The wealthy rely on a set of financial tools most people never hear about, including private banking, family offices, trusts, insurance wrappers, smart debt and advisors, to build wealth, cut taxes and keep money in the family. The video opens with the claim that the rich have a secret menu of tools and the money information people usually pay advisors thousands to hear. It walks through fifteen, with rough costs and, in some cases, a cheaper version anyone can copy.
This is an overview of what the video says, not tax, legal or financial advice. Rules and costs vary by country and change over time, so check with a qualified professional before acting.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 15 tools at a glance
- Private banking and black cards (0:41)
- Family offices and offshore accounts (1:51)
- Back-door access services (3:16)
- The stock market: direct indexing and option overlays (4:14)
- Digital security and anonymity (5:23)
- Physical security and movement (7:05)
- Prenuptial agreements (8:48)
- Trusts and estate-planning vehicles (9:50)
- Insurance wrappers as a private bank (11:31)
- Advisors (12:36)
- Assistant and concierge services (14:05)
- Smart debt and buy, borrow, die (15:23)
- Private membership clubs (17:17)
- Philanthropic foundations (18:47)
- Golden visas, citizenship and passports (20:12)
1. Private banking and black cards
The biggest banks run a separate section for the rich called private banking. Clients move their financial resources there and get lower borrowing rates, almost unlimited credit, better tax structuring and even over-the-counter pre-IPO investment opportunities. In the developing world these services start at $250,000. In the West, $1 million gets a foot in the door with most, though not the best. J.P. Morgan asks $10 million for full service, and UBS and Goldman Sachs slightly less.
To keep clients happy the banks add black cards that open events, upgrades and perks, such as flying you to a remote location to test drive a car before it launches.
2. Family offices and offshore accounts
A family office is a whole company whose only job is to grow your money, often hosted outside the country. It usually comes into play when a fortune crosses $100 million, and it employs ex-bankers and lawyers to manage the balance sheet and lifestyle. As of 2025, 15,000 family offices manage $5.9 trillion globally.
To lower the tax burden or avoid having all eggs in one basket, wealthy people set up entities around the world that often do not have to disclose their holdings. An offshore setup in the British Virgin Islands starts around $10,000 to $20,000 plus $1,000 to $2,000 in nominee fees, while Seychelles, Belize or the Bahamas can cost around $1,000. In one example, you register an important piece of intellectual property in the offshore holding and the main company licenses it, effectively moving funds offshore.
3. Back-door access services
Back-door means little things like sitting in first class before business and economy board, and big things like buying tomorrow’s IPO yesterday. It also covers moving up lists for events, experimental medical treatment or investment because of privileged access.
One example: employees with vested shares may want to sell before a company’s IPO, and services such as Forge Global, EquityZen and Zanbato let you buy those shares directly for a 2 to 10% fee, with minimums around $10,000.
4. The stock market: direct indexing and option overlays
The video says 80% of the population owns no stocks and the top 10% own almost 90% of them. When the market rises they gain, and when it falls they can write losses off against taxes. Instead of an ETF, they own the individual stocks of an index through services such as Schwab’s Personalized Indexing, Morningstar or Parametric, with a minimum around $100,000 and a 0.4% fee, which harvests losses daily.
The version for the average person uses two low-cost ETFs that track the same index, such as VOO and IVV. When the market is down you sell the loser to bank the loss and buy the twin with the proceeds to stay invested.
5. Digital security and anonymity
Everything we do is online, so net worth is effectively public record to hackers. Ransomware crews, SIM-swappers and deepfake scammers now track wealthy targets in real time, and bot-driven attacks doubled in two years. Your internet provider can also see every site you visit.
The answer given is a VPN, which anonymizes your online activity with one click. The team uses one in the office and while traveling, which also helps access streaming services abroad. The point applies to the super-rich and to everyone else.
6. Physical security and movement
You buy safety so you can make money in peace, and once you have money you buy time. Enterprise-level security cameras run around $1,500 each plus $250 a year, and a luxury panic room costs about $500 per square foot. Rich people do not add hours to the day. They delete the hours others waste.
Flying private is not about comfort, since a first class seat can be bigger. It is about the plane taking off when you arrive, and compressing travel time expands lifespan, in the video’s words. Fractional ownership has gone up 15% in 2024, and a 1/16 NetJets share is about $1.7 million plus $20,000 a month and $6,000 an hour. A cheaper route is empty legs: when a jet must be moved with empty seats, owners sell them at a discount, and apps like FlyXO and Mirai have given prices close to airline tickets.
7. Prenuptial agreements
Love is priceless and divorce is not. A prenup takes emotion out of splitting assets, and the video says rich divorcees with one call the $2,000 to $10,000 price the best money they spent. Half of Americans say they are open to a prenup, but only 20% have one, while 47% of engaged or married millennials do.
You list what you own before the marriage and both sign that you keep it. The tip from the team’s lawyer: you can stipulate whose name items are bought under. Under your name, it goes to you, and under both names, it is split in a divorce.
8. Trusts and estate-planning vehicles
A trust is a 300-year piggy bank. You put cash, stock or real estate in a legal entity, a trustee such as Northern Trust or South Dakota Trust Co. guards it and your family collects the benefits. In South Dakota a trust can technically last 365 years and avoid the 40% estate tax each time the owner dies. About 20 US states allow perpetual dynasty trusts.
Setup costs between $15,000 and $50,000, and the trustee charges 0.2 to 1% of the fund a year. Most people wait until net worth passes $10 million. The video also mentions a $13.9 million exemption for trusts set up before 2026, which it said would be halved to $7 million per person, and that married couples can combine exclusions up to $27.8 million.
9. Insurance wrappers as a private bank
Life insurance can serve as your own private bank. The video’s comparison: banks lend at 8%, credit cards charge 24% APR and your life insurance lends you money at 5%. You build cash value inside a whole-life or indexed universal life policy, then borrow up to 90% of it to buy income-generating assets.
The rich like it because proceeds are not taxable income, and if you never repay, the balance is simply deducted from the death benefit. For the very rich, 20 million or more, private equity and hedge fund positions can sit inside a tax-free wrapper, though the video calls that too technical to cover.
10. Advisors
Winging it is fine in the thousands, not in the millions. Once you make millions you rent a brain trust: former CFOs, tax specialists, portfolio engineers, estate lawyers and executive coaches who filter ideas before they are implemented. You pay to skip tuition at the school of hard knocks.
Your private banker can play the role, and entry-level advisory services at Vanguard are mentioned as good, though most often a wealthy person hires a consultant from the private markets for a fee.
11. Assistant and concierge services
Outsource your agenda and everything gets filtered before it reaches you. Time is the scarcest luxury, and deleting errands frees mental space for bigger deals. Concierge firms trade favors with hotels, embassies and brands, and they go beyond hard reservations to reputation protection: discreet bookings, alias travel and VIP access.
Quintessentially charges $5,000 a year at its classic tier and $45,000 at the elite one, Knightsbridge Circle in London is £25,000 a year rising to £100,000 for its private circle, and elite teams like John Paul Group and Sienna Charles negotiate by need. The next level of wealth begins when you buy time back from your business and still turn a profit.
12. Smart debt and buy, borrow, die
The video separates three kinds of debt. Bad debt is high-interest borrowing for a liability like a TV or sneakers. Good debt buys something that earns more than the interest, such as a rental property. Smart debt means borrowing against an asset that is rising, like the S&P 500 or property, without selling it, to buy something that earns even more.
The pattern is buy, borrow, die. The rich buy stocks, homes, gold, businesses and art, and never sell. They borrow against them through tools like a HELOC (home equity line of credit) or an SBLOC (securities-based line of credit), so no asset is sold and no tax is triggered while the assets keep compounding. When the owner dies, US law resets the cost basis to market value, so heirs inherit tax-free up to the estate tax exemption. The video’s advice for newcomers is not to go over 20% and to ask a bank for the interest rate and maximum loan-to-value.
13. Private membership clubs
If you lack high-profile friends, a club is a cheat code. Find an interest, such as golf, dining or investing, and someone is bringing those people together for a fee. You pay an initiation fee plus yearly dues, staff prescreen members so trust starts high and many clubs make introductions.
Soho House is about $600 to join and $3,000 a year, Core Club in New York is $15,000 plus $15,000 in dues, and a secret club tied to the Aman hotel chain asks $200,000 plus $15,000 a year. The video adds that buying a Bugatti makes you a member of an elite club with exclusive events.
14. Philanthropic foundations
People say they want more control over where their tax money goes, and the rich get it with donor-advised funds (DAFs) or, if they are wealthier, a private foundation. Say you bought NVIDIA shares before the AI boom and they have soared: selling triggers a tax event. Instead you donate the shares to a foundation or DAF, deduct the current market value and skip capital-gains tax.
The fund can then issue grants to almost anything it likes, from scholarships to hospital wings and art projects, and the assets keep growing meanwhile. A DAF can cost $100 to set up, with Fidelity Charitable and Schwab Charitable named as options, while foundations start around $15,000. It never hurts to farm some good reputation, the video adds.
15. Golden visas, citizenship and passports
Citizenship has been for sale for a while, and the price is often well below $5 million. For the price of a condo you can buy borderless living, and the video says millionaires hedging political risk have risen 320% in five years. Its line: when your government becomes your biggest risk, diversify governments.
In Portugal or Dubai, a $500,000 property purchase that you rent out can bring a golden visa, privileged access to the local economy and a path to citizenship in roughly 3 to 10 years. Greece and Italy are listed at 250,000, and the US went from $800,000 to a $5 million gold card. The full table on screen covers countries from Malta and Cyprus to St. Kitts and Nevis, Vanuatu, Canada and the UK. Even without being rich, digital nomad visas in places like Portugal, Croatia and Malaysia ask for proof of remote income, often under $3,000 a month.
A bonus tool and a takeaway
The video’s secret bonus is the Bloomberg terminal, at $32,000 a year an all-in-one portal for real-time data, news, analytics and trading that is the gold standard among professionals. It is overkill for retail investors, but a university may have one sitting unused, which makes it a free edge for a student.
The takeaway: most of these tools reward early planning, so the sooner you learn what exists, the sooner you can decide which ones fit your situation.
FAQ
What is a family office?
It is a company whose only job is to manage a family’s fortune, usually used once wealth passes about $100 million. As of 2025, 15,000 family offices manage $5.9 trillion globally.
What does buy, borrow, die mean?
The rich buy assets and never sell, borrow against them through tools like a HELOC or SBLOC so no tax is triggered, and at death heirs get the cost basis reset to market value.
How can ordinary investors copy direct indexing?
Use two low-cost ETFs that track the same index, like VOO and IVV. When one is down you sell it to bank the loss and buy the other to stay invested.
What is a prenuptial agreement for?
It lists what each person owns before marriage so assets are not split by default in a divorce. The video says it costs $2,000 to $10,000.
How do insurance wrappers work as a private bank?
You build cash value in a whole-life or indexed universal life policy, borrow up to 90% of it, and any unpaid balance is deducted from the death benefit.
What is a golden visa?
It is residency or citizenship granted for a qualifying investment, for example about $500,000 in property in Portugal or Dubai, with a path to citizenship in roughly 3 to 10 years.
Keep reading
- 15 Tools Rich People Use
- 15 Secrets RICH People Use to Get Everything in Life
- 15 Things Poor People Think Rich People Do (That They Actually Don’t)
