Personal finance for people who want to be great with money — written by the friend who already is.
Spent a career advising ultra-high-net-worth families. Believes the playbook translates further down the wealth spectrum than most people think.
About Elena
Elena writes about the moves that the very wealthy make routinely — trust structures, generational planning, insurance as an asset class — translated for people who have real assets but not a family office.
Her lane is the seams: where estate planning, taxes, and investment strategy meet, and where the biggest wins (and most expensive mistakes) tend to live.
In their own words
“Most 'complex' planning problems are three simple problems stacked on top of each other.”
— Elena Vasquez, The Family Office Advisor
The money story
Elena spent twenty years inside two family offices watching nine-figure families use the same handful of structures over and over. The revelation wasn't that the wealthy had secrets. It was that most of the plays worked at $2M, $5M, and $10M too — nobody had bothered to translate them.
Signature playbook
Every well-built estate plan sorts assets into three buckets, each with a different job. Get the buckets right and the tax and family drama largely handles itself.
The Use Bucket
Assets you'll spend down in your lifetime. Titled for liquidity and control, not tax efficiency.
The Legacy Bucket
Assets you intend to pass on. Titled inside the right trust for step-up, protection, and clean transfer.
The Insurance Layer
Term or permanent policies sized to a specific expensive event — estate tax, income replacement, business buyout — not as an investment.
A taste of the beat
Sample headlines from Elena's desk.
Rules I won't break
The non-negotiables — the things Elena refuses to recommend, no matter how good the pitch.
Filed by Elena
The weekly dispatch
The kind of financial advice you'd get from a friend who's already figured it out. No hot takes, no leaderboards, no affiliate hustle.