Dear Valued Clients and Friends,
I realized many of you just want the down and dirty Dividend Cafe and all its macroeconomic and investment coolness, and I assure you that is pretty much what I love doing most each week – showing the world my coolness by writing about monetary policy or dividend growth investing. But we made it a tradition a number of years ago to use this week to do something in Dividend Cafe, and something different is in store for you today in the Dividend Cafe. Please join along as it actually involves you!
Jump on into a special Thanksgiving week edition of the Dividend Cafe …
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An Annual Tradition
The tradition has become to use this week’s Dividend Cafe as a chance for me to express gratitude for some things, this being Thanksgiving week and all that. We send it on Wednesday versus Friday because we recognize that most readers and listeners are well into their holiday weekend after today, and because I want our content team to be into their holiday weekend after today, as well. So let me start there in these reflections of Thanksgiving … the Content team at TBG that delivers the Dividend Cafe each and every week. I have worked with Brian Tong and Glen Hall in some professional capacity for nearly thirty years now, and since I lured them into my company to stand up an in-house content team about ten years ago, they have worked tirelessly to cultivate a content platform that delivers our beliefs, convictions, and commentary to those who are most interested. We have gone from 500 subscribers of the written Dividend Cafe to over 30,000 subscribers, from a start-up podcast to one that now has over 4.3 million lifetime downloads, and to a weekly routine that involves five days a week editing, curating, and delivering. And while Dividend Cafe is the heart of our content engine, I assure you, between media, other podcasts, other writings, and just the nonstop “stuff” I throw at them, there is plenty more where Dividend Cafe came from. Brian, Glen, and Lukas make up the content team at TBG, and I am not only very thankful for their work, which makes your reading this possible, but I truly hope you all are thankful, as well.
As long as I am on the subject of the team at TBG, allow me to move from our Content Department to our Tax Department, which, in three years, has established itself as one of the crown jewels of our practice. With two new tax professionals joining in the coming weeks, we now have more people in our tax group than we had in the entire company when it launched less than eleven years ago. I truly believe Jay has been a servant-leader in where he has taken things thus far, and we can’t wait to announce what is coming. Thank you, Jay, Menka, Jordan, Ardalan, Vanessa, Susan, Carol, and two more to announce soon …
We are a wealth management group, which means we are an investment company and a planning company, and our value proposition sits at the nexus of those two things. Our Planning department was one person seven years ago, and we now have a dozen in the group, growing 4x in both quantity and quality. Matt Gregory’s leadership has been extraordinary, and I just cannot say enough about the work our planners have done to make us a planning-forward enterprise worthy of the name.
Planning and Tax are pretty core services in a properly understood wealth management offering, and they intersect heavily with Risk Management. Sarah Leitzke, along with Patty and Jonah and now Jake, make up a four-person risk team that is four more people than we had here just five years ago. The complement Risk plays to Planning, as well as integration with the Family Office Solutions work of Nick, Joel, and Kenneth, is truly special. I am thankful for the depth and sophistication we have in these complex planning capabilities, thankful that our estate planning capability has evolved to the level it has (death and taxes remain inevitable, it seems), and truly thankful for the heart Sarah brings to Risk, which we sill just say is as client-centric as anyone in her line of work could possibly be. All in our Planning, Risk, and Family Office silos represent the talent and client-focused people I always dreamed of having.
A major cause for Thanksgiving in 2025 was the build-out of a Business Administration department to better professionalize the internal Finance, Facilities, and Human Talent functions of our growing practice. Having a CFO with the experience and ability of Luis Garcia is a huge cause for Thanksgiving, and now with the capabilities Ryan brings to facilities and technology, Janet brings to administration, and Peter to Finance, it is really a major evolution for TBG. I am a better leader because of what Luis is doing in this department, and the stronger this backbone becomes, the better we as a company serve our clients.
The Operations Department at TBG is not like most Operations Departments. The workload is different, the tenacity is different, the attention to detail is different, the volume of activity is different, and the care for clients is different. The divisional system we implemented a year ago, with Beth running our Western U.S. operations and Laura overseeing Eastern U.S. operations, was a home run, and each person in this department has proven to be an incredible carrier of TBG culture and service. I am so thankful for Beth and Laura and the work that Alexis, Tammie, Carly, Camille, Darleen, Abigail, Natalie, Sarah D1, Megan, Sarah D2, Hannah, Katie, Madison, Andrew, Kristen, and Brenda provide each and every day.
Yes, we are an investment practice, and at TBG, that means something different from what it does at many other places. Our trading is done in-house. Our research is done in-house. Our analytics is done in-house. Our alternatives work is done in-house. We added some wonderful talent this year in Ishan, Patience, Micah, and Arthur. We have veterans now in Gale, Liping, Eddie, and Manuel. And Kenny’s leadership not only earned him a spot as a partner at TBG, but has really given us an Investment Solutions group I am proud of each and every day.
Obviously, we are as good a practice as our advisors are good in caring for their clients. I believe our advisor group (I will spare you all the long list of names) is absolutely incomparable in their love for our clients and their investment in delivering our services and mission to clients. We grow no more than our ability to have advisors who can be in relationships with clients, and I believe we have a unique, special group of financial professionals at TBG that not only bring purpose and passion to the cause, but are totally aligned with the TBG worldview that is truly special.
It should go without saying that at the top of my Thanksgiving list is the Leadership Team I work alongside every day. I never thought of myself as a micro-manager, but I was a person who took on more than a human should, because I felt I had to. Having Trevor to take on so much leadership of our Private Wealth Advisor Group, Luis as a CFO, Joleen in her unprecedented addition of style and heart to all dimensions of our client experience, Brian to help drive a better investment process and result, and Joe Klein to really be that right hand implementor of company organization and strategy, is the game-changer we long needed at TBG. These five people are more than just outstanding company leaders; they are my friends, my partners, and my trusted confidants, and they truly live the mission that is the heart of what TBG will always be.
I will do a special shout-out here for Joleen, not just because she is my wife, but because the Experience that she (and the extraordinary design talent she has in Mina Widmer) delivers to our TEAM and to our CLIENTS is truly special. We opened our ninth and tenth offices at TBG this year (Grand Rapids and Dallas) and massively upgraded and grew two offices (Phoenix and Newport Beach). If TBG were only an interior design company, I think we are the best in the land, but you basically have a wealth management company where the interior design and heartfelt client and team experience come for free. I am positive I speak for the vast majority of the ~90-person TBG family when I say that our team retreat in Dallas a few weeks back was a highlight of the year, both professionally and personally. Joleen has brought a heart to this company in the over seven years she has been inside the practice that I am extremely thankful for.
And she has, of course, been my partner, sidekick, confidant, and friend for much longer than that. As we get close to 25 years of marriage, and celebrate 25 years in the wealth advisory space together, I am reminded of all we have ever done with TBG and this incredibly fulfilling career we have done together. That is more cause for Thanksgiving than I can explain in words.
Thirty Years
In early December, it will be thirty years since I lost my dad and best friend. That means he would turn 77 this year. I am thankful for him in the way people with such an amazing father should be, but I am thankful for him specifically for what I believe about this company, as well. He gave me a work ethic through both modeling and instruction that sits at the daily foundation of what TBG is. He challenged me to think out of first principles and not be blown around like a wave in the sea. As I come upon this weighty anniversary of his passing, I am struck by how much of my adult life and career I am indebted to him for. I couldn’t have received his entire intellect (no mere mortal could), but whatever traits I have had to run this business, I got from him. And I am thankful for his legacy and memory.
Our Friends and Partners
From the vast team at Hightower, to our custodial partners at Fidelity and Schwab, to the research I rely on from Strategas and GaveKal, to key friends like John Mauldin and Rene Aninao, to the media folks at Strategy Voice, WooHoo, World, Fox, CNBC, and Bloomberg, to our many money manager partners, to so many I am inexcusably omitting, it takes a village to do all this. And we have a wonderful village of friends and partners that make it all happen. I wish all of them a very Happy Thanksgiving and hope they know how truly thankful I am for all of them.
And what it is really all about
I choose to conclude with a final expression of gratitude for our clients, because it is, sincerely, the meaning behind what we do. We do not manage money for the sake of managing money – every single investment decision we make is a part of a process to enable a real solution for a real person with real needs and wants. Our money management and financial planning are truly human endeavors because our clients are the lifeblood of our business. They are our clients because they trust us, and we are grateful for that trust in the most profound way imaginable, and devote ourselves to being entirely trustworthy each and every day.
To that end, we work.
Quote of the Week
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”
~ Psalm 106:1
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Happy Thanksgiving, all. Truly. May your Thanksgiving day and the weekend that follows be one of intense gratitude for the joys of life. We are blessed beyond words, and I speak for myself when I say, blessed more than I deserve. Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.
With regards,
David L. Bahnsen
Chief Investment Officer, Managing Partner
The Bahnsen Group
thebahnsengroup.com
This week’s Dividend Cafe features research from S&P, Baird, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and the IRN research platform of FactSet
