Dear Clients,
I have more personal news than financial planning or market news this time around, so I am going to lead with the good stuff.
I am now a married man! On May 2nd, Emma and I finally tied the knot. The day could not have gone any better. We got married just outside Columbus, Ohio, close to Emma's large family, and I am glad we did. Her crowd turned out in full, a good number of my own family made the trip, and our closest friends filled in the rest. It is a rare thing to look around a room and see nearly everyone who matters to you in one place.
Despite specializing in financial planning for a living, I am not that much of a planner outside of personal finance. I will happily map out a thirty-year retirement income plan and completely lose track of what I am supposed to make for dinner. It’s easy to overlook how many little things go into planning a wedding. Lucky for me I have Emma. She combined thousands of little things and turned a date on the calendar into the wedding of a lifetime.
She even got me through dance lessons. Once a week for 6 months I snuck out of the office a little early to learn an actual choreographed first dance. I will not oversell my talents here. I am Dave's son, and if any of you have ever seen Dave dance, you know it took a lot of practice. But we pulled it off, and I have Emma to thank for that too. I am more grateful for her than I know how to put in a newsletter. After years of helping clients plan for the milestones in their lives, it was truly a gift to stand in the middle of one of my own.
While Emma was weighing whether to include a jazz trio at the reception, my one job was to plan the honeymoon. A few days after the wedding we took off for sixteen days in the Canary Islands. We split our time across three islands and really tried to soak up what made each one different. The first stretch was all adventure. We hiked volcanoes, went whale watching, and tasted our way through the local wine. On the second island we explored the historic city of Las Palmas. Then we ended the trip the way every honeymoon should end, parked by the pool with nowhere to be and no one to answer to but each other.
It was the first time in a long while that I truly stepped away, and I needed it more than I realized. Sixteen days to focus on nothing but Emma and the start of our life together. I even made it through the entire first week without checking the markets, which longtime clients will recognize as a personal record. It was a much-needed pause from the practice and a rare chance to slow down and reflect.
We came home to one more new arrival. We got a puppy. Her name is Rhubarb, she is a Border Collie/Poodle mix, and she has opinions about everything, mostly about why we are not throwing the ball yet. Thanks to her, I am getting to the office a little earlier these days, whether I planned to or not. Our evenings now run on her schedule: training, a walk to the park, and throwing the ball until one of us gives out first. So if you call the office and hear barking in the background this summer, now you know.
Here is the one work-related thought I will leave you with, and it comes straight out of that honeymoon.
Stepping away worked because I let it. For sixteen days I stopped thinking about the next task, the next call, the next thing on the list, and I gave my attention to Emma and to us. I have spent a lot of years treating "always on" like a virtue. This trip reminded me it is not. What changed was me. I came home clearer, steadier, and more useful to the people who count on me than I would have been if I had never put it down.
The truth is, I could step away because I knew I was leaving everything in good hands. I have Dave, Kim, and Jane. I knew that anything that came up while I was gone would be handled, and handled well, because it always is. The few things that genuinely needed me would simply be waiting when I got back, in good order, with nothing dropped. It is the whole reason this firm works the way it does. No one here is the only person who knows your situation. Your relationship is not with one advisor who might be out of the office. It is with a team that has your back every day, whether you need us that week or not.
That is exactly what we want for you. The point of a good plan is that you do not have to carry it around in your head. You should be able to sit at your son or daughter's wedding, listening to the jazz trio you decided to splurge on, fully present and proud, without a quiet voice in the back of your mind asking whether you can really afford it. You answered that question already. We answered it together, long before the save-the-dates went out. That is the job. We do the worrying so you can do the living.
So if you have been putting off a trip, or a visit, or simply a real break, consider this your nudge. Go. Be present for what matters. We have things handled here, and we always will.
Thank you for being part of this firm's story while Emma and I start a new chapter of ours. I am grateful, and I am glad to be back and ready to go.
Warmly,
Austin Boniface