Wealth Grow It Protect It Spend It & Share It

More people are creating more wealth today than at any time in history. Even with the market dip in 2001-2003 the number of people with at least a million dollars in net worth is growing at nearly a double-digit annual rate. The dollars that they accumulate are growing even faster. The top 10 U.S. wealth management firms already employ 44,000 advisors to oversee $2.8 trillion in assets. The U.S. is also bracing for the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history. Reasonable estimates show an average of $1 trillion per year will be transferred from one generation of Americans to the next. With the ever-widening scrutiny that banks, brokerage houses, mutual funds, hedge funds, accounting firms, insurance companies and other wealth management firms are facing, consumers are more confused than ever about who to trust for good advice on managing their wealth. The fact is that managing and growing wealth is about much more than just investing! It is like a jigsaw puzzle. Other pieces include family relationships, values and culture, the motives of your advisors, spending, philanthropy, taxes and estate planning. Even if you have all the pieces, you still need to fit them together properly to build a complete picture. Otherwise, it's just a jumble. Lucas describes how to choose each piece of the puzzle in the context of all the others and offers eight proven, easy-to-understand principles of integrated wealth management as guideposts along the way.