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A productive meeting with your accountant or lawyer can leave you feeling that an important issue has been resolved. The questions were thoughtful, the discussion was useful, and the advice made sense. Then, you return to your desk. Who needs…
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Building Wealth Is One Skill. Investing It Is Another.
The best investors I’ve known personally have generally been long-term buy-and-hold investors. They hold investments they understand, accept how markets will be uncomfortable occasionally, and give their capital time to compound. They also have something that can be surprisingly difficult…
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Successful Payments Should Begin Before the Money Moves
A family can have substantial wealth and still struggle to make payments. Cash is often spread across banks, investment accounts, holding companies, trusts, and family members. Upcoming obligations may be scattered across emails, spreadsheets, and conversations. The person who knows…
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Climate-Aligned Investing Roadblocks, and Potential Fixes
A family can care deeply about climate change, fund environmental charities, and still struggle to bring those same priorities into its investment portfolio. In our family office work, we see the gap between interest and action. Families may genuinely want…
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Greater Wealth Raises the Stakes. Does It Require More Complexity?
When someone sells their business, they suddenly become a very attractive prospect for the wealth management industry. The pitches are for broad diversification, many different (esoteric) asset classes, and other strategies. But once someone has a big portfolio, do they…
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Why Our Private Fund Returns Differ from a Fund Manager’s Statements
You receive a statement from a private equity fund, then review your consolidated family office report. Both show a rate of return for the same investment, but the numbers differ. Does that mean someone has made a mistake? Not necessarily.…
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AI Can Generate a Family Office Report, Is It Good Enough?
I recently came across an interesting example of an AI-generated family office report. And, I think it’s pretty cool to see how AI can generate consolidated financial reports in the same class as the incumbent software providers (at a fraction…
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Stewarding $50 Million Without Making Wealth Management a Part-Time Job
Low-cost investing does not have to mean doing everything yourself. We were recently introduced to a relatively young investor who had inherited a substantial family portfolio. They face a responsibility that will last for decades: stewarding approximately $50 million of…
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Getting Organized: The Foundations of a Family Office
A family office is sometimes thought of primarily as a vehicle for managing investments. In practice, its most valuable role is often much broader: helping a family organize its financial life, make thoughtful decisions and administer its affairs reliably over…
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Before You Set Up a Trust, Ask What the Complexity Is For
Trusts can solve real problems. But they can also preserve yesterday’s assumptions, restrict tomorrow’s beneficiaries and create an administrative burden that lasts for decades. Trusts can help protect a vulnerable beneficiary, manage an inheritance, address the needs of a blended…