The goal of wealth preservation is to produce the best possible investment returns consistent with our client’s time frame and tolerance for risk. As a wealth manager, investment management will be only the foundation of the value we provide to clients.

This includes all concerns about protecting our client’s wealth against catastrophic loss, potential creditors, litigants, children’s spouses and potential ex-spouses and identity thieves—in short, ensuring that their assets are not unjustly taken.

Many affluent individuals are worried about being sued—not surprising, given how litigious our culture has become. This means that as a wealth manager, we likely will try to control risks through business processes, employment agreements and buy-sell agreements, as well as restructuring various assets and considering legal forms of ownership—such as trusts and limited liability entities—that will help put our clients’ wealth beyond the reach of creditors and other parties who may seek to take it.

Effective wealth transfer is all about taking care of heirs: finding and facilitating the most tax-efficient way to pass assets to loved ones in ways that meet the client’s wishes with minimal difficulty and cost.

Given the fluid nature of today’s tax environment, affluent families need to be proactive in their wealth transfer planning efforts if they truly want their wealth to benefit their heirs to the fullest extent possible. As a wealth manager, you will help them do so.

Wealth enhancement is about tax mitigation: minimizing the impact of taxes on clients’ investment returns while ensuring the cash flow they need.

We have seen that mitigating incomes taxes is one of the major financial concerns of the great majority of affluent individuals and families. Mitigating estate taxes and capital gains taxes also ranks high on their list of concerns.

It’s no surprise that so many affluent share these tax-related concerns. Taxes can—and do—eat up a great deal of wealth. As a wealth manager, our goal is to try to help our clients enhance their wealth by minimizing this impact.

Many affluent individuals are looking outward beyond their own families to the world at large. For these people, making meaningful gifts to charity in the most impactful way possible is a key issue.

Charitable giving comes with its own unique set of challenges—from selecting the appropriate means of giving (such as direct gifts, donor-advised funds or private family foundations) to selecting causes and specific organizations that will have the biggest impact.