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In his 2024 annual letter, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called for a fundamental rethink of how we approach retirement.

 With people living longer than ever, he warned that millions may risk outliving their savings. According to BlackRock’s research, 51% of Americans are more worried about running out of money in retirement than any other risk. Fink emphasized the need to shift from a savings-only mindset to one rooted in long-term investing. Even a modest 0.5% increase in annual returns, he noted, can grow retirement savings by 14.5% over a 40-year horizon, highlighting the crucial role of capital markets and private assets in closing the retirement gap.

Private market investments such as private equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure have consistently delivered long-term returns above those of traditional public markets. According to Bain & Company’s 2024 Global Private Equity Report, global buyout funds generated net returns of 11% to 15% over the past two decades.

These returns, when compounded over 20 to 30 years, can turn disciplined annual investments into multi-million-dollar portfolios, outpacing bank savings or short-term stock market speculation.

For younger investors, time is their greatest advantage. Through compounding, consistent contributions, especially in high-growth private markets, can lead to meaningful long-term wealth.

Take this example: A 30-year-old investor allocates $50,000 annually to a diversified private market portfolio targeting a 10% average annual return. Here’s how that investment could grow:

In the final 10 years alone, the portfolio grows by more than $6 million, illustrating just how much impact starting early can have on long-term outcomes.

You can model similar scenarios by entering their own financial details into The Family Office’s 

. The tool helps estimate future retirement income and measures progress toward long-term goals. You can easily adjust inputs such as contribution levels, time horizons, and risk appetite, gaining a clearer picture of how early investing influences long-term financial outcomes.

In the GCC, saving is second nature. But too often, that capital remains idle in low-yield accounts or concentrated in local real estate. While this cautious approach feels safe, it can quietly erode long-term financial potential.

Inflation diminishes the value of money over time, and delaying investment means missing out on the powerful effects of compounding. The longer wealth stays uninvested, the harder it becomes to catch up later.

Shifting from a savings mindset to an investment mindset is no longer just a good idea, it’s essential for those who want to preserve and grow their wealth in a changing world.

Helping the Next Generation Plan with Confidence

At The Family Office, we’ve developed digital solutions designed to meet the needs of today’s investors, especially those starting early and thinking long term. From defining retirement objectives to exploring private market strategies and monitoring progress over time, our tools support each stage of the investment journey.

With these tools, investors gain a transparent view of their portfolios and the ability to engage with their advisors when it matters most. This ecosystem was built to simplify decision-making, eliminate guesswork, and bring clarity to long-term planning.

We work exclusively with investors starting at $300,000, building globally diversified portfolios across private equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure, designed to grow wealth steadily and preserve it across generations.

Retirement isn’t just about stopping work. It’s about living with freedom and financial clarity. For young professionals in the GCC, early investing in private markets may be the single most effective way to achieve that vision.

As Larry Fink urged, retirement planning needs a reset. The tools and strategies exist, but it’s up to each investor to start.

With the right guidance and the right investments, retirement wealth doesn’t have to be uncertain. It can be exponential.

The Power of Starting Early: How Private Markets Grow Retirement Wealth

The case for private equity is not a hard one to make. Its returns were consistently ranked among the highest compared with all other asset classes.

The challenge is implementation. Put plainly, PE funds are difficult for individual investors to access. There are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly, most PE funds target institutional investors who deal with far larger sums of capital. The minimum investment required by most funds is, therefore, often a seven-figure sum (e.g. $5 million).

Furthermore, to avoid concentrating risk in a single fund, most PE investors spread their capital across 10 or even 20 different funds for maximum diversification. Even assuming a modest investment of $2.5 million per fund, this equates to $25-50 million of total committed capital.

Not only this, but the terms of PE investments typically lock up investor capital for the duration of the fund’s life (10-12 years).

It is therefore understandable that private equity remains out of reach for non-institutional investors, who cannot afford this level and duration of capital commitment.

This limited access is a genuine problem. 99% of companies are privately held, and so there are many more opportunities in the private markets than in the public markets. What has been lacking until recently is a way to gather and deploy the capital of thousands of individual investors to make the most of the opportunities.

This is where evergreen funds enter the picture. As the name suggests, such funds do not have a fixed lifecycle like typical “drawdown” funds (raise capital, deploy capital, return capital).

Investors are able to add and withdraw funds with greater freedom (i.e., without the decade-long lock-up period). Perhaps more importantly, evergreen funds can offer far lower entry thresholds, in some cases as low as $25,000, well within the reach of the typical affluent investor.

Evergreen funds that act as ‘multi-managers’ also provide access to top-tier traditional PE funds that might otherwise be out of reach to individuals. This is important, as performance between different funds varies considerably, and securing access to a top-quartile PE fund could deliver as much as 14% extra annual return in comparison to a bottom-quartile fund.

At this point, it would be right to ask if this is not all too good to be true, surely, this higher liquidity must come at a cost? And surely the high minimums at traditional firms are in place for a reason?

Both observations are correct up to a point.

It is true that there is a cost to the higher liquidity. In evergreen funds, part of the invested capital is kept in a so-called ‘liquidity sleeve’, to ensure that funds are available for investors who wish to withdraw. This liquid portion of the funds is lower-earning, which does have an impact on returns.

It is also true that evergreen funds are more regulated and have unique operational complexities involved in running them (particularly ensuring that inflows and outflows do not disrupt the workings of the fund), and this complexity naturally translates into a higher cost for the investor.

However, the above is offset by two important factors.

One, the flexibility of the evergreen model allows diversification by sector, manager, and geography, meaning that the overall risk of the investment is lower.

. This contrasts with the ‘drawdown’ model, where most of the capital remains essentially idle for much of the fund’s life. The contrast is shown in the chart below, the blue portion denoting ‘actively deployed capital’ - in other words, genuine “private equity”.

The slow start inherent in traditional drawdown PE is behind the so-called ‘J-curve’ phenomenon, where returns can be low or even negative in the initial years of a fund’s life. This is avoided in the evergreen model.

 shows that an evergreen PE strategy can equal or exceed that of a traditional, drawdown-based strategy.

In addition to potentially higher returns, the benefit for the individual investor is, as noted, one of initial access and ongoing liquidity, neither of which the typical model can offer.

This article has been a very brief precis of the case for evergreen funds. They are not a miracle “cure-all” solution, but do represent something genuinely new and useful, insofar as they broaden the universe of PE for both investors and firms looking to raise capital.

Data from Preqin shows that the number of global evergreen funds doubled to more than 500 in the years between 2018 and 2023, accounting for more than $350 billion of capital.

 The fact that even institutional investors are interested in it as a solution underscores its legitimacy, not only as an access-widener, but as a smart approach to gaining private markets exposure.

We believe it is a space worth keeping an eye on in the future.

Democratizing Private Equity with Evergreen Funds

The centerpiece of the symposium - in the eyes of both the markets and the media - is the session with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”). This year was Chairman Powell’s eighth and final speech at the conference.

The media coverage has largely focused on a single statement which, supposedly, hints at the possibility of an upcoming rate cut. The precise words used were, “With policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance”.

Markets reacted strongly to this wording,

 with the likelihood of a September rate cut increasing from 75% to nearly 90%.

Powell’s 21-minute speech was a dense, and somewhat opaque, reflection of the current state of disorientation in which the Fed, and most market commentators, find themselves.

Powell noted that the labor market is in a ‘curious’ state of balance. Hiring has slowed, but so too has demand, meaning that the labor market is still stable.

However, he believes that this balance is precarious, and recessionary risks are mounting. Tariffs may keep inflation high, while restrictive immigration may keep employment tight, 

potentially creating a stagflationary risk for the Fed.

The Fed's new strategic framework, formalized in its latest five-year review, shows a departure from its previous strategy, formed in an era of low-interest rates, slow growth and potential deflations.

The committee is officially moving back towards targeting 2% inflation (as opposed to targeting an 

 of 2%), and aiming for a balanced labor market. Powell acknowledged that the neutral rate may well have moved higher in the post-pandemic era. The current, relatively high rate of borrowing gives the Fed flexibility to move in either direction.

Finally, he explicitly disavowed the concept of a “preset” course, reiterating the need for data-dependent decision making, a concept with which Fed followers will by now be highly familiar.

One of the most notable observations of the Powell speech was the distinction drawn between cyclical and structural changes. His point was twofold: firstly, it is difficult to know if a trend is cyclical or structural.

Second, and equally importantly, the Fed’s power is largely confined to the cyclical realm. By implication, an era of structural change is one in which the Fed must react to rather than set the trend, or even predict it.

The theme of the conference as a whole was ‘Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy’. The 18 other speakers largely focused on the more important, longer-term structural changes such as demographic, fiscal, and technological developments.

For example, declining fertility rates and the resulting ageing populations have the effect of increasing demand for assets, while adding to the fiscal burden on governments in the form of higher entitlements.

On the other hand, the rapid development of AI has the potential to increase productivity and potentially provide the growth to offset fiscal strain, especially if (as suggested) it leads not to a displacement of labor but a reallocation of jobs.

In our opinion, it is these structural trends, rather than the comparative minutiae such as Fed committee appointments and/or firings, that investors should focus on.

Investing is a long-term game, and focusing on long-term trends provides the surest mainstay against the short-term panics and preoccupations that blow too many off course.

Trump Expands Retirement Plans to Include Private Market Investments | Abdulmohsin Al Omran Shares Insights on Bloomberg Asharq

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