In April, U.S. Trust Company released its Survey of Affluent Americans XXVI. (For you plebeians, that means this is the 26th annual edition; don’t think these guys take themselves and their survey just a tad too seriously, do we?)

This year, the survey used very much higher benchmarks than it has in the past. In previous years, U.S. Trust spoke to people who had either $300,000 in annual income or $5.9 million in net worth inclusive of the primary residence. This year, the threshold was simply $5 million of investable net worth exclusive of the main house. This is clearly a better class of survey respondents, and very close to our ideal client.

The full survey has its own website, and is very well worth reading in its entirety. For the moment, I’d just like to draw your attention to some of the more interesting findings. First, for those of you who are constantly tempted to try to be heroes because you think that’s what wealthy people demand, I note that a whopping 85% said that their portfolio returns met (45%) or exceeded (40%) their expectations in what the survey curiously called "the most recent fiscal year" – presumably, for most folks, calendar MMVI. This was certainly a good year, though not a barn-burner. Yet rich people seemed more than content.

Moreover, when the respondents were asked for their target equity return assumptions going forward, the average (median? mean? does anybody really care?) estimate for domestic equities was 8.85%, and for international equities 9.66%. Again, very healthy returns, but hardly the responses of a gaggle of performance maniacs. These findings tend to confirm an eternal truth, concerning which many advisors have a built-in forgetter. To wit: wealthy people aren’t trying to get rich – they already are rich. They’re simply trying to stay rich while earning a decent, competitive return.

But the one survey finding that really jumped out at me, and the proximate occasion for this little essay, is that fully 84% of these wealthy respondents started from absolute scratch, with virtually nothing. This statistic either surprises you or it doesn’t – it flat took my breath away, but I’ve quizzed some of my audiences about it, and they were in the ballpark. But it speaks volumes, and it suggests a way for advisors to manage their tendency to be intimidated by really affluent prospects. To wit: as you work to get to know us, and to let us know you, try to picture us not as we are, but as we were.

I say "us" advisedly here, for a couple of reasons. First, the former Joan Carrick and I, though we were not surveyed by U.S. Trust, certainly could have been: we comfortably fit the profile. Second, and even more to the point, we most assuredly started with nothing.

You will not intuitively know this. When we come in for our first interview, your eye may be drawn to Mrs. Murray’s quite lovely engagement solitaire; you will have no way of knowing that it took her 35 years of marriage to get it. (She was married in a tiny gold band which, in those days of a fixed $35-per-ounce gold price, cost $18. How do I still remember that?)

Alternatively, you may notice my English shoes, or my wrist watch, or my leather briefcase, lovingly handmade, one at a time, by Glaser Design of San Francisco. (To guys, this item is a show-stopper; they come up to me in airports and ask, in awe and wonder, where I got it.)

You will therefore not instinctively picture the two kids who, in the first year of marriage, had to take the soda bottles back for the deposit every other Friday, so we could buy the subway tokens we needed to get to our little jobs and collect our little paychecks – which would be all gone, and then some, two Fridays later.

Congratulate us, without being smarmy about it, on what we’ve accomplished – on the significant accumulation of assets we’re showing you today. (We don’t want to be patronized, but we don’t want an advisor to take these things for granted, either, because we sure don’t.) Then – and this is the whole point – try to get us to open up a little about how we started out…that is, about how we got where we are. A lot of times, it’s a fairly interesting story, and telling you about it makes us feel good – not least of all because your questions lead us to suspect that you may be genuinely interested in us, and not just in our money.

(Granted, if a guy my age comes wheeling into your office with a 39-year-old trophy wife on his arm, you’re probably going to want to soft-pedal this line of inquiry. Ask this guy how he started out, and you’ll probably remind him of the first wife who got him to where he is, and whom he then dropped down a hole.)

Often enough, the people we are now are compensating in some ways for the privations of the people as whom we started out. (I love this bloody Rolex. Every time I look at, I think of that poor kid from Queens, and how far he’s come, and how far he’s brought his family. I’m going to wear it every day for the rest of my life, and then I’m going to leave it to my only son, to remind him of all the stories I told him about that poor kid whom he never knew.)

Have the wit and the grace to perceive this, or at the very least to probe for it. Don’t get hypnotized by the compensatory externals. It’s true enough: wealthy people may, until they know you, seem to be putting on a reserved and even somewhat self-important "act." But give us a chance to revisit, and to tell you about, the way we were. And see if this doesn’t erase the emotional distance between us, more quickly and effectively than anything you’ve tried before.

Written on Friday, the XIII day of July, MMVII.