The Martins are co-owners of The Family Wealth Consulting Group, a financial planning firm in Silicon Valley.They are dedicated advisors/coaches to individuals and families providing inter-generational planning. This enables their clients to have an increased awareness about what is important to them and to be able to make informed choices about what matters most.
Peggy and Craig met and married more than two decades ago while each was serving as President of an adjoining regional Chapter of the Society of Financial Planning Professionals.They began merging their practices at that time.With similar levels of education and experience their focus was on the newly combined firm each engaged in different areas of expertise directed by client needs and individual interest.The firm’s driving force is to help clients make informed choices.The team has taken this goal very seriously by maintaining on-going educational goals while earning multiple undergraduate specialty designations and marks, which culminated with the Master of Science of Financial Services (MSFS).The MSFS is masters’ level work in coordinating estate and income tax planning with investments and cash flow.
As an example of their willingness to adapt to their clients' needs, they earned the designation Chartered Advisor to Senior Living (CASL) training them in advising clients on how to make informed choices about elder care planning and funding.With this formal education and their personal experiences with their own aging parents, allowed for caring coaching sessions with clients who were also wanting to make the best choices about their own aging parent’s situations, and sometimes their own.
Peggy has worked with leading estate planning attorneys and CPA’s in Silicon Valley as a Financial Advisor with an expertise in estate planning and been able to assist in closing estates of her clients at their death or at the death of the second spouse.
With a number of families, the second generation has recognized Peggy’s open, loving personality with dedication to their own family needs by continuing to work with her for many more years after closing their parent’s estate.
Peggy has had a personal passion for helping clients make heartfelt decisions about their legacy.Over several decades of personal interest and now professional status as a “LifeSager®/Celebrations of Life ®.”Peggy has now developed coaching and training sessions to assist clients in writing an Ethical Will also known as a Legacy Letter, Life Reflection Stories and Making A Difference documents.
Other areas of legacy planning are longevity and aging, end of life wishes, letting go-saying goodbye writing classes and wealth transfer writing.
She is active in participating in training sessions put on by end of life groups because it is part of the Family Wealth Plan process
What attracted Craig into the financial planning profession has been a driving force in his career in mastering an investment methodology that every client can successfully use to achieve financial independence.In 1989he stumbled onto a CPA in Sacramento who was using and then introduced Craig into a tiny mutual fund family called Dimensional Financial Advisor (DFA)Funds.Craig was amongst the 1st few advisors to be accepted to trade those funds when the only allowed investors were institutions.DFA is now one of the dominant family of mutual funds and is widely accepted in the fee-only financial advisor industry.In Silicon Valley where the average price of a residence is $1M (in 2016) it has been common for Craig to see clients with rental properties that they originally purchased as a 1st home 25-35 years ago. In coaching sessions, clients were telling Craig they no longer wanted to manage these rentals but were very hesitant to invest sales proceeds into mutual funds, after having experienced a big part of their wealth to date in real estate growth.Craig was able to research and find real estate general partners who had a multi-decade performance history of earning 20% IRR or better, which has become very desirable for his clients who qualify as accredited investors.Craig was also able to find several competing experts in Section 1031 Tax-Deferred Exchange programs which clients could choose between as well as some clients chose to use Charitable Remainder Trusts because Craig was so dedicated to making sure clients had the best information with which to make informed decisions.
After helping clients build risk-managed portfolios by adding an allocation to real estate limited partnerships (RELP), in 2010 the SEC imposed custody on each of those projects.So to help clients who were asking Craig to manage their RELP’s, he found expert legal help to set up a special fund that would accept a transfer of client’s RELP’s into one fund that continued to allow Craig to manage these assets, which is what clients wanted.That fund then began aggregating small amounts of investments from each client and investing into a series of 13 different RELP’s that passed Craig’s due diligence.At the time of the Fund’s investment into each RELP the original business plan was for the GP to buy an address, add value, increase rents and sell in the 5th year. It was gratifying for Craig and his clients that most executed that plan successfully, so after 5 years of investing annually, the Fund began to receive proceeds from the sale of the 5 year old projects. The profits received have so far been in the 18%+ IRR range, allowing clients to reinvest the principal each year and spend what amounts to 12-15% cash flow on the amount invested into real estate.Ultimately, what we inadvertently created with the fund using annual investments is a large liquidity each year after the 5th year. Which is now a full-blown value add for clients.
