Wealth Matters | Founder Michael Sonnenfeldt in The New York Times

The New York Times featured insights from TIGER 21 Founder and Chairman Michael Sonnenfeldt on how Members and other people with wealth are driven by how they can make a change in the world with their assets in this article about how the perception of wealth has evolved over the years by columnist Paul Sullivan. 

The following is an excerpt from the article:

I began writing the Wealth Matters column in December 2008. The column was conceived earlier that year, when the economy still appeared to be running high. But by the time the first one ran, the economy was deep in crisis, and Americans were worried about their investments, their savings and, in many cases, their homes.

It took years for many Americans to recover. As for the wealthy, they have flourished in those 13 years.

I’m writing my last column — No. 608 — as the Covid pandemic has highlighted how stark income inequality has become. We have multiple billionaires blasting into space on their own rockets, high above the economic, financial and health problems of the rest of the world.

So for this Wealth Matters column, I called a group of people who work with or study the wealthy, people I’ve leaned on repeatedly over the years for insights, and asked them this open-ended question: How has the perception of wealth changed from 2008 to today?

Michael Sonnenfeldt, founder and chairman of Tiger 21, an investment club for people who have at least $10 million in assets, said he had seen a marked shift in the group’s membership. Besides skewing younger, many members perceive their wealth as a way to effect change, not a chance to sit back and relax.

“People aren’t retiring no matter how wealthy they are,” he said. Yet that isn’t driven by a feeling that they’re going to lose it but more by what they can do with it.

“I can only speak for myself,” said Mr. Sonnenfeldt, who has built and sold three companies, “but my assets allow me to be more consequential in making climate-related investments.”

Putting money into climate-change investments is something that any investor can do. And that was my original goal for this column — to give readers a look at what the wealthy are doing and apply it in their own financial decisions.

Read the full New York Times article HERE.