Linda H. was up very early to go to work. We would not have heard her get up and leave if not for the three dogs, which make quite a ruckus anytime someone comes or goes from the house. Marilyn, Linda, and I got up a few hours later and had toast and coffee for breakfast. I worked at my computer until 9:30 AM when we had to get ready to leave for an 11 AM appointment with our financial advisor.
We have worked with John Christensen for at least a decade. We first met John at A. G. Edwards when my parents’ stockbroker decided to leave and John was assigned to handle their accounts. We liked him right away and ended up moving all of accounts there, including accounts for our children. My sister and Marilyn eventually opened accounts with John as well. A. G. Edwards was an excellent local brokerage that unfortunately got absorbed by Wachovia. Wachovia ultimately failed and the remnants were acquired by Wells Fargo Advisors. John and his administrative assistant, Maggie Smith, had an opportunity to move to a new office being opened by Stifel-Nicholas in O’Fallon, Missouri and our family moved all of our business to S-N along with them.
We usually manage to make at least one trip to the St. Louis area each year, often around this time, and we always try to arrange a meeting with John if our schedules permit. We arrived at 11AM, talked for an hour and then walked to Bristol’s for lunch. Maggie joined us, which was great. We have interacted with her for as long as we have worked with John, but do not know her as well on a personal level. We got to know her a little better today. Linda and I both had a grilled vegetable platter with asparagus, mushrooms, red and green bell peppers, and sliced green tomatoes. They were some of the best restaurant vegetables we have ever had.
We returned to John’s office around 1:00 PM and spent another couple hours going over reports, plans, and projections before finely making a few decisions about our portfolio. All told we were there for four hours. I don’t know if that’s typical for financial advisors, but we appreciate that John has extensive reports prepared when we arrive, has already developed recommendations, and takes the time to go over everything with us. Most of our financial interactions are easily handled by phone and secure e-mail during the year so having our financial advisor three states away is not a problem, especially as John and Maggie are real people with whom we have a real, face-to-face, relationship.
By the time we left the afternoon rush hour was well under way. St. Louis is a midwest city with east coast ties. Normal business hours here are 8 AM to 4 PM which corresponds to 9 AM to 5 PM in New York. Kansas City, Missouri, only 240 miles west of St. Louis on the Kansas border, is a decidedly more western city, and the southern part of the state, which borders Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, is decidedly southern. We fought our way back to Illinois through stop-and-go traffic and by the time we got back to Glen Carbon Ron and Mary had arrived from Pennsylvania. Linda H. got home from work not long after we arrived and Mike and Clayton arrived not long after that. They live and work in St. Louis area. Linda, Marilyn, and Ron are siblings and Mike is their nephew. Their other nephew, Rick, was unable to attend. Marilyn had spent the afternoon making vegan Sloppy Joe’s. For dinner we had a nice summer meal of green salad, Sloppy Joe’s, and chips, followed by Linda’s vegan double chocolate torte, accompanied by white and red wines.
By the time we finished dinner, wine, and conversation we had all had a long day. For us it was a day of family finances and family. When we finally went to bed we did not even watch an episode of Doc Martin. As an aside, today was the SLAARC pre-setup for the ARRL Field Day event. The main setup will be tomorrow morning and the operating event begins at 2 PM EDT. It is the single largest, and most public, amateur (ham) radio event of the year. We are missing it for the second year in a row because family comes first.