One of Us

Michael Wicks

Posted

What brought you to Ponte Vedra?

We moved up from Orlando, my wife and I. At the time, we were expecting twins and decided that we wanted to raise them here at the beach.

My wife’s in pharmaceutical sales, and I’m a certified financial planner, so we had the flexibility to kind of choose where we wanted to live.

So, we chose Ponte Vedra and have really not looked back. It’s probably the best decision we’ve ever made.

What do you like most about this area?

I’m a beach guy. I was raised in Satellite Beach, Florida, which is down in Brevard County, so I’m a beach guy. I’m also an avid golfer. For me, living in Ponte Vedra Beach is as good as it gets.

I like the weather here. I like the fact that we get a change of season. I like the fact that we have a distinct period of time during the winter. The way I always describe our weather is that it gets so hot for so long that you forget what cold air feels like, but then we get so cool for so long that you forget what really oppressive heat feels like.

So, it’s kind of the best of both worlds.

There’s a reason why I meet so many people that live in Ponte Vedra that have chosen Ponte Vedra. It wasn’t thrust upon them. They did their homework, and they did their research and they decided that this is where they wanted to do it.

Tell me about your profession.

I’m in my 27th year as a certified financial planner. I do full-service planning and wealth management for about 200 households.

How do you maintain a good work/family balance?

I’ve always worked from home. In my old house – we’re in the process of building a new one – but in my old house, I had a detached garage where I built some really cool office space. And that will be part of what we do in the new house. So, I was ahead of the curve on that deal.

I don’t want to miss a minute of my kids. This really has given me an incredible opportunity to really be involved and to utilize my time really effectively.

So, not having to commute 45 minutes each way and all that kind of stuff, I can work really efficiently and get a lot of time with them. And we do a lot of traveling in the summer.

You hate to compare yourself with other people, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a dad who’s gotten more time with his kids than I’ve gotten with mine.

Tell me about your involvement in the community.

We’re members of Sawgrass Country Club, which is another of the best decisions I ever made. I think we’re at the 10-year mark as far as being at Sawgrass.

And then, I’ve just been really involved in the community in different ways.

My first real foray into community service work was I got involved with a group that was petitioning St. Johns County to build sidewalks. So, I was very involved with the construction of sidewalks that connected Plantation Oaks into the roundabout and took the sidewalks from the roundabout to the Palm Valley bridge and then took the sidewalks up Mickler Road. So, 2.1 miles of sidewalks. It took us several years to get the county to do that.

So, that was my first real foray into that.

I have a political science degree, so I’m one of these guys that really pays a lot of attention, not only at the national level but really at the local level, too. National’s all fun and well, but the local stuff is, you know, potholes and sidewalks, planting trees and stuff that I can actually see and feel and touch.

Then, I was on the board of the Blood Alliance, which was the big blood bank here in town before they merged with OneBlood out of Central Florida. I was on that board probably about five years.

When that board rolled into the bigger board, I joined the board of the Friends of the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall. I had been very involved in that group up until recently.

I rolled off of that board because I was asked by Commissioner Jeremiah Blocker to serve on the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council, and the Concert Hall is under the purview of the Cultural Arts Division. I just didn’t want there to be any sort of perceived conflict of interest.

I served on the strategic planning committee at Sawgrass Country Club. I did a four-year stint there.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Like I said, I play golf. I also play a lot of tennis. I’m on the tennis team at Sawgrass, and we’re competing in July down in Orlando.

And then I sit at swim meets on Saturday, and I take kids to cross-country meets and all the other typical stuff.

When I do get time that I can kind of focus on me it’s a tennis and golf thing, for sure.