What is Stealth Wealth?

A guide to stealth wealth

Stealth wealth is the practice of minimizing the publicly available information about one’s income, assets, and net-worth in order to maximize privacy. This level of secrecy typically extends to family, friends, or potential business partners. There are a number of benefits to stealth wealth, including personal privacy and wealth preservation.

If your income, assets, or net worth can be easily ascertained, you may become the target of frivolous lawsuits. Under the widespread doctrine of joint and several liability, if more than one defendant is responsible for a plaintiff’s injury, any one of them may be held liable for the full amount of the damage award. This means that a lawyer will often concentrate on the person with the highest net worth, instead of the one most at fault.

Stealth wealth is important not just in preserving wealth, but accumulating it. Stealth wealth is based on the concept of information asymmetry, where one party in a transaction or event has better information than the other. It is always advantageous to have better information than another party, whether in your personal life or professional career. This is commonly demonstrated when people negotiate their salaries with a new employer. Prospective employees typically lose ground in salary negotiations if their prospective employer…