At this time of year, aren’t you itching to know about family office trends for 2025?
Don’t waste your time. There aren’t any.
Morgan Housel explained this through the difference between cumulative and cyclical knowledge. In some fields, such as medicine, what we know builds on the knowledge of our predecessors. That way, the body of knowledge continues to accumulate and improve.
But in the realm of money and wealth, the same themes have been regurgitated for hundreds of years:
- Anxiety around maintaining wealth
- How not to let wealth spoil us and our children
- Economic bubbles and crashes
The classical Jewish work Ethics of the Fathers (written around 2000 years ago), put it very succinctly: “The more property, the more anxiety” (2:7).
These challenges are not new, and will never get old.
You will not read about a family office trend of age-appropriate rising gen education about living a good life with significant wealth.
Why?
Because unlike medicine or mathematics, our relationship with money and wealth is as much emotional as it is rational.
What drives us to create and sustain wealth goes to feelings about power, our place in society, and our relationships.
My favourite quote on this was from the mobster Tony Montana in the movie Scarface (1983): “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”
No trends there.
Just eternal truths about the human condition.
Our attitudes to wealth are established in our formative years. They are a product of our upbringing and experiences. They remain with us for most of our lives, usually buried deep in the subconscious.
Appetite for risk, attraction to certain asset classes, approach to diversification, scarcity or abundance mindset.
They can usually be traced back to baked-in beliefs rather than anything scientific:
- “Property never goes down”
- “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”
- “Debt is bad”
- “Debt is good”
- “Giving children money will spoil them”
So what to do instead of embracing the latest “family office trend”?
Firstly, skim those “trend” articles with a heaped tablespoon of salt.
Read a “trend” article from a few years ago and laugh at it.
Then, start this during the holiday season (preferably with your family):
- Articulate your own money beliefs and challenge them.
- Understand where they came from and why.
- Think about how your children’s (and your parent’s) beliefs may differ and why.
- Decide what you want to keep, and what you want to change.
Our greatest risk lies in the things we don’t know we don’t know.
The first step to changing anything is self-awareness.
Thriving families focus on communication, learning and growth, not trends.
That is the key to thriving across generations.
Conversation Starters:
What are the ‘money myths’ in your family?
What are the stories that gave rise to them?
How has behaviour been reinforcing them or challenging them?
What stories (money-related and otherwise) help the family thrive?
Further reading:
FIVE FAMILY BUSINESS TRENDS FOR 2019
Asian Family Office – Recent Trends and its Non-financial Role
Ten Trends That Will Impact Private Wealth And Family Offices In 2021
Three Pivotal Trends Impacting Growth
Family office executives reveal the 10 biggest trends shaping the industry
