The rich have a secret menu of tools that you know nothing about. You've always had this inkling that they know something you don't. And you're right. The rich don't play by the same rules and they don't use the same tools that you do. You're about to hear mostly private information that you'd have to pay thousands if not percentage points to financial advisors to share it with you. Let us show you exactly how the rich outsmart the tax code. how they borrow money at the lowest rates possible and how they keep their wealth for generations and never have to wait for anything. Here are 15 tools rich people use to build and keep wealth. Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. Number one, private banking and black cards. What if your bank called you to give you money and pitch opportunities instead of asking you to pay your debt? The biggest banks in the world have a special different bank section reserved specifically for the rich called private banking. How it works? Well, rich people move all their financial resources to these private banks. And in exchange, they get preferential financial treatment, lower borrowing rates, almost unlimited credit, superior tax structuring, and even over-the-counter preIPO investment opportunities. In the developing world, these services start at $250,000. In the West, 1 million should get your foot in the door with most of them, but not the very best. JP Morgan, for example, demands 10 million for full service. Slightly less for UBS Global Wealth and Goldman Sachs. Not only do they manage and grow the money for you, but to keep you happy, you get these black cards that unlock special events, every upgrade possible, and secret perks reserved only for the rich. For example, they'll fly you to a remote location just to test drive the new Mercedes that's about to be launched next year. Number two, family offices and offshore accounts. Imagine owning a whole company whose only job is to grow your money, preferably hosted somewhere out of the country, and you end up running the family's fortune like you would an institution. These usually come into play when a family's fortune crosses $100 million or more. You hire ex-bankers, lawyers just to manage the family's balance sheet and lifestyle. As of 2025, 15,000 family offices manage 5.9 trillion globally. Stoneh Fleming, Rockefeller Capital Management, Trident Trust are just a few of the providers of such services. You can find more on your own that cater to your geography. To minimize the tax burden or simply not have all your eggs in one basket, you set up three entities around the world that more often than not do not have to disclose the extent of the holdings. Setting up an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands starts around 10 to 20,000 plus 1 to 2,000 nominee fees. You can do it for yourself and set yourself up in the Sey Shells, Bise, or Bahamas for around $1,000. You register an important piece of intellectual property in one of those holdings and the main company license it off effectively moving some of your funds to the offshore. From there you spend it as the company would. If you think that's cool, well the video builds up from here, so watch until the end. Number three, backdoor access services. Now backdoor can mean a lot of things in the world of the rich. From little things like already being on the plane in first class while those in business and economy are ready to board to chilling with the artists at every festival to buying tomorrow's IPO yesterday. Someone picks you up and you get to bypass any restrictions to your destination. This is more than what concier services do and we'll talk about those a little bit later in the video. Backdoor services might mean moving you up on a list just because of your privileged access. This applies to events, experimental medical treatments, even investments. For example, some employees have vested their shares and might want to liquidate prior to a company's IPO. Services like Forge Global, Equity Zen, and Zanvato allow you to buy those shares directly from employees for a 2 to 10% fee. Minimums are $10,000. Number four, the stock market. Direct index and option overlays. You know, 80% of the population doesn't own any stocks. The top 10% own almost 90% of it. When the market goes up, they get rich. When the market goes down, they get to write it off as a loss on their taxes. Forget meme stocks. Rich investors literally program the market to spit out tax refunds when they sleep. Here's how you do it. Okay, so go to Schwab, Morning Star, or Parametric and get yourself set up for a minimum of 100K with a 0.4% 4% fee. What you do is own the individual stocks of an index instead of the ETF. Schwab personalized indexing autoh harvests losses on a daily basis and you can add callers on single stock positions. Here's how the average person can do the same. So you can replicate direct index tax loss harvesting with two lowcost ETFs that track the same index. For example, VO versus IV. When the market is down, you sell the loser to bank the loss and then use those funds to buy the twin to stay invested. Number five, digital security and anonymity. Your net worth is a public record to hackers because everything we do today is online. Ransomware crews, SIM swappers, and deep fake scammers now track high-networth targets in real time. Bot-driven attacks doubled in the last 2 years, and it's not stopping with the rise of AI. Not to mention that basically your internet provider has direct access to every website you visit. And if they were a bad agent, they could access most of your personal information. And this not only can be used to steal sensitive data, but also to affect reputation and have long-term negative impacts. This applies to both you and the super rich. Lucky for you, there's an affordable solution that allows you to take back control of your digital footprint. It's called a VPN. And with one click of a button, you anonymize your online activity. We use a VPN all the time, okay? Both in the office and when traveling for an extra layer of protection. Plus, it's great to be able to access all of your TV streaming services when abroad. We've been using NordVPN for years now, and they've been an incredible reliable provider so much that we decided to partner with them in making this video and getting you guys an exclusive deal. So, if you go to alux.com/vpn, you'll get the biggest discount they offer anywhere online on their 2-year plan. Plus, you get four extra months for free. You buy it once and you browse the internet with no worries from now on. Go to alux.com/vpn and start protecting yourself online today. Thank you to NordVPN for sponsoring this video and for looking out for our community. And, you know, speaking of encryption, we're moving on from the digital to the physical. Number six, physical security and movement. You buy safety so you can make money in peace. And once you've got money, you buy time. Enterprise level security cameras cost around $1,500 a piece plus $250 a year. Panic rooms differ, but expect to pay around $500 per square foot for something luxury. And more recently, fire and flood resistant infrastructure is peaking. With that done, you look at your time. So, rich people don't buy more hours in a day. They delete the hours the rest of us waste out of their calendars. Poor people think flying private is about comfort and luxury. But, you know, a first class seat is often bigger and a lot more comfortable than flying private. No, you fly private, so the plane takes off the second you get to the airport. Compressing travel time expands lifespan. And the cool thing is you don't even have to buy a private plane to fly private. And we're going to give you the scoop here. Okay, so fractional private jet ownership has gone up 15% in 2024. If you're rich but you don't fly that much, you can basically buy a time share. And here's just a ballpark of the math of the cost with netjets. So 116th share is 1.7 million. That's $20,000 a month or $6,000 an hour. If the math seems too expensive, let's introduce you to empty legs. So when a private jet needs to be moved from one city to another and there are empty seats in it, the owner can sell those seats at a discount. There are a lot of apps doing this. We've used Fly XO and Mai in the past to get prices close to airline tickets. All right, now let's look at the family unit. Number seven, prenuptual agreements. Because love, well, love is priceless, but divorce isn't. So, prenups allow you to take the emotion out of the equation when it comes to splitting the assets. Ask any rich divorce with a prenup and they'll tell you the 2,000 to $10,000 price tag they paid was the best money they ever spent. Although it used to be kind of a taboo topic in the past, 50% of Americans say they now are open to a prenup, but only 20% actually have one. The fastest demographic to adopt prenups are millennials. 47% of engaged or married millennials already have a prenup. You basically make a list of the things you own before going into the marriage and sign that both of you get to keep it. Pro advice from our very expensive lawyer. You can stipulate under whose name you buy stuff. If it's under your name, it goes to you. If it's under the both of your names, you split that in the event of a divorce. This builds a framework where you can take control of your holdings instead of letting the government take charge. Number eight, trusts and estate planning vehicles. Think of it like a 300-year piggy bank. What if you could lock today's fortune in a time capsule that keeps paying your grandkids rent while the tax man forgets the capsule exists? Well, here's how it works. Step one, you drop cash, stock, or real estate into a trust, a legal entity with its own social security number. Step two, a trustee guards that box. Step three, your family just collects the goodies. You want something juicy, though? In South Dakota, a trust can technically live 365 years, avoiding that 40% estate tax every time the big owner dies. 20 states in the US allow for what's called perpetual dynasty trusts. Look it up, okay? It's fascinating. It costs between 15 and 50K to set it up. The trustee taking care of it costs between 0.2 to 1% of the fund per year. Most people wait until their net worth crosses 10 million to think about trusts because that makes the math a little bit better. But you got to be fast. There's a $13.9 million exception if you set the trust before 2026. On January 1st next year, it gets cut in half to $7 million per person. Even better, married couples can combine their exclusions to up to 27.8 million. Pro tip, technically nothing is stopping you from having multiple trusts and spreading that wealth around a little bit if you get creative early in your career. And we're going to do a video on how trust funds work in the following week. So, make sure you're subscribed for that. Number nine, insurance rappers as a private bank. Oh, you're going to love this. Okay, so rich people have figured out how to turn your life insurance into your very own private bank tax-free and interest cheaper than a credit card. To put things into perspective, banks lend at 8%. Credit cards are 24% APR. Your life insurance lends you money at 5%. You just found some cheaper money. Okay, so how it works is you build up cash value inside your whole life or indexed UL policy. You borrow up to 90% of that cash value to buy income generating assets with it. The rich do this because proceeds are not taxable income. And if you never pay it back, the balance is simply deducted from the death benefit. Here are some providers to look up. Okay. If you're super rich, like 20 million plus, you can even stuff private equity and hedge fund positions inside of a tax-free rapper. But we're already getting a bit too technical here. Okay. Maybe another time. You need some people to teach you these things. Number 10, advisors. Now, winging it is fine when you're in the thousands, but not when you're in the millions. Okay? Once you make millions, you rent a brain trust instead of guessing. You build an advisory board who looks over your decisions and can stop weak points from a mile away. These are not your gurus, okay? They're specialists. former CFOs, tax ninjas, portfolio engineers, JD for estate docs, and executive coaches. You basically pay to skip tuition at the school of hard knocks. What these advisers do is they act like a filter between ideas and implementation to maximize your return. Your private banker can act as one. The folks at Vanguard Personal Advisor Select are great. The entry-level one is good as well, but most often you just poach someone from the private markets to serve as a consultant for you in exchange for a fee. But if you are not sitting on seven figures yet, the Alux app puts a pocket advisor in your hand. Byte-sized master classes on money, business, and lifestyle curated by real experts. No 1% fee, no account minimum, but a 7-day free trial. All the good stuff. Okay? You get MBA grade money lessons straight to your phone. Download it today at alux.com/app and start compounding wisdom before you're paying somebody else to. Even better, after you download the app, come back and scan this QR code and get 25% off the yearly plan. Number 11, assistant and concierge services. You're no longer managing your Google calendar because you've outsourced your agenda. Everything gets filtered before it gets to you or anyone wanting a piece of your time. Time is the scarcest luxury. Deleting errands frees up mental space for bigger deals or pure leisure for that matter. Concierge service firms trade favors with hotels, embassies, and brands to get you preferential treatment. Their job is to minimize the friction of your life. It doesn't stop at hard to get reservations or booking an artist for your daughter's bar mitzvah. Now they do reputation protection, discrete bookings, arranging meetings, alias travel and VIP access away from the public eye. Quintessentially costs £5,000 a year on the classic tier and $45,000 on the elite one. London's Nightsbridge circle is at £25,000 per year and 100K on the private circle. And then there are elite individual teams like John Paul Group and Sienna Charles where you basically negotiate based on what you need. You break through the next level of wealth the moment you start buying your time back from your business and are still able to make a profit. Number 12, smart debt and buy, borrow, die. Now there's good debt, bad debt, and smart debt. Bad debt is when you borrow money with a high interest to build a liability, something that doesn't make you money, like a TV or sneakers. Good debt is when you borrow money to buy something that makes you more money than the interest you pay on the loan, like buying a property that you rent out. Smart debt is when you have your money locked into something that's going up in value, like the S&P 500 or property, and you borrow money against it without liquidating it to buy something that makes you even more money. The rich buy stuff and never sell stuff. Stocks, homes, gold, businesses, art, you name it. That's the buy part. There are specific tools in place that allow you to get cash and still keep your assets. That's the borrow part. They've got some funky names, too. If you borrow against a piece of property, it's called HELOC, home equity line of credit. If you borrow against your stock portfolio, it's called SBlock, securitiesbased line of credit. Go to your bank and ask them this. What is the interest rate and the maximum loan to value if I pledge my account or house? But if you're a newbie, don't go crazy, okay, and go over 20%. It's the smart way to get cash because since it's a loan and you didn't sell any assets, there's no tax to be paid and your assets are still compounding in the background. and the die part. Well, when you pass away, US law resets the cost basis of that asset to its market value on the date of death. Your kids will inherit it tax-free up to the estate tax exemption, that 13.9 million that we mentioned earlier, just like and save this video because you'll want to come back to this later on. All right, now maybe you're thinking, "Okay, Alux, that's all smart and good, but I want to learn about something fun." Okay, my friend, we got you. We got you. Number 13, private membership clubs. So, if you don't have high-profile friends or a network, this is your cheat code. You'll find these all around the world catering to different interests and different tax brackets. You basically find something you're interested in. Golf, private dining, investing, and for sure, someone is bringing together those who are sharing that same passion for a modest fee. The deal is pretty straightforward. You pay an initiation fee, a yearly fee, and have reason to get out of the house and talk to people like you. Club staff pre-screen members, so the default trust level is already high. Most of them take care of the introduction part as well, helping you to meet members who are relevant to what you do. Soho House is one of the most popular ones, around $600 to join and $3,000 a year to stay a member. As with everything, there are levels to this, too. Core Club NYC is $15,000 to join and 15K in dues. And if you know the Aman hotel chain, there is a secret club with a $200,000 initiation fee and 15K per year to get access to their restaurants, lounges, and spas. Poor people think that rich people pay three plus million for a Bugatti because it goes fast, but that's not really true. When you buy one, you become a member of the elite Bugatti Club. So you now have access to exclusive events where other people who can afford Bugattis hang out together. Number 14, philanthropic foundations. Everyone says they want more control over where their tax money goes to. So of course the rich have figured it out. Let's just put you on game. Okay, these tools are called DAFFs or donor advised funds. Or if you're really rich, you do a full private foundation. Let's say you bought some Nvidia shares a couple of years ago before the AI boom and now they've appreciated like crazy. Selling them, well, it would trigger a tax event. So, what the rich do is they set up a foundation, donate the shares, and deduct the current market value off their taxes because charitable contributions are deductible. So, you skip that capital gains tax. The awesome part, well, the DAFF or foundation can issue grants whenever it wants to almost anything it feels worth funding. The best part, it costs $100 to set up a DAFF. Fidelity Charitable and Schwab Charitable are great options, but you can pick your own. Foundations are around 15K and up and bring in some complexity. Once you've got your charitable entity, the assets can grow under your watch. And when you're ready to deploy the funds wherever your passion takes you, from scholarships, the gray area is for your own kids to hospital wings, art projects, whatever. Plus, I mean, it never hurts to farm some good reputation. Number 15, golden visas, citizenship, and passports. Now, most Americans have only now found out that citizenships are up for sale. They have been for a while, and you don't need to spend 5 million. You've got plenty of options. For the price of a condo, you could buy borderless living. Strategic foreign investments allows investors to fasttrack citizenship to many tax favorable countries and a second passport. When your government becomes your biggest risk, diversify governments. Since world politics have been rocky for a while now, in the past 5 years, there's been a 320% increase in the volume of millionaires hedging their political risk. Unlocking Shenin or international mobility and accessing new banking hubs. It doesn't hurt to have your money spread around the globe, okay? Multiple passports create asymmetric upside and near zero downside. So, here's how you do it. You go to Portugal or Dubai and for $500,000 you buy a piece of property that you rent out making you money every month. Because of your investment, you get a golden visa that gives you privileged access to the local economy. If you stay in the country less than 6 months, you don't pay income tax. And in time, usually 3 to 10 years, you can become a full citizen. Greece is 250K. So is Italy. The US used to be 800K, but now it's 5 million. Here's the full list. You can pause the video if you need to. Your passport is an underrated tool, okay? Even if you're not rich, many countries now offer digital nomad visas like Portugal, Croatia, and Malaysia. Just provide proof of remote income, often under 3,000 a month, and you can convert to permanent residency later. Looking at the list, you got an MBA level education for absolutely free. Okay. All we ask is that you subscribe to our channel and check out our sponsor and our app. It really does help. Now, we're curious to know which of these tools would you like us to do a dedicated video on where we expand on it even more. Let us know in the comments. And since you watched this already long video until the very end, it wouldn't be an Alux video without a secret bonus, would it? So, here it is. Meet the Bloomberg terminal, aka the terminal. So, it costs around $32,000 per year, and it's basically an all-in-one portal for investing. That includes real-time financial data, news, analytics, and trading. The chat function is highly used on Wall Street by professional traders, not the dgens that post on Reddit. And you can get the most accurate data available. It's become the golden standard of the market. Although overkill for retail investors, it is super valuable if you're a pro. Bloomberg journalists curate the news in real time, so you're the first to know how the market is moving. You mostly trade over-the-counter with other parties and have the best analytics available anywhere. And here's the fun part. If you're a student at a decent university, they might just have one sitting around with faculty members not knowing what it does or how to use it. So, jump on in and enjoy your edge. And since you're looking for an edge, here's a reward exclusive to the true Aluxers. Okay, so if this is your first time downloading the Alux app, scan this secret QR code for a massive $100 off the yearly plan. It'll be like our little secret, okay? If you made it this far, use the word pro in the comments. We'll reply to as many of you as we can. We hope very soon that you'll be able to leverage all of these tools to grow your wealth and take care of your family. Thank you for being a true Aluxer. We'll see you back next time. Until then, take care.