Wealth Levels: Life at $1M, $10M, $100M, and $1B
A working map of the four wealth tiers — $1M, $10M, $100M, $1B. What each one is, what it buys, and what does not change as the number gets larger.
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Insurance for the Wealthy: Umbrella, Art, Kidnap, and Estate
The art and the house are the easy part. Liability has no ceiling and the catastrophe map is closing. How insurance actually works above $5 million in net worth.
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Liquidity: How Much Cash the Wealthy Actually Keep
Two 2026 studies put high-net-worth cash holdings at 24% and 5%. Both are right. What that gap reveals about how wealthy households actually manage liquidity.
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Real Estate as an Investment: How the Wealthy Actually Use Property
Depreciation, leverage, 1031 exchanges, cap rates, syndications and REITs — how wealthy households actually use property as an asset class, and why real estate is a smaller share of their balance sheet than almost anyone assumes.
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Equity Compensation: RSUs, ISOs, and the Tech Wealth Engine
RSUs, ISOs, NSOs, ESPPs, the AMT trap, 83(b), and tender offers — how tech equity compensation actually turns a salary into seven figures, and where it goes wrong.
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Multiple Streams of Income: The Myth, the Math, and What Wealthy Households Actually Do
“The average millionaire has seven streams of income, according to the IRS.” The IRS never said it. Here’s what the actual tax data shows about how wealthy households really earn.
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Taxing the Billionaires: Wealth-Tax Debates From California to Warren
A billionaire wealth tax was proposed in six places between 2024 and 2026 and lost in all of them. Norway ran the real experiment. Here’s what actually happened to the money — and why the arithmetic is harder than either side admits.
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The Giving Pledge: Public Promises, Private Delivery
Giving Pledge signers promised half their fortunes to charity. Fifteen years on, the founding class has given $206 billion — and gotten 283% richer. Here’s the arithmetic.
