Dear Readers,

As we wrote in our 2025 Christmas Greetings, we had a good past year. Cape May Wealth Advisors had its first full year of operations, and has grown quickly to proudly serve 40+ clients.

Without a doubt, a lot of this growth is thanks to this newsletter. Not only do we use the articles we’ve written in the past in our client interactions (such as our most famous one, the Aspirational Investor Framework), but we also had more than one instance where individuals independently found this newsletter and through that also became clients - something we couldn’t be more proud of. But there’s also been interactions that went differently: More than one person last year told me how much they enjoy reading our newsletter - but then asked what we actually do. Considering how much time we spend every week writing my newsletter, that was an eye-opening moment for me, making it clear that we might need to refine our message a little bit.

As a result, we have two objectives for this newsletter in 2026: One, make it even more practical to our target audience at Cape May, especially affluent entrepreneurs with a net worth between 2 and 25M€, as well as entrepreneurial, ‘small’ family offices. That means more practical examples, more case studies, and more insights into how we work. Two, we’ll share an additional monthly article highlighting what has happened at Cape May over the past month. That includes things that constitute big news to our small firm (see below!), examples of how we helped clients this month, and if relevant, media appearances. But also, in case you missed it, a quick summary of what we covered on the newsletter in the prior month - since we know that even our most loyal readers might sometimes miss one of our articles.

As always, please let me know your thoughts - we write this newsletter for you, my dear readers. So if there is something we can or should change to make it even more interesting, don’t hesitate to reach out.

All the best,
Jan & the Cape May team

Big news for our small firm: We just moved into our first proper office. You can now find us at Mindspace Hausvogteiplatz in Berlin. We’ve worked hard this month to turn your regular co-working space into something that feels personal to us - fueled in particular by a plant buying spree at Ikea. Kudos to our co-founder Tamara who worked especially hard to put together a quintessential piece of German furniture, a fireproof filing cabinet.

We’ve already welcomed our first (prospective) clients at the office. If you’re ever in the area, don’t hesitate to message us and swing by your a coffee. We’d be happy to welcome you.

Even bigger news than an office is also just around the corner… but more on that in next month’s edition. 😉

As with most of our industry peers, January is a time focused on annual reviews. On a quarterly (or somes bi-annual basis), we sit down with our clients to review the past year with them, identifying where they were on track relative to their financial plan and where we need to make changes. We review matters specific to their situation, such as cases where we help with liquidity management, structural matters such as a wealth transfer to their children, or desired investment into alternative assets like private equity.

And of course, we also speak about the performance of our clients’ managed accounts. In that regard, 2025 was a great year: While the underpositioning in US equities has been a detractor in the past years, our scepticism finally paid off last year, especially in light of the weaker US dollar. Other portfolio components such as inflation-sensitive investments, a substantial diversification in bonds/fixed income, as well as our approach to risk management have also continued to contribute as expected. (If you’re interested in knowing more about how we invest and how our performance looked like in recent years, don’t hesitate to reach out.)

And besides those annual reviews, we still had a chance to help (prospective) clients in a multitude of other ways. To name just a few:

As you can see, we pride ourselves in supporting our clients in a truly holistic fashion. Judging by last year’s (and of course the long-term) performance of our clients’ managed accounts, that alone is worth our fee - but that’s not enough for us, nor should it be for any advisor/bank out there that you work with. We want to help our clients in all their matters, whether that’s structure and tax, liquid investments, or alternatives - and whatever keeps them up in their business, and their private activity.

If that resonates with you, or if you know someone who could benefit from our holistic approach, don’t hesitate to reach out.

This month, we are proud to have made two ‘media appearances’:

Thanks to an introduction by one of my favorite newsletter authors Swen Lorenz, I made an appearance on James Faulkner’s Poor Millionaires podcast.

Many of our clients fit James’ definition of a ‘poor millionaire’. Poor certainly not in the financial sense, as even the lower end of James' definition (investable assets of $1-20M) is typically a life-changing amount of money. Instead, we find our clients to be poor in the quality of advice they receive before they met us - dealing either with ‘smaller’ advisors that often lack the skillset for their degree of complexity, or ‘ultra high net worth’ advisors that have the knowledge but to whom they are often small clients despite their substantial wealth.

For insights into how we work with ‘poor millionaires’, and what they can learn from ‘small’ family offices, listen to this podcast. You can find the full video on YouTube, or on a podcast platform of your choosing.

Eleanor Warnock has been a reader and supporter of my work from the earliest days, And I was very honored when Eleanor asked if she could interview me for her newsletter about my writing journey and process - and how my content-driven approach helped with shaping and growing Cape May.

In the interview, I share (among other things) how an investing framework that's not even my own has become almost synonymous with my name, how transparency in an otherwise opaque industry has empowered clients, and why I think that getting started with content creation doesn't require a 'magnum opus' but simply good, genuine views.

You can read it here - and make sure to follow Eleanor and her amazing newsletter.

If you have a podcast, a blog, or another type of publication that you think would benefit from our views and network, don’t hesitate to reach out.

This month, we covered a number of topics:

In Four Tasks for 2026, we shared insights into how investors should think about properly reviewing last year’s investment activity - and what to conclusions to draw for the new year.

In The Tax Playbook, Tamara and I wrote about how we affluent investors should navigate the concept of taxes - ranging from best practices on where to optimize (and where not), and where they should be mindful of ‘tax double standards’.

In Lines of Defense, we talk about taking a holistic view of liquidity - a framework which we also implement for some of our clients. We talk about how to split your liquidity buffer into cash, short-term investments, and a diversified investment portfolio, as well as the proper use of margin loans.

In this week’s How To Spend It, we talk about what might be THE key question for most affluent individuals - how much can they really afford to spend on their lifestyle? We try to tackle this question from a number of angles, ranging from the practical to the philosophical, and give an example of how we try to model the right answer for our clients.

As always, if you have feedback or a specific topic you’d like to see addressed, let us know.

This concludes the first edition of Cape May Monthly Review. As with our newsletters, if you liked (or disliked) this format, let us know - we’re always trying to improve.

Lastly, I want to address a question that I’ve been often asked but haven’t yet answered on the newsletter: Jan, what’s the deal with the art you use for the newsletter?

Simply said - I am NOT great with design, whether that’s building slides or picking the right stock photo for my LinkedIn posts. So rather than have a boring, constant picture for the monthly newsletter, I looked for other options - and found out about ‘open access’ images and art.

So every week, once I’m done writing, I try to find a piece of art that best represents whatever topic I am covering this week. Admittedly, and perhaps somewhat in line with most of the financial industry, that results in lots of pictures of fortresses, mountains, boats, and the occasional still life. Still, I (and according to my reader survey, many of you!) find the art beautiful. I guess that’s the point of, well, art.

If you’re interested in that type of art, my sources are The Met Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and more recently, Public.Work.

Thanks for taking the time to read this first monthly review - and see you soon again in your inbox for next week’s newsletter!

Cape May Wealth Advisors is a Berlin-based wealth management firm focused on helping affluent entrepreneurs find financial independence. If you are interested in learning more about how we can help you, reach out to us via email, and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter.