#I have juuust enough money to care about educating myself about these things
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One of the things that annoys me about billionaire romance/power fantasy books, as a lower-middle class kid who had the fortune to go to semi-private Montessori schools and thus knew upper class kids and is fortunate enough to have inherited some wealth from my deceased dad, is the lack of visible infrastructure to maintain or increase that wealth.
Like yeah, most of it will be invisible or done by people hired by the protagonist but only sometimes will there be a mention of a financial advisor such as an account or bank manager. (Both of which by the way, are not what people with millions of dollars would use as financial advisers. At least not solely.) Wealth management as a service like legal advice, security, household staff (ie cleaning, cooking, landscaping & household maintenance), personal assistance (ie secretarial, health, exercise & nutrition; hair, makeup & clothing) and public relations, where a whole team is involved, is rarely if ever mentioned. There's almost certainly no active management mentioned, just what's in the bank and maybe whatever investments in stocks, businesses and properties a character owns. There aren't discussions about seeking higher returns through private equity or claiming a loss on devaluation of an asset purposefully bought to lower their income (on paper) for tax purposes. There aren't characters talking about how they'll vote at the annual meeting for shares held in direct ownership because they want a board member ousted, or directing their custodian to vote that way. No discussions about the tax rates of investments held in trusts vs held by shell corporations vs held in their name, nor the privacy benefits of the first two.
I know billionaire romances are just fantasy and most people don't care about the economics of wealth, just the projected image of it.
But I think it is morally correct for such authors to do at least a little research into the wealth management of the rich by reading articles like this Financial Times one, and rip away the curtain a little bit to show their readers how billionaires actually obtain their high scores in money. Because it's definitely not through hard work.
#economics#and like. this goes for people who like writing Tony Stark or enjoy the Inheritance Games trilogy#like yeah yeah both Tony and Avery divested from major parts of their income#but they still have a LOT of money to sink elsewhere and will probably profit from#your billionaire faves will always be problematic as long as they remain billionaires#I have juuust enough money to care about educating myself about these things#but not enough to do any of the above aside from wondering if I should put things into a trust#also there's a lot of drama left on the table by ignoring 'wealth management'#character hates a board member? get them voted out via the amount of shares held & whisper networking#make up a fucking rule that the shell company a character uses needs them to be in that country for two weeks a year#insider trading is generally agreed to be bad/unfair but is hard to prove and stock markets are easy to influence outside of that anyway#I don't quite understand share buybacks and how they tie in with profits but they sound like an excellent plot point for Iron Man fanfic
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