MUUS Chairman in Kiplinger: Is a Poorly Performing Family Office Eroding Your Family Fortune?

Over decades of building businesses, founding TIGER 21, and managing his own family office, MUUS Chairman Michael Sonnenfeldt has observed a fundamental distinction between creating wealth and stewarding it. Entrepreneurs often build fortunes through concentrated conviction, deep expertise, and substantial risk; preserving that wealth across generations requires a different discipline. Too often, families focus on asset values, allocations, managers, and access without rigorously measuring the returns they generate relative to the risk, liquidity, complexity, and fees they assume. At MUUS, we believe effective wealth stewardship begins by measuring what matters: understanding performance across multiple time horizons and liquidity tiers, recognizing where genuine investment edge exists, and aligning investment strategy with a family’s long-term objectives and governance. Better measurement makes strengths and weaknesses visible, helps distinguish productive complexity from costly activity, and ultimately enables families to make better decisions about preserving and compounding wealth across generations.

This piece represents Michael’s latest thinking on the evolution of the family office and asset allocation: moving beyond the traditional question of what do you own? to the more important questions of what are you actually earning, for what risk, at what cost, and with what liquidity? It reflects a framework shaped by nearly three decades of conversations with some of the world’s most successful wealth creators through TIGER 21, as well as Michael’s own experience navigating the transition from entrepreneur to investor and steward of family capital.

Original Kiplinger piece here: https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/wealth-management/is-your-family-office-losing-money