Wealthy investors say the last year was tough for them financially, and they aren’t entirely optimistic about the next 12 months, according to a new study.
Less than 40 percent of ultra-high-net-worth investors, with between $5 million and $25 million in investable assets, believe they are better off today than they were one year ago, according to Financial Behaviors and the Investor’s Mindset, the latest report from analysts at Chicago-based Spectrem Group.
Less than half of the ultra-high-net-worth investors surveyed believe that their financial situation will improve over the next 12 months. Investors with more than $100,000 in net worth list the political environment as their top concern, according to Spectrem.
Within wealthy and affluent households, finances are a family affair.
Most ultra-high-net-worth investors, 59 percent, pool all their finances with a spouse or a partner, while another 28 percent pool most of their finances while each spouse also maintains their own individual accounts. Only four percent of such households do not mingle their finances at all.
The ultra-high-net-worth respondents seem to be in accord with their spouses, claiming that they are more than 83 percent in agreement with their partner on financial matters, according to the survey.
Among millionaires with between $1 million and $5 million, 61 percent said they pool all of their household finances, while 65 percent of the mass affluent with investible assets between $100,000 to $1 million reported the same.
However, among the less affluent, the level of spousal agreement drops. Millionaires rate the agreement of spouses or partners in a household at 81 percent, while mass affluent investors rate it at 78 percent. The researchers found that the level of agreement among household members increases with age, from a relatively low 67 percent among millennials aged 35 and younger to a high of 87 percent among the World War II generation, aged 71 and older.
More than half of the millionaires believe that their children are better investors than they are, according to Spectrem.
Spectrem found that younger affluent and wealthy investors are concentrating on building their own businesses to grow their wealth. According to the research, millionaire investors are more likely to work for themselves and to focus on their personal businesses than the less affluent.
Millennial millionaires are more likely than their elders to name family connections as the source of their wealth — 24 percent of millennials credited family for their wealth, compared to six percent of all millionaires. Millennials were less likely to credit factors like hard work, education and taking risk.
When millennial millionaires were asked where the future growth in their wealth would come from, 52 percent responded that income from a current or future job — a sign that millennial millionaires are still working and will continue to work despite their wealth, according to Spectrem.
While many millionaires expressed personal concerns related to their children and grandchildren, millennial respondents were more likely to be concerned about a business entity that they own, possibly because many millennials do not have children or are just starting their own families.
Spectrem’s research is based on surveys conducted earlier this year of households segmented by age and net worth.
