2025 Christmas Greetings

Welcome to this week’s edition of Cape May Wealth Weekly. If you’re new here, subscribe to ensure you receive my next piece in your inbox. If you want to read more of my posts, check out my archive!

Hello, beloved readers! 2025 is coming to an end - and just like 2024, it was a big year another big year for Markus, Tamara and I at Cape May Wealth Advisors. To start with a little executive summary:

• In our first proper year in business, we’ve grown to 40+ clients, managing total assets of close to 100M€, with a substantial multiple of that figure in advised assets.

• We’ve helped individual investors on matters such as financial planning or asset allocation, but also more specific topics, including but not limited to wealth transfers to their children and partners, setting up Liechtenstein foundations, and providing commercial support on their new ventures.

• We’ve worked with family offices on an even wider range of topics, such as conceptualizing the right family office structure in the first place, to finding the right banks and partners, to recruiting their family office staff.

Perhaps let’s also use this moment to answer a question that I still get here and then: Jan, who do you actually work with, and what do you do?

• We work with young entrepreneurs with investable assets of 2M€ to 25M€ who are looking for holistic wealth management advice. We covering not just investments, but all matters related to their wealth, including topics such as tax structuring (thanks to our co-founder and tax advisor Tamara), niche investment matters (where my co-founder Markus provides outstanding service), or alternative investments (my area of expertise).
  

• We act as independent advisor to entrepreneurial family offices with investable assets between 50M€ and 250M€ (in line with our ‘small’ family office thesis). They appreciate to have us as neutral sparring partner on a product-free basis, providing advice that ranges from the specific (think a second opinion on niche tax matters, or our view on crypto) to the general (such as a critical one-off review of their entire setup). We’ve also helped multiple families with recruiting their Head of Family Office - and are already lined up for new mandates.

We look forward to continuing to grow across both of those groups in 2026 - so if you know of someone in your network who you think could benefit from our views and advice, or if you are even looking for support yourself: Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. While all of our clients make me proud, of course, I would be lying if I didn’t say that there is even more joy for when someone decided this to year to become client after reading this newsletter.

So with that in mind, let’s look back at the past year and do a little personal recap for 2025.

First of all, the newsletter. We’ve grown from ~1.300 subscribers to over 2.200 subscribers (net of one substantial clean-up of inactive users). Our reader list continues to include professionals from the financial industry, GPs of PE and VC firms, and leaders in the family office space. Furthermore, I continue to appreciate the ‘recognition’ of our content in the real world too - ranging from being recognized at conferences (I guess that’s the life of a niche internet micro-celebrity for me), to hearing how a group of very affluent entrepreneurs has made the Aspirational Investor Framework the core of their entire investing process. 

Furthermore, I made it through this year of writing without ever feeling as uninspired as I sometimes did in 2024. Firstly, this was driven by giving myself the freedom to bring back (reworked) insights from the prior year, meaning that I didn’t have to force myself to produce original thought every single week - which was a relief. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, speaking to more affluent investors has the wonderful side effect of providing more inspiration for content. Articles influenced directly by interactions with some of my much-appreciated readers include but aren’t limited to Private Real Estate for Affluent Investors, Who Needs A Financial Advisor?, or Leverage: A Primer. (As I’ve said many times before, if you have a topic that you think I should write about, please let me know.) I also liked the opportunity to share views that seem to be somewhat contrarian to the wider opinion - most notably the Case for Small Family Offices, but also What Investors Get Wrong About Semi-Liquid Private Equity.

Secondly, my ‘self-employment’ as financial advisor. Earlier this year, I went out to dinner with a good friend who noted that despite my new entrepreneurial activity, I seemed surprisingly relaxed. I hadn’t thought about it, but upon reflection, I agreed - which I think also gives a good recap for this first year of full self-employment: Doing something you love to do, with clients who appreciate your work, is incredibly rewarding and energizing - and even if my hours this year were some of the busiest I had in a long time, I never felt stressed. Working with Markus and Tamara has been nothing but a joy, with many clients noting how well we function as a team. I continue to be excited by what we are building with Cape May. And we’re also growing from ‘three individuals’ into a company - not only will we have a proper office starting January (if you’re ever in Berlin near Gendarmenmarkt, come say hi), but will also have our first analyst join our team in February. But more on that in due course.

Other professionals highlights for the year include:

• My Case for Small Family Offices got featured in the private banking magazin, a German industry publication for the wealth management industry - and it didn’t just vanish into the depths of the internet, but actually remained in their top 10 most read articles for quite a while.
  

• I got to moderate a panel discussion on different approaches to private equity. Sitting in a panel, I’ve done before, and it’s quite easy - just wait until you’re asked a question. Moderating a panel, on the other hand, was more stressful, no matter how good your pre-prepared script is.
  

• I got quoted in my favorite financial publication, Bloomberg. Just a small quote, for now - hopefully next year I can follow that up with a full-on feature. 😉

Lastly, to also provide you with a few personal touches:

• A big highlight this year was seeing Radiohead live not once but twice here in Berlin. Absolutely fantastic show, great music, and great crowd - just the right mix of Oasis-esque sing-alongs and weird drum machine beats.
  

• I read a lot of books this year. Admittedly, this year I strayed a bit more towards fiction than non-fiction. In science fiction, the Red Rising series got me absolutely hooked, as did Endymion and its sequel (both, in return, the sequels to the Hyperion series I recommended last year). In the fiction/non-fiction crossover, I greatly enjoyed The Shipping Man and its sequels, which definitely made me want to become a shipowner (and made me want more ‘finance fiction’!). In non-fiction, few books stood out this year, but one that I recently started and have already recommended to many of my colleagues is Delivering Massive Value. Rarely have I read a book where I felt so seen by its author and his recommendations.

• For the Berlin foodies among us: I’ve enjoyed great meals at Barra and Grill Royal. I had some fantastic Thai food at Boii Boii and Khao Taan. And I’m also very pleased that good tacos have finally made it to Berlin, not only at the already popular Tacos El Rey, but also at ‘hidden gem’ Ringbar (at very fair prices too - no 7€ tacos!). If you plan to go to either of them and need someone to tag along, definitely let me know.
  

• Last but not least, it took me about five years of hemming and hawing, but I finally got myself a portafilter coffee machine - and definitely understand the hype now, and wonder why I’ve waited for so long.

I don’t want to keep you from your well-deserved Christmas holiday (or final professional touches), so let me conclude today’s newsletter: Thank you, dear readers, so much for sticking with me not only for one, but for two years now, and for the continued great feedback on my writing. It’s you, the readers, for whom I put in the hours, and nothing makes me happier than hearing about how an article of mine helped you in your wealth-related matters. I also want to thank our clients at Cape May (many of which are also avid readers of the newsletter). Thank you for trusting us with your hard-earned wealth - a responsibility we don’t take lightly. Thank you to Markus and Tamara for continuing to build Cape May with me, and for indulging my esoteric finance and tax ideas (is box spread financing the better, cheaper alternative to a margin loan? We still have to figure out, but more on that next year!). And of course, thank you to my wonderful wife Cara - without her ongoing support, all of this likely wouldn’t be possible.

If you’ve read it this far, and enjoyed my newsletter this year, perhaps you can do me one final Christmas favor - and fill out my Subscriber Survey. Your feedback greatly helps me with better tailoring my content and writing to what you are looking to read, so if you could take the ~2 minutes to fill it out, it would be much appreciated.

With that said: Merry Christmas to all of you, and a happy new year. Once again, I’m excited for the new year - and I hope you are too. 🎄