How the Wealthy Design their Lives

NEWSLETTER

Family office insights this week:

• What the wealthy get right and wrong in designing life

• The latest family office asset allocation

• Share of markets family offices control

• Books: The 5 types of wealth: going beyond the financial

• Watch: 5 steps to designing the life you want

How the Wealthy Design their Lives (or fail to)

As modern philosopher Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

The pressure of a career, a family business, or a family office can mean wealthy people don’t stop to look around.

All manner of external forces distract us all from living the lives we want or push us to prioritize the wrong things. The digital age has amplified external pressures, distracting us from what is really valuable.

But wealth gives you a unique opportunity to take a different approach: wealth allows you to design your life.

i.e. to build a truly fulfilled and intentional life. To spend your time doing what makes you happy.

Some do it extremely well. Others… not so much.

Optionality

Wealth gives people options. It grants the freedom to prioritize what truly matters.

Financial autonomy allows people to focus on their passions, their family, and their health. It allows people to focus on meaningful work.

Many ultra-wealthy people are undoubtedly workaholics, but they are still designing their lives around what they love. Focusing on the aspects of work they are passionate about, working in an environment they cherish, working with the people they want to spend their lives with. 

As Warren Buffett says, "The ultimate luxury is doing something every day that you love doing with people that you love doing it with."

The 5 Types of Wealth

In his book the Five Types of Wealth, Sahil Bloom breaks wealth down into five buckets:

1. Financial Wealth – Money, assets, and resources.

2. Social Wealth – Status, relationships, and influence.

3. Time Wealth – Freedom over your calendar.

4. Physical Wealth – Health and energy.

5. Mental Wealth – Peace of mind, clarity, and happiness.

A well-designed life considers all five. Many chase financial wealth and neglect the others, especially time, health, and peace. The most fulfilled people use money to build holistic wealth, not just an ever-expanding portfolio. 

Living with Intention and Purpose 🎯

The key to designing your life is intentionality.

This means identifying the key levers to your happiness.

Designing your life is about optimizing the key variables that shape your daily experience:

Where you work – the villa, your private office, the boat… location independence is a major perk of true financial freedom.

The hours you work – With wealth, you can dictate your schedule, working when you're most productive or cutting back entirely.

Who you work with – Choosing who you work with is a major boon in life. This can mean working with family members and working with those with shared values.

What you work on – Wealth allows you to focus on projects that align with your passions and long-term goals. You can move from optimizing returns to optimizing your life.

Lifestyle design – From diet and fitness routines to travel and leisure, a well-designed life can mean a highly curated healthy life.

Family and relationships – Prioritizing quality time with loved ones rather than being consumed by work or financial stress.

Personal development – When you design your life, you can focus on personal growth, learning new skills, lifelong learning, mentorship, that enrich your life.

Why it’s easier than ever to design your life

It has never been easier for those with wealth to take control of their lives. Several factors have made life design more accessible than ever:

• Remote Work & Digital Infrastructure – COVID taught us that people can work and run companies from anywhere in the world.

• Global Mobility & Tax Planning – with residency programs, digital nomad visas, and offshore structures, it’s easier than ever for the wealthy to optimize their living and financial situations.

• Personalized Services & Automation – wealth management, concierge services, and ultra-efficient workflows allow people to free up time.

• Artificial Intelligence - AI agents provide on-demand support, acting as your personal psychologist, motivational coach, wellness advisor and more.

How to design your life

Achieving true wealth requires a balance across various facets of life. This isn’t new science - it’s about setting intention and taking action:

1. Physical and Mental Health 
   Regular exercise, mindfulness practices, adequate rest. Investing in wellness—personal fitness, mental resilience, or longevity-focused habits—enhances overall well-being and helps you build a fulfilling life beyond material success.

2. Social Relationships 
   Genuine connections with family and friends enrich life. For the wealthy, genuine friendships can be difficult. So prioritizing deep, meaningful relationships over transactional ones results in love, joy, and fulfillment.

3. Financial Stability & Purposeful Wealth 
   The wealthy are often in a position to pursue interests without undue stress. These may focus on philanthropy, mentorship, or pet passion projects.

4. Job Satisfaction & Investing in Intrinsically Valued Pursuits ️
   Meaningful work, in fields such as art, education, or sustainability, provide a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

5. Community Engagement & A Mindset of ‘Enough’ ️
   Community activities support a sense of belonging and allows people to contribute positively to society.

True contentment doesn’t stem from accumulation.

Recognizing you have enough prevents the endless pursuit of more, allowing people to appreciate their achievements and focus on non-material joys.

At its core, true wealth is reflected in rich relationships and meaningful experiences. Prioritizing family, friendships, and community leads to a more satisfying life, regardless of financial status.

A designed life is one where wealth serves as a tool for fulfillment, not just accumulation. The most successful people integrate financial success with personal growth, legacy-building, and deep human connections, ensuring that their prosperity translates into a truly enriched life.

When the wealthy fail to design their lives

Just because wealth gives you options doesn’t mean that all wealthy people design their lives.

Many ultra-high-net-worth people utterly fail to design their lives. They find themselves trapped in routines, unable to break free from the obligations and responsibilities they feel have become non-negotiable.

Sometimes this relates to the pursuit of money, convinced that just a little more will buy them the freedom they already possess. They stay in businesses they loathe, attend meetings they dread, and maintain relationships that drain them, all in service of a lifestyle they’re not even enjoying.

They let external expectations, legacy pressures, or sheer inertia dictate their daily existence.

Without clear intention, they become prisoners of their own success, accumulating assets but squandering time, the one resource they can never buy back.

True wealth isn’t just about money, it’s about freedom, fulfillment, and alignment with personal values. While financial success grants choices, the real challenge lies in using those choices wisely.

The most successful individuals recognize that wealth is a tool, not the goal. It enables security, deeper relationships, meaningful work, and personal growth, but only if used with intentionality.

Without clear purpose and boundaries, financial freedom can easily spiral into isolation, dissatisfaction, or the endless chase for more.

But wealth isn’t a prerequisite for a well-designed life. Some of the happiest people live simply, crafting lives built around passion, purpose, and community.

In a world that constantly pushes external measures of success, the truly wealthy, regardless of their bank balance, are those who define success and live their lives on their own terms.

𝕏 highlights

Latest family office asset allocation from the UBS Family Office Report 2025. Much more on this in next week’s newsletter.

Telling your family’s story.

The share of markets that family offices control:

 💼 where to work

Three notable family office job opportunities currently open…

Senior Analyst, Family Office Advisory - Iconiq (New York / MFO)

Family Office Director - Private Family Office (North Bethesda, MD / SFO)

Family Office Counsel - Keel Point (Tysons Corner, VA / MFO)

📚 what to read

Sahil Bloom’s The 5 Types of Wealth offers a thoughtful framework for redefining success beyond financial metrics. By exploring Time, Social, Mental, Physical, and Financial wealth, Bloom encourages readers to pursue a more balanced and fulfilling life. It’s smart, relatable, a little “self-helpy” but a great reminder and guide to living your best life.

📺 what to watch

And 5 steps to designing the life you want.

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are Stanford professors and Silicon Valley veterans who co-founded the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. Their work focuses on applying design thinking to help students plan their careers and design their lives.

📻 what to listen to

Here’s Bill Burnett again being interviewed in the Work for Humans podcast about designing your life.

And finally…

This week I was at my favorite family office event, SFO week in London hosted by SFO Alliance. Incredible people, first-rate content. Personal highlights included Sir Niall Ferguson talking on geopolitical risks and opportunities and Harry Stebbings being brutally honest about family offices and venture.

If you missed Monday’s Office Buzz, it was a good one. It included. 

• Why the wealthy can't find enough people to manage their money

• The silent estate planning time bombs

• The personal risk of working in a family office

The Buzz will be back as usual on Monday, our monthly jobs newsletter on Wednesday and Friday it’s a deep dive on the latest UBS Family Office report.

Until next week, see you on 𝕏 or LinkedIn!

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