Personal Wealth Manager

See: Stockbroker.

What does a personal wealth manager do? Personal…wealth. Sounds like a big rich guy rolling around in $100 bills instead of a mattress, yeah?

A personal wealth manager usually comes from a stockbroker background. They understand the heavy butt-kissing of that gig. It needs to be done to keep difficult wealthy clients happy, so they'll continue paying the 1%-a-year fee, plus whatever other charges they incur, like commissions and other fees.

The job is generally housed inside of investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and others, and the banks generally charge that 1% for managing a client’s money. Each year. Year. After year. After year.

So, if a wealth manager is handling the savings for a client with $100 million invested with them, the fee for just that one client is a million bucks a year. And the wealth manager has heft, or leverage, or power, when they negotiate on the client’s behalf to get into whatever theoretically exclusive hedge fund, or private equity fund, or other fancy, for-the-rich-only investment vehicles are out there and feel “hot” that day.

In theory, by being inside of an investment bank, the PWM has access to valuable research or discounted pricing on fees in whatever funds might be appropriate for the client, and to all of the other resources offered by the bank.

"How’s your cough there, Mr. Client? We have a nice estate and will planning department down the hall here. Want to donate money? We can show you a tax efficient way to do so…"

Stuff like that. Tons of services the wealthy need to, you know…stay wealthy. On a day-to-day basis, you are the fork in the road, stock and bond research goes through you...you add your own spin to it, and then you disseminate it to your clients.

And for that little add of salt and pepper to the Stone Soup of finance, you get to earn a modest salary, maybe $50-$80k, depending on where you live..but then annual bonuses can be in the millions, based on how big and lucrative your clients are.

Bottom line: if you’re reasonably good at managing money, but not good enough to be an actual portfolio slash money manager, and you know how to butt-kiss with the best of ‘em, well...maybe this is a gig for you.