Rich for three generations, poor for five clothes.
It's just a saying that you are richer than three generations. There are many people who are richer than three generations in real life. Excellent people cultivate excellent people who are richer than three generations. The so-called wealth is created by talents, and only excellent and capable descendants can better inherit, preserve and carry forward wealth.
Whether it is "three generations rich" or "five clothes poor", the most important thing is whether the fighting spirit is lost. Things are developing and changing. The ancients said that "there is no rain in January, and the people are not poor", and Mozi once said that "officials are impermanent and expensive, and the people have no final foundation". The wind and water turn, and wealth and poverty are more impermanent.
Rich but not the source of three generations
The old saying that "wealth can't exceed three generations" comes from Mencius' sentence in Louzhang that "a gentleman's kindness will be beheaded after five generations". However, let's take a look at this classic quotation of Mencius. The original intention is: the good qualities of a gentleman are basically gone by the fifth generation of descendants.
The complete statement of the ancients that "wealth does not exceed three generations" is that "morality is passed down for more than ten generations, followed by farming and reading, followed by poetry and books, and wealth is passed down for three generations". For this reason, later generations summed it up with emotion as "rich but not three generations"! Its original meaning is "it is easy to start a business, but difficult to keep it". No matter how rich the family is, it is difficult to pass on the accumulated wealth to the third generation.