“Focus on what you value before you focus on the value of what you own”

- Scott Fithian

Are you tired of paying high fees to professionals simply because you are wealthy? Are you worried about how trustworthy the advice you are getting is from salespeople? Do you wonder if there is a more cost effective approach to managing your wealth? Most plans begin and end with numbers. We begin by discovering what is important to you and create a plan that effectively deploys your wealth in a manner that works toward your most important goals, dreams, and desires.

At Lugen Family Office, we start with the premise that the management of net worth is only a small component of True Wealth.

Just like a successful business brings together disciplines to work cooperatively (eg. sales and marketing, accounting, finance, operations, legal, etc.), families of substantial wealth must also take a coordinated approach to their affairs. As Meyer A. Rothschild said, “It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune; and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.”

Our role at Lugen Family Office is to help you with important projects and to develop an integrated plan for family wealth. This requires that we identify areas requiring specific expertise and attention. Typically, we work with our clients’ existing accountants and lawyers, especially where a trusted relationship has existed for years. If our clients don’t have a trusted advisor in a particular discipline, we will introduce them to professionals from our network of specialists, who we believe can best meet their needs.

As the picture below shows, the role of our family office is to collaborate with your advisors in various disciplines, such as tax, legal, insurance, and investments AND help you tap into our network of other professionals and business families, where appropriate, to empower your true wealth for multiple generations.

a) Am I living my life according to my values?

b) Am I making a real difference in the world by sharing my unique abilities with others?

c) Am I using my wealth wisely?

d) When all is said and done, what will those I love say about what I’ve done?

e) Whose lives have I touched with my life?

f) When I’m gone, how will I be remembered?

g) Will my legacy be an inspiration for future generations?

h) Will my family legacy survive for at least seven generations?

Lugen Family Office believes that real collaboration is the best way to solve challenges and accomplish goals. When you become a client of Lugen Family Office, we spend quality time with you and your family, along with any other appropriate colleagues or professionals in your network, to truly understand what your true needs are and what is required to close the gap between your current and desired situation. You will work with Enzo Calamo, or one of the appropriate experts within the Lugen Family Office’s strategic network, to address your core life, true wealth, and business questions.

Lugen Family Office’s innovative Multi-Family Office approach develops plans to help you and your family find the “place of most potential” for achieving your life purpose.

Our Unique Process:

Lugen Family Office is your partner in bringing together world class experts and strategists, along with other appropriate resources, to inspire you to live your life with passion, productivity, profitability, and purpose.

Our services include:

1) Discovery Process – our unique Seven Generation Legacy Process is a process where we ask clients enough of the right questions so that our clients can achieve absolute clarity around their vision, mission, and goals. We believe that clients should focus on what they value before the value of what they own.

Sharing the meaning of your life through thoughtful reflections gives your family and future heirs a sense of the wholeness of your wealth and the financial decisions you make. At Lugen Family Office, we believe that capturing, empowering, preserving, and sharing your life story is Priceless! We help transform your meaningful conversations with us into a touching and lasting treasure.

Our proprietary process is simple, practical and fun. A precious gift to yourself, your family, and future generations.

2) Family Governance & Facilitation – while the Discovery process is a critical first step, building a family dynasty only takes root when the Family begins to share their different perspectives around wealth with each other so as to discover what true wealth really means for the whole family.

Family Governance is a multi-generational management technique designed to ensure that your family’s history, values and wealth extends well beyond the typical two generations. At Lugen Family Office, we believe in Seven Generation Thinking!

Family Governance is a “dynastic constitution” among family members who acknowledge specific shared family goals and values by which each voluntarily agrees to abide.

3) Risk Management Planning – there are many ways to create, grow, and preserve wealth. Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks to maximize the realization of your opportunities. Risks can come from uncertainty in financial markets, project failures (at any phase in design, development, production, or sustainment life-cycles), legal liabilities, credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters as well as a deliberate attack from an adversary, or events of uncertain or unpredictable root-causes.

The strategies to manage risk typically include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect or probability of the risk, or even accepting some or all of the potential or actual consequences of a particular risk.

Dynastic risk planning is a key element within seven generation thinking. At Lugen Family Office, we help you address your risk management solutions.

4) Succession and Estate Planning – transferring assets is only a small part of passing on wealth. Preserving life stories, values, and intellectual capital for future generations requires a disciplined legacy approach about what is truly important.

Death, taxes and estate planning can be difficult subjects for families to discuss.  Many individuals feel overwhelmed by the complexity of traditional estate planning methods.  They fail to plan adequately or make decisions which create an added burden for family members.

Lugen Family Office believes that planning a legacy involves more than just updating your wills and minimizing taxes. A good legacy plan goes beyond conventional estate planning.  It comes from knowing your values, living your values, and planning from your values.

We’ve developed a unique process called the Seven Generation Legacy Process that will guide you to confident decisions.  Your family is validated, educated and motivated to author a legacy plan which reflects your shared core values.

We make the legacy planning process understandable.  We listen to you and propose solutions that are based on your goals and values and those of your family – solutions that effectively preserve and multiply your wealth during periods of transition. We make legacy planning understandable, effective, enlightening and exciting!

5) Legacy Asset Allocation Planning – Although Asset Allocation and integrated investment management are important to family wealth, Lugen Family Office has  discovered that these typical investment management approaches are only a portion of real wealth management. For most high net worth families, Legacy Asset Allocation is much more important for True Wealth and inter-generational planning. This requires a new way of addressing your Asset Classes.

It has been our experience at Lugen Family Office that High Net Worth Clients need to either add, or treat differently, the following asset classes:

1) Family Businesses – whether  you want to sell or keep your family business in the future, most family businesses have a strong connection to their founder and/or the family. To treat such an important asset like a typical stock, bond, or other non-emotional asset classes is a huge risk in inter-generational wealth planning.

2) Legacy Assets – Some assets have emotional, or strong significant meanings, for a family. This prevents the family from protecting, or growing, their wealth as the financial marketplace changes. Legacy assets must be identified, protected, and treated differently since these assets have a special meaning for the family.

3) Family Bank – Whether a family bank is a formal, or informal, structure (or process),  these are resources that are dedicated for the well being of the family. Regardless of the actual investments, the reality is that the purpose of these assets far outweigh typical asset allocation planning. Therefore, special attention must be given on how to handle these investments versus other asset classes.

4) Security Fund - Andrew Carnegie differentiated between a person being economically competent and being rich. For most high net worth families, Lugen Family Office helps with the creation of a protective barrier that prevents the slide backwards from being wealthy to economically competent.

5) Transforming Excess Wealth into Impactful Wealth – Once high net worth families have achieved financial freedom, plus organized their estate plans and business succession plans, it is time for these affluent families to move from success, and prosperity, to significance and building a sustainable family dynasty.

In his book, Beyond Success, Randall Ottinger describes three junctions in our lives (pp.15-16):

1)      The success junction is the point at which decisions are made based on what success means for an individual and family. It is also the point at which individuals determine how much is enough for themselves and their heirs.

2)      The significance junction is the point at which decisions are made concerning one’s purpose in life and how this influences how one spends his or her time.

3)      The generational junction is the point at which decisions are made with regard to what individuals want to last within their families, including family values, family history, and family businesses.

Randall goes on to say (p. 16),

It is only when people are satisfied with their financial success that they can begin to shift their personal identity beyond that of a wealth builder….and what we term the wealth divide…As a result, they have shifted how they view themselves from that of a wealth builder to that of a legacy builder.

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