The Dividend Cafe - Thanksgiving Edition - November 26, 2025

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/48jNR1e Thanksgiving Reflections: A Heartfelt Tribute to The Bahnsen Group In this special Thanksgiving edition of Dividend Cafe, David Bahnsen, Managing Partner of The Bahnsen Group, shares his gratitude for the various teams and individuals who contribute to the firm's success. Bahnsen highlights the hard work of the content department, the growth and achievements of the tax, planning, risk, and operations departments, and the essential role of the leadership team. He also expresses deep personal thanks to his wife Jolene, the legacy of his late father, and the trust of their valued clients. The episode serves as a heartfelt reflection on the dedication and commitment of The Bahnsen Group during this season of gratitude. 00:00 Welcome to the Thanksgiving Edition 01:12 Personal Reflections on Thanksgiving 02:08 Content Creation and Media Team 04:04 Growth of the Tax Department 05:35 Planning and Risk Management 07:58 Business Administration and Operations 10:35 Investment Solutions Department 13:20 Leadership and Personal Gratitude 16:35 Honoring My Father's Legacy 17:56 Gratitude for Our Clients 19:36 Closing Remarks Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. Hello and welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of the Dividend Cafe. My name is David Bonson. I think most of you, if you're listening to this or watching, likely you know who I am, but just by way of background, not only am I the managing partner of the business and I do write and record the Dividing Cafe every week, normally coming out, of course, on Fridays. But today I get to be the person to express Thanksgiving, the gratitude that we have at the

Bonson Group for so many different things. And I want to really kind of personalize it to the things in particular that I'm grateful for. And while we normally use the Dividing Cafe to provide some form of current macroeconomic commentary or investment perspective each year during Thanksgiving week, largely because we recognize it is a holiday weekend and you're going to be busy with your own families and turkeys, but also we're going to be busy with our own families and turkeys on Friday. So we want to send out before the Thanksgiving weekend commences reflections on this very special holiday. It is my favorite holiday.

My kids are far too old for me to care about Halloween anymore. I do love Christmas and, of course, we always enjoy that holiday. But there has been something not only throughout my adult life, but even when I was younger, that always had a special place in my heart for Thanksgiving. And so rather than get overly personal about, out of here in the Diven Cafe, I just think it's appropriate to use the time to share with some of you that are connected to the Bonson Group that, if nothing else, read our frequent amount of commentary and perspective and point of view. But especially for those of you who are clients

that, you know, may appreciate the kind of inside baseball, a little under the hood look at what enables the company to go and for us to do what we do on behalf of our clients. So, I just want to share a few of these Thanksgiving reflections with you now. You know, the very thing you're watching by video right now or listening on podcast, you know, those that read the dividend cafe, there is social media components, there is web posting, there is video editing, there is production, there is, you know, a sort of curation of content. And it goes beyond just a weekly dividend cafe. We put something out every single day.

There are media appearances. There is an awful lot of writing I do, all in between various content I'm writing and the Dividing Cafe. There is something in the articles and other things. There's something around a minimum of five and usually closer to 10,000 words a week that are being written. There are at least three, if not four or five videos being edited and posted. There's just a lot that we try to put out by what. way of content that is very substantive and hopefully useful in portraying our belief system and allowing clients to become more informed about what it is that we believe and who it is

that we are and what it is we're doing and that content department Brian and Glenn that have run the department for the entire time we've had this business I've actually worked with them for nearly 30 years. Lucas has been in this department for a number of years now, and you're talking about three full-time people necessary to really serve all that we're doing in this vein, and I'm very thankful for them, but I really want to invite all of you benefit from this content to be thankful for them, because it is true. I do a lot of writing there, and, you know, Brian records those podcasts and does writing

in the middle of the week as well, but even beyond the intense amount of work that goes into the content creation, we have a content department that has to do a lot to make this go. There's a lot of design that goes into it, the work that Mina does out of our experience department. These are things that I think you deserve to hear about, and I'm thankful for all the work that is done there. You know, when I think about the various departments at the company, there's no particular order to the way I want to do this right now. But I do want to say that we didn't even have a tax department, you know, just a few years ago.

And having just completed the third year of our tax department and the incredible work that Jay has done there, as we get ready now, we have two new people joining the department. That will bring us to a department of nine tax professionals. And that is more people than we had when the entire practice. has started nearly 11 years ago. Our company launched with eight people, and we now have a tax group going into 2026 of nine people. And it has been an incredible blessing for us to integrate tax into the overall wealth management experience. We're delivering. It's something I believe is vital as a core part of our offering to be able to integrate all these different levels of

the wealth management process. But it was a big risk for us. It was a lot of work. work and to stand this up and have had it be as successful as it's been and the caliber of tax talent we have, I just am so incredibly thankful, very excited for the new people that will be coming in, but really thankful for Jay and Manka and Ardalen and Jordan and Carol and Vanessa, Susan. We just have a great department and I'm thankful for all TBG tax has meant in its so far reasonably short life. you know, you could move from tax rate into planning because I think that the planning side is another area where we had one person, I think it was about seven years ago, where we said

we no longer want our advisors to have to be in full-time relationship with client and also delivering and doing all the back-end work of the planning. We want to provide planning resources to them at an cost and investment but resource for the company that then serves the advisor who can better serve the clients. And Matt Gregory, under his leadership, we now have a planning department of 12 people. It was one person seven years ago. This is a vital part of our mission because I think we are an investment practice and we are a planning practice. and for us to not present this two-headed monster, to make one subordinate to the other gives the wrong messaging.

When people say, are you more of an investment practice or a planning practice? The answer is yes. And we are able to deliver that level of planning expertise and planning depth because of the great bench of talent we've accumulated there. And it goes beyond just the planners and great work that that whole team, that Matt is built out, but also the complex planning, the family office solutions. When I look at the depth of estate planning, we're able to do, and think of the talent we have in Matt and Nick and Yel, I think of the risk department that Sarah Leitsky has stood up.

We had zero people in that department four years ago, certainly five years ago. maybe it was beginning to take shape about four and a half years ago. But we can't properly serve clients without those right risk management resources. And to do so in a way that is entirely fiduciary and entirely client-centric, it takes a heart. And Sarah, in the leadership, she's brought her team with Patty and Jonah and recently added Jake, this is just a resource at TBG. and the fact that the planning tax, risk groups have grown the way they have so quickly,

I never want to take for granted that they are the extremely vital part of what we are. There is really a different company at TBG because of these resources, and I'm so very, very thankful. I talk a lot about how much the company has grown. And one of the things that was so profound in 2025 as a result of the growth was our need to really stand up a business administration department. And for me to be able to hire a CFO of the caliber of Luis Garcia, someone that I've now been able to call a friend for over 33 years, literally, and his depth and experience as a professional CFO and now to have a facilities department, a finance department, to invest into our human capital the way that we're able to, bringing in Peter and Ryan and Janet, there's just a need. to professionalize this back-end business administration. And I know most of these functions are not things that clients are doing with on the front end, but they are things that make possible us running our business so that we can

better serve clients. I don't take that for granted. And it's a huge source of Thanksgiving in 2025 what Luis and this business administration department represent. You know, it's only a matter of time you can get to the operations department when you're talking about the things that you're thankful for at TBG, they are in a lot of ways of front line and client communications. Our operations department is not like other operations departments I've ever seen. There is an activity of work, activity load, there is an efficiency,

there is a speed, there is a volume, there is a tenacity. It's just different. I believe that we know what that means internally, but I want you all to know that interact with the operations Department, this is a special group that is doing more work and doing it better than anything I've ever seen or observed, and that my peer group communicates to me could even really exist in the universe. We grew to a point where we thought it best a year ago to divide into an Eastern Division Operations Department led by Laura Sauer and a Western Division led by Beth out of our Newport office. And this entire bench of operations, folks from Alexis, Tammy, Carly, Camille, Darlene, Abigail, Natalie, Sarah. We have two Sarah D's,

Megan, Hannah, Katie, Madison, Andrew Kristen, and Brenda. I say all their names because it's just important that they get the recognition. Advisors are people that are a little bit sometimes more visible and on the kind of, you know, front end of things. But the operations back and middle office work is so vital. They do it so well. And I am very thankful. I mentioned that the challenge of being planning focused and investment focused practice all at once is very, very important to us. But I have to say that we could not do that without a investment solutions department that drove that standard, that expectation forward. we insource so much of what we do when it comes to investing client capital and managing client money and the decisions that go in there are research being internalized,

our alternatives being internalized, the trading function being internalized. There is a significant amount of work that we bring in-house and that so many other peers or competitors or colleagues would be outsourcing. And not only am I thankful for the leadership that Kenny Malina's brought to this department, Kenny has been named a partner in the company because of that. But just what we have with veterans in Mani and Eddie, Gail has been in our alternatives department a long time now. We have hired newer people this year from Ishaan to patients to Micah to Arthur.

it really is a great group of people, and I am so thankful that we can continue to be an investment forward in practice and that we have the talent and depth to go do all this. Now, of course, you cannot have a company like ours. I mean, what becomes this bedrock, I've talked about all these different departments that support the advisors in delivering the client experience. And I will spare you the long list of names of all of our different. private wealth advisors. But we do have what we call PWAG, our private wealth advisor group, that really are the intermediaries between the practice, our mission, our services, our client

experience, the things we believe in, and our clients. They are responsible to know them, to care for them, to deliver that experience that we believe in, not just as a business model, but as a mission. Not only their alignment with our belief system, with our worldview, but that commitment to delivering an experience to our clients, it's an ecosystem, it's an ethos, and they're constantly aspiring to be better and to be deeply involved in clients' lives

in the way that we think the advisor-client relationship is supposed to work. So I am very thankful for all of them, and I hope you are too. The leadership team we have, as I get ready to kind of wrap some of this up, I need to be clear, you know, some of you know me as the managing partner in the business, I have poured my heart and soul into this. And I don't want to take away from how hard I work at it, but I do want to make clear that I don't think I was ever really a micromanager. I mean, I was doing several people's jobs and working very, very hard.

But what I had to do was stand up a leadership team to support me and to do so at a senior level that would really give that lift in the way I did my job, in the lift in the way our business conducted itself so that we could better serve clients. To have Trevor Cummings leading our private wealth advisor group, to have Jolene Bonson driving our experience that we deliver both to clients and to our team. Brian Saitel and the investment side, a longtime partner as co-CIO being there for such vital parts of our investment process. Luis Garcia, I mentioned now as CFO inside that internal business leadership. And then Joe Klein as president this year, that announcement being something so deserved but so vital to the vision for what we want to have as a fully empowered leadership team. a group of executives that are driving a better company, integrating across our departments to serve clients better, and to go implement the strategy that we have that we can continue to be successful as a company.

I couldn't do it all my own, and I'm so thankful for the leadership team I have next to me. And I talk about Jolene being on the leadership team, but I need to say that obviously you know Jolene to be my wife and there is a support that comes from that that nobody could possibly comprehend that goes further back than of course the seven years she's been inside the company seven and a half years now but really represents the entire almost 25 years of our marriage and 25 years in my career in financial services that she's been that partner and that confidant and that support that there's nothing that I've done in the business that we haven't done together We love this company and we're able to do this better as husband and wife,

and I'm thankful for that opportunity to work alongside my wife in that way. There are, of course, many partners. I'm not going to go through all of them that we have at the company. There are vendors we work with, our custodians with Fidelity and Charles Schwab, the back and middle office partnership we have with the great team at Hightower. I think of people like John Malden and Renee Annanow and the research partners at Stratigis and Govkow. I think of our media partners, strategy voice, my dear friends at Fox, Bloomberg, CNBC. There's just so many alliances, strategic partnerships out there that are a part of what we're doing day in and day out.

And I just want to say happy Thanksgiving to all of them. Before I wrap this up with some comments on our clients, I do want to say that we're going to in about two weeks, be it the 30-year anniversary of when I lost my father, Greg Bonson, he would be 77 this year. He passed away 30 years ago. The reason I bring him up is a source of gratitude and Thanksgiving this year, connected to TBG in the business, is although it would be easy for me to say, I'm thankful to him because he was such a great dad and he was my friend and my mentor and all those things.

But when I think about TBG and the work ethic that has come under this business, the worldview, the belief system, the things that I think have really made us the company we are in terms of the devotion to first principles, these are not things I came up with on my own. These are things that were taught to me that I learned from a very, very special person who had an intellect like no one you've ever met and yet also in the short life he had instilled into me those things that I believe have been vital for why this business is what it is. And so I just am thankful even more than normal this time of year for the legacy and memory

of my late father. And I will close as it ought to be with the best for last, which are our clients. which are the end to which we work because we do not manage money for the sake of managing money. We manage money. We develop planning solutions. We are in the business of being solutions providers. We try to be very advanced and sophisticated and clever and savvy and industrious and tenacious and the way we do all those things, but we don't do them in an abstract.

They are targeted at an end, and that end are people. Those people are clients and they are unique. They have individual needs, individual goals, stories, inspiring stories in so many cases, personalities, different challenges. And the fact that this is a human endeavor, I've said this over the years, but it is just something that sometimes I feel like I have an appreciation for in a way that I could never make you understand what it means. I love the work we do at Bonson Group, but I love the people we aim the work towards. That this is such an intensely human business with clients who have to trust us with something so extremely important to them. We are committed because of the trust that clients have given us to being trustworthy.

And that to me is one of the great blessings of this career. is the trust we have from clients we love and our day-to-day intense commitment to being trustworthy. It is a wonderful career that we have chosen, and I am so thankful for all that we get to do this for. I will leave it there. I appreciate your bearing with an exception to the rule of what happens in the dividend cafe, but hopefully you can hear from my heart that we have an awful lot to be thankful for at the Bonson Group. We're thankful for all of you. Thank you for listening to Dividendin Cafe, for watching Dividend Cafe, and most of all, those of you who read Divided Cafe, you may have heard that's my favorite.

Have a very, very happy Thanksgiving. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with Hightower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC, and with Hightower Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Securities are offered through Hightower Securities LLC. Advisory services are offered through Hightower Advisors, LLC. This is not an offer to buy ourselves securities. No investor process is free risk. There is no guarantee that the investment process or investment opportunities referenced to rein will be profitable.

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