Design, Wealth… WISDOM: A Holistic Approach to Financial Prosperity

Peter Martin: Good morning.

Brandy Chetsas: For those that do not already know you, I’d like to share a bit of your background. Peter is a Senior Wealth Manager here at Mayflower Advisors. He has dedicated nearly 30 years to working with families to help people create financial success, while also living a fulfilled and intentional life. When not advising and helping others with wealth management, Peter lives this holistic approach to life by prioritizing time with his wife, three children and Bernese Mountain dog.

What is your dog's name, Peter?

Peter Martin: Bella.

Brandy Chetsas: Bella… I didn’t know that!

An avid fisherman, you are likely to find Peter enjoying the ocean and patrolling the waters of Cape Cod and Nantucket. Peter also serves as a Deacon of his church and enjoys volunteering at the Southborough Senior Center. I love the way you practice what you preach, Peter—enjoying the fruits of well-rounded, intentional living. It is a pleasure to have you here today to learn more about your intriguing approach.

Peter Martin: Thank you. It is good to be here.

Brandy Chetsas: I began this conversation with some pretty depressing data points, frankly, including the sad reality that less than half of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. What’s going on, Peter? Can you enlighten us?

Peter Martin: I think part of the one of the issues is that there is a bit of a “shoot before we aim” approach to getting started: in life, wealth accumulation and starting our direction. A lot of times when I meet with people, I start talking about design first: What are we building?

Imagine if you hired a contractor to build your house and all of a sudden, they just start pouring concrete in the floor and put up a random 4X4 or 2X4 … or start bringing out air guns and drill guns and putting up windows. They’re working really hard. They’re busy. They’re sweating and working all day long—but there is no plan! At the end of the day, there is just this “Frankenstein” house.

It is a ludicrous idea, of course; but we tend to do that sometimes with our lives. We want to just start building, creating and doing things, but without knowing what we are building in the first place.

Brandy Chetsas: That makes good sense. The title of this podcast is “Design, Wealth, Wisdom: A Holistic Approach to Financial Prosperity.” You have just touched upon the design component of that really being foundational before anything else should be considered. How did this idea develop, Peter? How did it take shape in your own life and with your own home?

Peter Martin: It started in a couple of different ways. A lot of clients over the years would say, “Hey, Pete. Can you talk to my kids about money?” When I say “kids,” a lot of times it was anyone from 15 to 40, really. When I heard that question, and I’m sure a lot of financial advisors get that question, I thought, What does that mean to talk to your kids about money?

How can I make that a meaningful discussion like deeply?

Are they looking for career advice?

Are they just wondering how money works, how capitalism works, how to be successful people?

I thought a lot over the years. Focusing on the deign piece, it is never too late. It is never too early to figure it out. What is the design for your life? We write it out, and it does not need to be all that complicated.

We just start with questions:

• Do I want to live in the city or country?
• Do I want to get married?
• Do I want to have a house?
• Do I want to have a second home up in the woods or have time to travel?
• What type of career do I want?
• Do I want to be self-employed or work for somebody else?
• What type of people do I want in my life?
• How do I want to be known?
• How do I want to be remembered?

Obviously, those type of questions are not answered in one setting. But start the journaling process to try to get as much of that down on paper as possible. That is your design.

Whatever you do not design will be resulting in default, so I spent a lot of time saying, “Let’s make sure we know what we are creating!” Once we figure that out, then I move on to wealth, based on your goals—not your parents’ goals, not society’s goals, not your neighbors’ goals… your design. Let’s figure out what type of money is needed to create that life that you wrote down on your paper.

What happens a lot, at least from what I have seen too often, is that if you do not know how much money you need. Therefore, you never have enough, and you spend your whole life chasing this elusive number on a computer screen. The alternative is to say, “No, I want money to serve me, not me serving money.” That is the design and wealth piece. Then the wisdom piece is just trying to share lessons along the way that once we know what we want and we have the money to afford it, we do not blow it by doing something silly. That is pretty much the essence of that program.

Brandy Chetsas: You upended the whole thing: It is common sense yet contrary to most people’s approach. I like the way that you put a finite amount on financing specific goals. In the end, assets fund goals, right? So if everything is driven towards that larger purpose, the “why” that you are answering in the design portion, it all just falls into place. It keeps you on track!

Peter Martin: Exactly—that is what happens. We are in the greatest country at arguably the richest time in our history, yet we have a lot of people that are depressed and miserable. How could that be? I think it is just that we are not taking the time to set the foundation and figure out what we are building.

The irony of being alive at this unbelievable time in history is that a lot of people get really busy building. Then, all of a sudden, they do not like the life they have created because they never really thought about design.

Brandy Chetsas: Yes, that will likely resonate with a lot of people. There’s often a converse relationship: The more security and financial/career success that people experience the more frequently they seem to find themselves disheartened and seeking something different.

Peter Martin: A lot of times, it becomes about living up to other people’s expectations or thoughts on success, compared to writing out what they want. What I have seen over the years when having people write out what they want to accomplish in their life, one of the greatest parts of this is that people are excitedly embarrassed about what they write down for their life design.

People will kind of hold back, and I will say, “Hey, you know what? A lot of times in design, you'll actually be embarrassed to read it out loud or maybe embarrassed to share it with somebody because it is so awesome!”

You have got a situation where people just cannot believe they never really took the time to write down what they really want. When they look at it, there is not only excitement but also energy and passion. If we study anything about human nature, where there is energy and passion, things get done!

Brandy Chetsas: That’s fascinating! You mentioned specifically when they write their design, that they are embarrassed to share it. It is almost giggly… with that enthusiasm and trepidation. But you specifically use the word “awesome”: Their ultimate design, that they never before said out loud or put on paper, now, they’ve made themselves accountable. So, one, it might be awesome and, two, it also might be something very simple and, in fact, attainable.

Peter Martin: No doubt about it. The more we study how the mind works, it is like we might be a little afraid sometimes to write down our goals because might think, “It’s impossible. Why even write it down?” But what we are learning about how the brain works is that the brain does not care: It just wants to know what you want. It just wants to know the number. You want a house? Sure! You might not have it in the numbers now.

Your current reality is only a representation of what you used to think. Once you write down what you want, eventually the brain gets into figure mode because now it knows what direction you want to go and now it knows the design of the house that you want to build. It builds. It will do it!

Brandy Chetsas: That is so true, and that is the glory of what you and your colleagues do as wealth managers: You create that plan to make it happen… starting with the ultimate goal and working backwards from that designing with such intention.

There’s so much that you do, of course, the investment management and all the critical financial aspects that people like myself wouldn’t know what to do without your expertise, but it is so much more than that—giving people that voice, getting spouses on the same page, bringing in multi-generational considerations and legacy planning.

You mentioned that as part of the design, what you want the legacy to be. It is so much more than portfolio performance. Of course, that is important and we all expect that, but there are so many pieces of the puzzle, that holistic approach.