Protect What Powers You: Strategic Health & Care Planning for Generational Resilience

For ultra high-net-worth (“UHNW”) families, integrating health into wealth planning isn’t optional — it’s essential for legacy, performance, and peace of mind.

The good news: Individuals today are living longer. Over the last 200 years, life expectancy in the US has doubled and now averages 78.8 years.¹ The bad news: This tremendous gift also brings new responsibilities. With extended longevity comes the reality of rising healthcare needs, increasing complexity of care, and the need for thoughtful and prolonged preparation. Just as families plan deliberately for education, retirement, and estate transitions, strategic planning for health and care has become a critical pillar of generational resilience. For UHNW families, where stakes are high and expectations of quality and coordination are nonnegotiable, this planning is both a safeguard and a legacy strategy.

The upcoming holiday season brings families together in ways that few other times of year do. Amid celebrations and meaningful traditions, these visits often reveal quiet shifts in a loved one’s health — a slower pace, moments of forgetfulness, or increased reliance on support. Noticing these changes is not just emotional; it can be a strategic inflection point, enabling families to plan proactively and ensure that care aligns with their values, expectations, and legacy goals.

Health is not simply another expense line — it is the engine that powers leadership, decision-making, and legacy stewardship. Concierge homecare firm TrustHouse frames this as “protecting what powers you”: treating vitality as a critical family asset that deserves the same rigor as financial planning.

Healthcare costs continue to rise steadily, particularly in areas like long-term care, home-based support, and management of chronic conditions. Even the most affluent families can be caught off-guard by the scale of resources required — or by how quickly unplanned medical expenses can erode liquidity or disrupt portfolio strategy.

Incorporating health-related planning into broader financial architecture serves to ensure that:

In short, health planning isn’t an add-on — it’s a strategic component of wealth preservation.

High-performing families build elite teams — for investment, legal strategy, philanthropy, and succession. Health deserves the same holistic approach. TrustHouse’s philosophy for “high performers” emphasizes assembling a trusted circle of care well before it’s needed, led by a “quarterback” such as a concierge homecare partner, geriatric care manager, or healthcare navigation firm who can navigate the medical, logistical, and emotional dimensions of care.

A well-structured care network can:

This circle functions as a living care engine — a team you can reliably call upon, rather than cobble together in moments of crisis.

Reciprocally, health decisions shape financial outcomes, and financial strategy profoundly influences health trajectories. A concierge care model bridges this divide by ensuring that families have both the resources and the right people in place.

When care is proactive, complications are prevented, hospitalizations are reduced, and financial drain is minimized. Integrating care planning into wealth strategy builds resilience in the face of medical risk rather than relegating it to afterthought. When trusted advisors across medical, legal, and financial domains converge, families make decisions with clarity, not fragmentation.

Proactive wellness is as much about building a durable legacy infrastructure for future generations as it is about optimizing the present.

Longevity planning becomes more powerful when it recognizes that men and women age differently. While every individual’s journey is unique, decades of research highlight meaningful distinctions in physical, cognitive, and emotional aging trajectories. Thoughtful family strategies take these differences into account at their core.

Maintaining strength, mobility, and balance is central to preserving independence — particularly for high-achieving individuals accustomed to performance. Functional reserve (muscle mass, gait stability, joint health) tends to decline with age, but patterns differ between men and women. Hormonal transitions, including menopause and andropause, affect bone density, metabolism, and body composition differently. Preventive strength training, biomechanical assessments, and hormone-informed nutrition can sustain mobility well into later decades.²

Sleep architecture and circadian rhythms diverge by gender, with notable implications for aging brains. Women are more likely to experience insomnia and circadian misalignment, while men have higher rates of sleep apnea.³ These differences influence metabolic risk, emotional resilience, and cognitive aging trajectories. Tailored sleep profiling, hormone transition support, and chronotherapy can protect sleep as a strategic asset for cognitive and physical health.

Gender differences also shape emotional and cognitive trajectories. Women have higher lifetime rates of mood and anxiety disorders, while men may experience different patterns of cognitive decline linked to inflammation and immune pathways.⁴ Personalized cognitive training, social engagement, and anticipatory mental health strategies can help sustain cognitive reserve and emotional wellbeing across aging milestones.

For family offices and UHNW families, planning earlier and acting deliberately can elicit the greatest gains. Integrating health as a core planning domain involves several strategic steps:

For UHNW families, health is infrastructure for legacy, leadership, and intergenerational continuity. Classic planning elements like cost modeling, liquidity reserves, and provider networks remain essential. But the differentiator lies in anticipating aging trajectories — including gender-specific needs — and building proactive, coordinated strategies around them.

Further than managing risk, when families treat health like the strategic asset it is, they’re preserving performance, protecting wealth, and ensuring that the people who power their legacy can do so with strength, clarity, and dignity.

Plan early. Act deliberately. Protect what powers you.

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Disclosures

The information contained herein is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or investment advisory services. The content is not intended to provide personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. All investments involve risk, and readers should consult with a qualified professional regarding their individual circumstances before making any financial decisions.