You've probably heard the term. Family office. It comes up in profiles of the very wealthy, in passing references to "how the really rich manage their money," in conversations that gesture toward a level of financial sophistication that seems to exist just out of view.
But no one actually explains what it is.
A family office is, at its core, a private company that manages one family's entire financial life. Not just investments—everything. Tax strategy, estate planning, philanthropy, insurance, bill pay, property management, household logistics. The full operation.
It's what wealth management looks like when nothing is fragmented. It's the architecture we talked about in Why High Earners Rarely Become Wealthy built out to its fullest expression.
Why it matters even if you'll never have one
The threshold for a single-family office where a family hires a dedicated team exclusively for themselves—is typically $100 million or more in investable assets. The cost of running one ranges from $1-3 million annually. For most of us, that's not the conversation.
But understanding the model is useful anyway. Because a family office represents the complete picture of what financial coordination can look like. And most high-earning women are getting something far less coherent.
