We Continue to Put Down Roots, Both Deep and Wide, in New Albany
After the massive life changes that have played out over the past few years, not only our own family and firm but the broader world, 2024 has been a blessing. I shared with you back in March that Aaron and I had been quietly buying real estate in and an around New Albany, Ohio; one of the fastest growing, wealthiest areas in the United States. This has given a sense of permanence to our relocation and made us feel firmly settled. That project has continued apace as we continue to put down roots, both deep and wide, in the community.
Our primary house – a brick Georgian with classical architecture sitting on the golf course of the New Albany Country Club – feels like home. It has the traditional spirit of the best of America; the sort of idyllic place where we wanted our kids to grow up as food is made in the kitchen and the piano is playing from the living room. The neighbors are amazing and welcoming, the neighborhood looks like something out of a storybook, and it’s slowly transforming into how we want it to be. There is still a lot of work to do – I think I mentioned my best guess is it would take 36 months or so to personalize it how we envision – but things are coming along nicely. Our front door is decorated for autumn, the leaves are changing, the kids helped me bake an apple pie the other day … it feels like our life in Missouri, only better, in so many ways.
The second house we bought for my in-laws to live in as they grow older has also been a huge blessing. It’s surrounded by beautiful trees and landscaping, is only minutes away, a short distance to parks, and the kids love it. This is the home they will associate with grandma and grandpa as they grow up. It feels very similar, only larger and even newer, than our house in Missouri so it felt so right the moment we walked into it.
I’m trying to convince my parents and grandma Ruby to live nearby, too. I think I have a good chance. My parents are younger and not, yet, retired, but they need to start planning for their golden years. We both loved growing up surrounded by our own grandparents and want the same for the Kennon-Green kids.
The newest development: We are under contract to purchase a commercial property! We are so, so happy about it! We’ve been working from our home in New Albany for almost a year now and I cannot wait for it to have its own facility. It’s minutes away. At 4,200+ square feet, provides more than double the space we had in Newport Beach. It also makes me feel much better to own the real estate, spending less than we were on rent and piling up yet another reserve of equity. (Interestingly, we had given up hope finding something that would work for us in the area and were going to lease in an existing commercial building until we decided to construct something. The opposing counsel for the landlord on the lease deal took awhile to get responses back to our attorney. It was during those delays that this fell into our laps, arriving completely out of the blue.) Commercial property is definitely more complicated than residential property – reading about telecom easements and property declarations wasn’t on my bingo card a few months ago – but the process has been so much easier thanks to the seller being amazing. We are so grateful for everything she’s done to get the deal closed, which we hope is in the very near future. So much of the process is waiting on others, such as the title company, to do their thing.
The best part of all of this is I am only 42 years old. True, the last few years have felt like a lifetime between parenthood, the pandemic, and the firm’s growth, but objectively, if I am fortunate and have ordinary life expectancy, I’m at the really fun part of the game. Do you know what I can do from this base over 40+ years? I feel giddy just thinking about it.
The next big decision is what every parent faces: When to have more kids. (There is no official schedule, yet, for when we start the next round of gestational surrogacy journeys for babies three and four, but we’d like to do it sooner rather than later so the kids are all around the same age and get to grow up together. Based on normal life expectancy, our next children will likely get to know all four of their grandparents and great grandma Ruby, as well, which is important to us. We want them to carry those memories with them for the rest of their lives.) To that end, we’ve started moving the puzzle pieces, the first of which was the car. We decided to get rid of the 2021 Lincoln Aviator Black Label SUV. It was, and is, a great vehicle, especially during the pandemic. We love the hybrid feature. However, it isn’t big enough. We opted to replace it with a 2024 Cadillac Escalade Platinum Sports model. It has so much more space in the third row that we could either have additional car seats or grandma and grandpa could go with us to a restaurant.
As you can probably guess, it bothered me a bit because I prefer to drive cars for decades to get the cost per use down to nothing given my distaste for depreciating assets. This was a case where parenthood changed the utility calculation and our needs outweighed my inner Scrooge McDuck. At least in part. If I’m being totally transparent, there was still a Scrooge-like element to the deal. We got a five-figure discount on the Cadillac because we agreed to buy one of the brand new models the dealership had temporary provided to the professional tennis players at the Cincinnati Open tournament a few days prior. That meant there were only a few colors from which we could choose on those specific units. Fortunately, there was a beautiful white one that closely matched our 2016 Jaguar XJL Portfolio Edition so now they look as if we purposely designed them this way when, really, it was all about those sweet, sweet discounts. Seven or eight years later and that Jaguar remains almost perfect. No car has ever come close to the value/benefit calculation.
It’s almost unfathomable to me how much parenthood influenced everything about my life. I live in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, drive a large SUV, joined a country club so the kids could have lots of activities, and made real estate choices based upon school district. My evenings are spent reading books, building tower blocks, and watching Disney movies. In the old days, it would have been a cold, calculated mathematical question meant to optimize my compounding outcomes and I’d have spent a couple of hours watching Korean dramas or playing Civilization. Yet, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Reader Comments (16)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
Joe Pierson
October 27, 2024
Dealer demos are the way to go, will your next vehicle be a G wagon ... or minivan lol
That commercial building is a beautiful match to your house! I guess your in-law's house doesn't have the same HOAs.
Andrew Craig
December 20, 2024
Replying to Joe Pierson
The Cadillac is more spacious than the G wagon and actually has more cargo capacity than a minivan.
I went the same route, but ended up with a Ford Expedition Max Limited.
These large SUVs are basically the same, though the Cadillac definitely has some more luxury features.
Joshua Kennon
January 16, 2025
Replying to Joe Pierson
I tried to convince them to move within a few houses of us even if it meant we put in an elevator or anything else but they found a perfect house a couple minutes away and it was exactly what they wanted. It actually reminds us so much of an even nicer version of our (Aaron and my) former long-term house in Missouri. Now, I only need to get my parents to move here when they retire ...
Angela Trimmer
November 1, 2024
Your commercial property looks fabulous! Happy you're getting settled and looking forward to Halloween adventures. Missing you in Missouri!
Angela
Connelly Barnes
November 8, 2024
The Cadillac looks like a nice luxury SUV. One thing to watch out for though is for air suspension the air struts typically fail after about 60-100k miles, and the compressor that is used to pressurize the air struts can eventually have problems too. My brother learned this the hard way with his used Range Rover (not typically a vehicle people buy used because of reliability issues but anyway) where he was constantly replacing air struts. Also, one time on a hot day on the interstate, his compressor overheated, but of course the engineers don't design in a backup spring so the car lowers way down to the bump stops, and starts bouncing like crazy. So he had to slow way down on the interstate and take the next exit. Eventually he got fed up with all of this since he was working long hours for his career, so he got a coilover conversion kit and my Dad was nice enough to help him convert it to coil. Air suspension is slightly better in ride quality but it's not very noticeable for me and coils should be 99.999% reliable if they don't rust out for like a million miles or so.
But we're the kind of people who might drive into snowstorms or hundreds of miles into the wilderness so it makes more sense to prefer the reliability because you don't want an unreliable vehicle due to air struts. The lack of a coilover conversion kit is one of the main things that keeps me from getting a Rivian R1S. But R2S is supposed to have coils so we'll see; in the meantime we just have a used Ford Escape for our 3 person family, which seems fine for now.
Andrew Craig
December 20, 2024
Replying to Connelly Barnes
We paid a bit extra for an Extended Warranty (10-year) to take the headache out of this.
It's already paid off with a major A/C unit repair. Ours is Ford, but in their recent earnings it is apparent they are losing money on warranties. That means a good deal for consumers.
Once you experience an Electric Vehicle it is hard to go back, but the R1S is much less spacious than the Cadillac / Suburban / Yukon XL or the equivalent Ford.
In ours we use the 3rd row most of the time, yet have tons of space in the trunk. It is quite the vehicle for family vacations and Christmas present hauls.
However, our second vehicle is a Tesla Model Y and I end up using that for as much driving as possible! Clean, quiet, smooth, and it feels like a space ship compared to the SUV. Also it blocks all pollution and road stink.
Connelly Barnes
February 5, 2025
Replying to Andrew Craig
That's a good point Andrew about analyzing whether earnings reports shows profit or loss for warranties. Re: larger vehicles, we have considered slightly larger SUVs for safety reasons (more mass and more space around you makes you safer in a collision), but we haven't really figured out which one to go with. Perhaps a used 2015-2020 Tahoe Z71 with coil suspension like my brother got recently, since after considering Rivian for some time I was concerned about its reliability problems and as a consumer, don't like to be a first adopter for new technologies either (Amusingly, if I search Google for "rivian chapter 11" it responds falsely as of today Feb 5 with a hallucination that "Rivian Automotive, Inc. (RIVN) is an electric vehicle (EV) startup that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a series of setbacks and problems."). More recent Tahoe's unfortunately for skiing / outdoors enthusiasts like me have a rear wishbone independent suspension which reduces ground clearance.
Joshua Kennon
January 16, 2025
Replying to Connelly Barnes
Thanks for the heads up! Our drive use-case isn't likely to be extensive at all for this particular vehicle - it's basically a land yacht to carry around a ton of people to a restaurant or the movies for a few miles at a time then back home - but I'll definitely keep this in mind.
robert hotaling
November 10, 2024
I love when you post as it always thoughtful and insightful. I wish you could give us a little bit of financial opinion like the old days as I miss the thought of process that follows.
I have a question that is personal so you obviously don’t have to answer. Why move from Cali to OH if it is from a wealthy area to another wealthy area? Just to see the change of the seasons? The architecture? Having grown up in Pennsylvania I get the attraction to fine furniture and architecture but that can’t be all. I read your post over a year ago with why you moved but seems like the same wealthy surroundings. I get that you need to live with the society that is at your level and your business depends on that too. But isnt OH less tolerate to your personal situation?
Joshua Kennon
January 16, 2025
Replying to robert hotaling
This is a great, great question. I feel like it would be best for me to organize my thoughts and turn my response into a post, which I will try to do in the coming weeks.
Cody A. Ray
November 11, 2024
I didn’t realize that country clubs had kids’ activities. That changes the calculus a lot! What are some of your kids favorite activities at the club?
Joshua Kennon
January 16, 2025
Replying to Cody A. Ray
I just realized that I never responded here but shortly after you sent this message, I wrote you a long, direct email that you should have received around that time. If you didn't get it, please check your junk mail!
San Francisco
January 15, 2025
Not tryin to be a jerk here, but whats the reason for buying a gas powered vehicle, especially considering you moved in part because of climate change? Why not just get a model Y?
Joshua Kennon
January 16, 2025
Replying to San Francisco
The short answer: Based upon our projected driving habits for this particular vehicle and its use case, purchasing and operating a gasoline powered vehicle will lead to substantially lower carbon emissions than if we had purchased an electric vehicle. (The general concept is laid out in this article from The Harvard Gazette).
It's difficult to express the lengths to which I will go to avoid commuting. I'm not wasting my time bucket sitting in a car if I can help it. I mean, we spent a year looking for a commercial building in part because Aaron and I wanted to find something no more than five minutes door-to-door in heavy traffic and because I wanted it to be in the same taxing district as my home to support the local community to avoid having to file an additional set of paperwork. This gives me more time to focus on the firm, and helping our clients, and to then get home and focus on my family. (Today was a great example. I stayed a bit late at the office after a long, long day of equity and fixed-income trading but then got home in a few minutes so I could sit by the fireplace with Aaron and the kids to play Slapburger. I'd much rather listen to our three-year old sons yell "Double Decker!" with the fury of a war cry as they smack the card deck as fast as they can to try and claim victory than sit at a red light or be merging on a highway.)
The longer answer: A Model Y was disqualified from the start for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, it couldn't fit us, two or four kids (since we'll have more in the future), and a set of grandparents as we ran out to dinner or a movie so there were really only four or five potential models available by various car manufacturers we could consider. We needed something very, very large.
For the cars that were possibilities based upon size requirement, Lincoln stopped offering hybrid technology in the high-end Navigator models, which is bizarre to me. Cadillac doesn't offer a hybrid, but they are coming out with an all-electric IQ Escalade. It, however, has a few severe design flaws in that it utilizes an entirely digital touchscreen interface system. (This is far beyond the scope of the conversation but there is a lot of evidence touch-screen based vehicles without traditional knobs injure and kill far more people than traditional cars to the point European regulators are forcing automobile manufacturers to revert to tactile buttons that do not require you to take your eyes off the road to operate. While not ideal, that may be passable for someone super-responsible in a convertible but not so much in a family car that is so huge.) There were a few others we analyzed but none offered hybrid or electric models, meaning it had to be removed as a variable in any event.
San Francisco
January 16, 2025
Replying to Joshua Kennon
Yes, that makes sense! I didn't realize how much carbon emissions are a result of manufacturing. I have a model 3 that I've driven 100,000 miles and believe me, my main complaint is I wish it was bigger. I also agree about the touch screen. Taking eyes off the road to find windshield wipers or change the music is a big safety hazard. But at the end of the day, I'm happy it doesn't make noise, it's smooth as anything, and fewer parts means less maintenance.
Joshua Kennon
January 16, 2025
Thanks! I'm sure there will be (pictures). Actually, we are launching a Media & Communications department at the firm so there is a 100% probability there is at least a YouTube channel this year so maybe even video. Not sure on specifics, wrapping up some final decisions now. But I'm so excited to get all this done.
Re: the cars. Definitely. I just mentioned some specifics in an earlier comment in this thread. It was a real challenge because there are only a few models / makes in the size requirement we had.