How Couples Navigate Finance: Live from Future Proof

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1:38Carol Massar:Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, back with us at Future Proof, Doug and Heather Bonaparte of Bonafide Wealth. They're married. They work together. If you remember from our conversation here last year, they also co-wrote the book Money Together. Doug, founder of Bonafide Wealth. Heather is a lawyer who's director of business and legal affairs. They've got around$150 billion in assets under management. They're usually on the East Coast. They're here. I don't know where your kids are. If you guys are both here.

2:13What are you talking about? What kids? You guys are both here. I don't know who's taking the kids to school. I'll take that$150 billion in assets under management. Did I say$150 million? $150 million in assets under management. We're on our way. $150 million in assets under management.

2:27Carol Massar:Hey, I'm here for you guys. Thank you. He didn't answer the question about kids. Oh, my mom is watching our daughters. Thank you, mom. Who's watching your kids? My wife. Okay. Okay. The actual logistics of us both being there. Oh, it's wild. No, I know. I know. What a 2026 statement. But you know what? It goes to the core of your book, which is communicating about this stuff. And if you if anybody who's in a relationship understands that most conflict comes from not communicating properly, right? It comes from a place of, wait, what's going on here? Because we didn't talk about it. Is it any different, Heather, with money?

3:02Oh, it is no different with money. We often say that disputes about money are never really just about the money, right? Money is the manifestation of something else going on. Because our money beliefs go way, way back. Some of our earliest money beliefs start when we're children, right? They come from our culture, from our experiences, from the things that we observe growing up. And when you get together with somebody and you start a life with them, you've got two people with two different beliefs and two different messages that dictate their behavior. It's incredibly difficult to stay aligned on that.

3:34So, like, if you're not communicating, it's difficult.

3:38Carol Massar:How important is it, Doug, come on in on this, that you have that conversation before or, like, early in your relationship and you start talking about things like this? Absolutely. So, you know, you're not going to get all into each other's financial wares, you know, right off the bat. But it should be a buildup as the relationship evolves, right, and the responsibilities continue to grow. You're going to want to go deeper and deeper into understanding what that background looks like because you're going to be committed for a long time. And, by the way, the responsibilities are only going to continue to grow.

4:08You know, you start in thinking about maybe buying a home and obviously having kids. Right. You get to a point where you really do want to have this figured out. And, you know, compounding works sometimes opposite way, right? The issues you didn't address early on will actually start to compound later in life. How many times have you seen kids go off to college and the parents don't even know each other? And a lot of relationships actually fall apart there because you didn't have those conversations. You're completely lost in your marriage. And now you're the statistic. Now you're the coin flip.

4:37And I don't want to rest on a 50-50 chance of my marriage working out. So now you see why I asked about the kids, right? That is the entry into the conversation about communication.

4:49Carol Massar:My daughter is a year out from college, working on her own, working in Boston. And I was thinking, it's my anniversary today, 36 years. I'm feeling actually pretty good. Congratulations. I love our daughter. It's really kind of nice to be on her own again. You know what? Love you, Aggie. Love, Aggie. No, but we've had a lot of conversations over the years about money. We have a colleague whose kid is going off to college next year who just went off. And he's like, he is here. And he is so ready. Like, he is so ready. You know what one of the crazy things is? I think before you have kids, you have this idea of like, am I ready?

5:27Am I not ready? Will we ever be ready? And the thing we say to people is all you have to be ready for is a life of constant change once you have children, right? Because nothing will ever stay the same forever. Like, look, you've got kids going off to college. you're entering a new chapter in your life and in your marriage. Like you just have to be willing to embrace that change and that fluidity. And it applies to so much with our money and our household and our lives. So, all right.

5:50Carol Massar:Um, I'm trying to think where we should go here. So think about this environment. You have a couple come in, like, tell us what are the first things you, you, you kind of want to ask them or you want to start talking about with them? Yeah. So we want to figure out what kind of financial household they're running here. Ideally we want everything to be shared joint, you know, transparency being key. How often is it not? And I'm thinking about Strangers, the book, Bellburn. Oh, my goodness. I think I could go long on that. I think it's very generational, to be honest with you. I think when I look at younger clients, and now we're seeing Gen Z clients start to get married, I see them being very open to this notion that they've got to share everything.

6:28They're very eager to get the joint accounts and be transparent. And that's good to see. That's really good to see. Well, I'll add to that, though. I think there are, it doesn't need to be all or nothing. And that's something that we always tell people who are hesitant, not just clients at the firm, but people who write into us with our newsletter and things. It doesn't have to be put it all in the pot, keep it all separate. Yours, mine, and ours is often the best approach. And it's often the best approach when it comes to the way that we think about our finances in general. Like you are, you, we do not all become one homogeneous blob when you marry someone.

7:00You will retain those beliefs. You retain those values of your own. And then you form new ones together and your personal finances are no different, right? So anytime we, you know, we're not going to push people and say, hey, you know, there are many, many reasons why it may not make sense for you to hold everything jointly or make every financial decision as a joint one.

7:19Carol Massar:I also think that... But having an awareness, you gotta, right, of everything that's going on. Oh, yeah. Access and transparency are more important than the actual breakdown of where you keep those funds. But you need it more today than ever before. And I think when I make a comment about, oh, it's generational, you know, the amount of dual working households today relative to just 20, 30 years ago, you know, is substantial. The child care issue, we can talk about this for a while now, is such a dilemma that, you know, you got everyone working for this common goal of just living and surviving and making sure the kids are okay.

7:53I think you can't afford, I think, not to be sharing information and being transparent about that. I think it swings both ways. You've got a very successful outcome when you get there, and I think a lot of people gravitate that way. And it can crack pretty fast when you don't because things are just so chaotic. And we could spend all day talking about how institutions haven't really met up with this change that I think Gen X, Y, and Z have here. I think one good place to start in relationships is the shared calendar. And that is so important. We just solved this again. There are these huge wall things that you can buy that have been like, I think there was a New York Times article.

8:35The Skylight. My sister had one of those giant. And they're like, this thing saves marriages. Yeah. Because everything is updated in real time. And the coordination is such a challenging thing. Oh, absolutely. And the mental load and the emotional labor of caregiving is invisible unless someone makes it visible. And that tool is one very helpful. So let's bring this all back to financial planning and what you guys are doing at Bonafide. Because I think it's fair to say you have this digital first strategy, very social media heavy. It's like this funnel to try to get clients. But I'm curious about who you're attracting, Doug, and where they are in their life stage.

9:15Yeah. So we got a couple of advisors at the firm, including myself. The goal has always been to be relatable to our clients. So we're attracting people that are like us and where we are in life. I think this is the most dynamic part of our life so far. When you're raising kids, we keep talking about this. And we look to our other associate who is more or less looking at how we did that early on 10, 15 years ago when we were young millennials. Like, don't reinvent the wheel, but go be relatable for Gen Z. What are the financial issues unique to the generation? We built a firm on that. 10 years ago, it was student loan debt that was the issue.

9:50A breakdown in, oh, I'll just go educate myself and the rest. Our parents are like, hey, go take out the loans, go get educated. And then something like 2008, generationally speaking, defines a generation. Everything you were told gets turned upside down and you have to adapt. And then COVID, we do this all day. And that's what's specific to our, what's it like raising kids in a pandemic to be called back into work, to not have a lot of faith in spending 30 years at an organization? Why are you guys jumping around jobs all the time? Right, and it's true. And I think at the core of it is that, as cheesy as it sounds, giving human-first financial advice just requires being a human being to your clients and talking to them, and we share with them about our lives as well.

10:33And I think that just having that person, that sounding board, is incredibly helpful.

10:37Carol Massar:It's a great point amid the AI conversation. When I think you talk about generations and what they're facing, and you have a generation who's thinking, wait, am I really going to have a job for 30 years or the next 30 years? I'm just curious how you guys are rolling in that, as it is also an incredible investment opportunity right now. Sure. Maybe. We'll see how much longer it goes on. You know, one of the things we wanted to do when we built the firm was always be nimble and flexible because we know we're going to have to pivot. Like, that's one of the big takeaways we've learned in growing up into being adults is, you know, those two events I mentioned, whether it be recession or a pandemic, you had to pivot fast.

11:14And if you are not nimble, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to adapt. And now you're seeing it with AI and technology. So we want to keep that as part of our DNA as we continue to grow. All right. Speaking of pivoting, let's get it up on the screen. 2025 Halloween costume.

11:30Carol Massar:Oh, my goodness. Oh, God. You guys were 6 '7". Okay, this thing, like, blew up. Oh, my goodness. I appreciate you doing this because now... We killed it. We killed it for the parents. All right, what's it going to be for 2026? We haven't even thought of it yet. It's too soon. No, it's not. It's, like, five weeks away. It definitely... If we want to have another viral moment, you've got to wait until right before. We need to see what's the top... What is the top thing that we... I cannot believe... With the irony, this happened two days before our book came out. And I said, this would only happen to us that we're going to go viral for something that isn't our book two days before our book.

12:06I did get one news outlet to kind of steer the article towards the book lodge just to see if I could do it with my PR skills. It happened. Not sure what it really did in the end. But I know what I would be if we would do it. Like, kids can't get enough of, like, Neato's and Squishy Toys. Yeah, I love those. But, like, that's a tough costume. How do I turn myself into a giant, you know, stress? Yeah, get a bunch of Jell-O. OK, then put you in a tank and put you in the. I was going to bleed out Jell-O in the party. Like, oh, someone popped. So the costume, the costume for people listening on radio was they were dressed as six, seven.

12:40So I'm going to get their bone apart. TBD, TBD.

12:44Carol Massar:We'll be watching.

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