New wealth is created every year, bringing more millionaires into the fold of the financial elite. While money is and has long been an important part of the American dream, most people equate it with having a better quality of life. This is, of course, a simplistic perspective that can result in heartache, disappointment and squandered time, effort and capital.
In truth, a monied life comes with many more stresses and opportunities. When you have more money, more people see you as a potential source of business, donations and fees. Your tax obligations are larger, your insurance bills are bigger and you are the recipient of countless proposals and warnings—both polished and incendiary—that will prey on your greatest passions and fears. This is the existence of a newly wealthy person.
There’s a reason why multigenerational wealth is revered: It has weathered difficulties and emerged stronger, having learned some valuable lessons along the way enabling it to sustain and grow. It takes time, accumulated wisdom and probably a few bad experiences to truly understand what’s important and what’s noise and how to distinguish between the two.
As people create fortunes, they need professionals and mechanisms to help them manage, structure and oversee their assets. It takes a broad scope of expertise that extends far beyond strict financial matters to help a wealthy family position itself for success, but the majority of experts view things through their own specialized lens. In effect, this leaves the family with the job of coordinating and overseeing varied (and often conflicting) agendas while trying to gauge relevance, efficacy and costs.
Most wealth managers and multifamily offices position themselves as objective and trusted providers that are capable of overseeing the total affairs of a wealthy family, but a closer look at the platform of services, sources of revenue and business models at these firms will often reveal otherwise.
The financial community still largely underserves significant money. There remains room for a different kind of professional, one who is willing to orchestrate a stable of disparate providers in a way that aligns with a family’s personal and financial priorities while helping them acquire the knowledge to live confidently and contentedly with money.
