Most investment philosophies are written for the next ten years. Ours is written for the next hundred. Below are the seven tenets we have refined since 1992 — through three recessions, two debt crises, one pandemic, and the daily quiet work of stewarding multi-generational wealth.
Our tenets are testable propositions, not slogans. Each has been measured against thirty-four years of actual outcomes across forty-one client families.
The investment plan follows the family — not the other way around. We refuse to stand in front of a model portfolio and ask the family to fit. Every allocation begins with a written liability schedule: what does this household need to do, when, and on whose behalf?
The portfolio is constructed backward from the answer.
The first deliverable for every new family is a 4-page liability schedule, not a portfolio recommendation. The portfolio is built only after the schedule is signed.
Liquidity is not a residual; it is the asset class that makes every other position survivable. We aim to hold 18–36 months of household burn in genuinely liquid instruments at all times — not 30-day Treasuries dressed up as cash.
This costs return. It buys patience. Patience is the only edge a long-horizon investor reliably has.
For households at our threshold, the after-tax return is the only return that matters. A 9% pre-tax annualized return becomes a 5.4% after-tax return for a New York-resident principal in the 40% bracket. That 360-basis-point gap is where we earn our keep.
We aim to harvest losses quarterly, time gain realizations against rolling capital-loss carryforwards, and never, under any circumstance, churn a position to chase a thesis.
Effective tax rate on aggregate client base in 2025 was 14.2% — vs. an unmanaged blended-bracket benchmark of 28.4%.
The wealth our families brought to us was almost always built through concentrated exposure — to a business, a property, a family enterprise. We do not pretend that broad diversification is morally superior to concentration. We do believe that concentration without a written exit plan is a form of denial.
We coordinate the orderly diversification of legacy concentrated positions over multi-year horizons, using exchange funds, charitable vehicles, and structured products where appropriate.
We allocate to private equity, venture capital, and private credit selectively — never as a percentage box to fill. The illiquidity premium is real but capped. We will not commit to a fund where the GP cannot articulate, in writing, why the asset they intend to buy is mispriced and how the mispricing closes.
Roughly 22% of aggregate client AUS sits in private positions. That ratio is a ceiling, not a target.
The largest correlated risk to a multi-generational portfolio is not market drawdown. It is the disintegration of the family that owns it. A family without a written governance framework will, with high probability, eventually litigate against itself.
We treat governance work — constitutions, councils, conflict facilitation — as part of the investment mandate. Not adjacent to it.
Of 18 generational transitions completed since 2008, 17 occurred within written governance frameworks drafted with us. Zero litigation among siblings or successor trustees.
Every five years the consensus map of "where to invest" is redrawn. The compass — the direction the family is genuinely trying to move toward — almost never changes. We refuse to revise allocation in response to short-term consensus. We do, every five years, revise allocation in response to where the family has decided to go.
That is the only kind of revision we believe in.
Across all 41 client households, weighted by AUS. Individual family allocations vary considerably — some are 40% private; some are zero. This is the average, not a recommendation.
The aggregate sits roughly 70/30 across liquid and illiquid positions. The 22% in fixed income is heavily weighted to municipal credit — most of our households are concentrated in higher tax states and the muni-bond yield-after-tax outperforms taxable Treasuries on a like-for-like basis.
The 14% in private equity reflects funds across vintage years 2014–2024. We treat that bucket as a 10-year rolling window. We do not chase vintage concentration in any one year.
The 6% venture allocation is unusually low for a family-office aggregate. We believe the asset class has been over-allocated in the broader UHNW universe for the last six years. We may be wrong.
Equally important. Many of these are common at peer firms. The list is regularly debated internally and last revised in 2024.
Custody is a different business than ours. Yours sit at Northern Trust, BNY, JP Morgan, or another peer institution at all times. We never touch the assets directly.
Fee-only. Always. The only money we receive flows directly from the family to us. No referral fees, no placement agents, no carry on third-party funds.
We coordinate it. The product itself is sourced through specialty brokers we vet, with the carrier paying that broker — not us. We have no commission interest in the policy.
The roster is closed at 45 households. We currently sit at 41. We onboard, on average, 1.5 new families per year. Many qualified inquiries are politely declined.
We do not move 20% of the book to gold when CNBC tells us to. We do, every five years, conduct a full strategic review with the family principals.
We work alongside your existing tax counsel, estate attorneys, and outside CPAs. We never recommend you consolidate them onto us. Healthy families have multiple advisors.
Recommended to every new principal. We will mail you a hardcover edition of any of the six on request.
Required reading on portfolio construction across multi-decade horizons.
The original argument for fundamental, balance-sheet-first investing.
An honest study of how a multi-generational fortune actually compounds.
The book that shaped our governance practice. We've placed it in 41 family libraries.
The argument for low-cost public-market exposure as the bedrock of every portfolio.
A complexity-economics view of how value is actually created over generations.