Planning
Design distributions that reward initiative, education, and contribution—stewardship over entitlement.
Family Governance and Education Programs
Equip future generations to make wise decisions, understand their roles, and contribute meaningfully.
The magic lies not in any one piece, but in how it all works together.
The Rockefeller Method succeeds where traditional approaches fail by embedding intention, education, and governance into every step.
Most estate plans transfer wealth but little else. They create a legal handoff, but not a philosophical one. The result? Future generations inherit money with no clarity, no leadership, and no preparation.
That’s why 90% of wealth is gone by the third generation. Because most plans don’t teach the principles that made the wealth possible in the first place.
The Rockefeller Method fixes this by creating a living, evolving system—a strategy grounded in your values, structured around education, and governed by an enduring family constitution.
It’s not just legal. It’s cultural. It’s not just strategic. It’s spiritual. It gives your heirs a reason to preserve, a purpose to grow, and a plan to lead.
"Legacy isn’t just what you leave behind. It’s what lives on in the people you prepared." — Garrett Gunderson
Curious about the Rockefeller Method? Get your free copy of What Would the Rockefellers Do? today. Inside the book you'll learn:
How the Rockefellers structured trusts to last 6+ generations.
Why most estate plans fail—and how to fix them.
The principles that build financial stewardship, not entitlement.
How to use insurance, trusts, and governance to preserve family unity.
The step-by-step process to implement the Rockefeller Method in your life.
*Disclaimer: Financial Advisors do not provide specific tax/legal advice and this information should not be considered as such. You should always consult your tax/legal advisor regarding your own specific tax/legal situation. Separate from the financial plan and our role as a financial planner, we may recommend the purchase of specific investment or insurance products or account. These product recommendations are not part of the financial plan and you are under no obligation to follow them. Life insurance products contain fees, such as mortality and expense charges (which may increase over time), and may contain restrictions, such as surrender periods.