Case study |
The firm that invests in people first
About Bone Fide Wealth
New York City-based RIA managing ~$100M AUM. Founded in 2016 by Douglas Boneparth, CFP®. Specializes in serving millennials and next-generation investors and their families.
Why they switched
Legacy platforms couldn’t keep pace with the clients Bone Fide Wealth serves. They needed an intuitive and fast platform built for the future.
The results
Switching to Altruist gave the firm back significant time, streamlined every corner of their practice, and made it possible to deliver a tech-forward experience to clients who demand nothing less.
Douglas Boneparth founded Bone Fide Wealth on one premise: invest in people before they’re ready to invest with you. It’s a philosophy forged from personal experience.
In 2010, his wife Heather graduated from law school into a job market that had no interest in keeping pace with her student loan debt. Douglas watched their entire peer group face the same rude awakening. He recognized a generation that needed someone in their corner before they had anything to show for it.
The early years
At the beginning, it was just Douglas helping peers refinance student loans, open their first bank accounts as adults, and figure out how to fill out a W-2.
Over the years, those clients’ lives grew more complex, and so did the work: equity compensation, real estate decisions, tax planning, business ownership. As the firm grew, the question wasn’t whether it could keep going—it was how to deepen what made it different.
That meant raising the bar on the client experience and building the infrastructure to do it at scale. That’s where Heather came in.
She joined in 2023 as Director of Business and Legal Affairs, bringing the operational and legal rigor to make it possible, starting with a hard look at the tools they were using to serve clients.
What the transition actually looked like
The clients Bone Fide Wealth serves don’t wait. They expect to log in at midnight and see their full financial picture, transfer money the moment an opportunity arises, and open an account the same day they decide to invest. Their advisors, and the tools they use, have to keep up.
They turned to Altruist to make that speed possible.
“We can now operate at the speed of our clients’ lives,” said Douglas. Whether that’s investing a windfall from a bonus or needing to close on a house, we can get this done in a moment’s notice, not a matter of days or sometimes weeks.”
Both partners at the table
For Bone Fide Wealth, financial planning is about the whole picture, including who’s in the room when the decisions get made.
Heather Boneparth has been a driving force in reorienting the firm’s client experience around equity between partners. She has written and spoken extensively about what happens when one partner isn’t involved in the finances: trust, in short, can erode.
It’s a pattern she’d seen too often, and one Altruist directly addresses.
“It’s scary how often one partner controls the logins while the other is left in the dark,” said Heather. “You can’t call it comprehensive planning if both aren’t at the table. With Altruist, both partners can easily log in, see the same information, and stay equally engaged in their financial lives.”
Altruist’s household management makes this concrete, organizing all of a family’s accounts into a single view. Whether it’s a joint brokerage account, individual IRAs, or a mix of both, everything can be grouped together under one household so both partners can access a shared, accurate snapshot of their family’s financial life.
The real return
on investment
Altruist’s integrated platform—combining custody, account opening, trading, reporting, billing, and portfolio management—eliminated the tool-switching and manual work that used to quietly consume the team’s time. And time, it turns out, was one of the most valuable things Bone Fide Wealth gained.
“The time we have gotten back since our move to Altruist is incalculable,” said Heather. “From the integrated tools to the interface, the whole experience has been excellent. We are able to reinvest that time back into getting better ourselves, deepening our relationships with our clients, and improving our work.”
Technology that grows with you
For Douglas Boneparth, the choice of a custodial platform isn’t a short-term decision. It’s a bet on who’s building for what’s next.
“The great thing about working with a partner like Altruist is that I don’t need to worry if I will have the tools and technology required to grow into the future—not over the next five years, but perhaps over the next 10, 20 years and beyond,” said Douglas.
That confidence extends beyond the platform itself. What Bone Fide Wealth found at Altruist was also a partner that shows up when they need them.
“
Not enough can be said about the people behind the organization who’ve been able to support me at every stage of not just transitioning to the platform, but continuing our growth objectives. Any organization really hinges on its people, and you have a group of people here who are building with you.”
Douglas Boneparth, President of Bone Fide Wealth
This testimonial was given by a current client. Neither Altruist nor its affiliates paid for this testimonial, but we do earn revenue from financial advisors who use our software, from assets invested through our broker-dealer (Altruist Financial LLC) and assets using services made available by our registered investment adviser (Altruist LLC). The promoting advisor received compensation or other benefits from Altruist through the promoting advisor’s participation in one or more of Altruist’s various programs, which created a conflict of interest on the promoting advisor’s part and may have influenced the view(s) expressed by the promoting advisor. For more details on program compensation and benefits and related conflicts of interest, please visit altruist.com/RIA-testimonial. For additional information about the promoting advisor’s conflicts of interest when expressing its views about Altruist or Altruist’s affiliates, please see the promoting advisor’s advisory program brochures, available at https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/. This testimonial may not represent the experience of others and it is not a guarantee of results.