Jose L. Martin, CFP®, CLTC
President & Founder of LifeCraft Wealth Management
I've spent more than twenty years helping people envision their ideal retirement lifestyle, and then build and manage the financial plan that supports it. I came to this work by an indirect route. In early 2001, I had, on paper, what most people would consider a wonderful situation: Product and Marketing Manager at my father-in-law's thriving electronics business. Job security, good benefits, a reliable salary — all of which should have been especially gratifying as the primary earner for a young family with a new home, a first mortgage, and our newborn daughter, Ariel. Except I was miserable. I lacked the one thing I deeply yearned for: to feel that my work was making a meaningful, positive impact in the lives of others.
Sitting down with a financial planner to build our own foundation, I recognized a career that would let me do exactly that. I entered the industry in early 2003. I am a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and hold the Certified in Long-Term Care (CLTC)designation. In 2009, I founded LifeCraft Wealth Management to work exclusively with empty-nesters in and approaching retirement, helping them craft the life they envision. In 2024, I took the final step toward full independence by founding LifeCraft as my own Registered Investment Advisor. We don't work for a parent company. We work for our clients. We're privileged to serve clients across South Florida and around the country.
The long way around.
The short version leaves out the part where I quit with no plan, no prospects, and a newborn at home. Here is thewhole thing.
The job I couldn't do for forty years.
I remember the thought clear as day:
I simply cannot do this for the next forty years of my life. I'll be a depressedhusband and father. I don't want to be that.It was the worst possible moment to be thinking it. There was a clear path for me to grow into an equity positionin the family business — my life laid out in front of me with certainty. We had agreed that I would remain thesole earner while Sharon took time away from work to be home with Ariel. Walking away meant walking awayfrom her father's company, our income, and everything we had just built.So I approached Sharon with the untimely news. “I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I know it's notthis.”Sharon had known me since I was fifteen — she was my high school sweetheart. She could justifiably have said,“I understand, but the timing is really, really bad. Stick it out for now.” She didn't. She hugged me, looked medead in the eye, and said, “I believe in you. I support you. Whatever you decide to do, we're in it together.
Eighteen months of figuring it out.
Shortly after, I resigned. I spent the next eighteen months between trades and crafts — anything to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table for my wife and our newborn daughter, Ariel. Bartending, waiting tables, selling home security systems, you name it.I used that time to work out what I wanted from a career, and why I hadn't found joy or fulfillment in the role I'dleft. In some ways it shouldn't have been surprising. My whole life I'd been an aspiring musician and filmmaker whose primary interests were spiritual philosophy and personal development. I competed in speech and drama at Miami Palmetto Senior High, then majored in Film & Television Production with a Religious Studies minor at New York University, where I graduated with the Founder's Day Award for academic excellence. So the fact that I wasn't happy marketing cables to customers in South America shouldn't have been much of a shock. But what would make me happy? Fulfilled?
The meeting that changed everything.
While I was working that out, I asked my sisters for a referral to a financial planner. I had realized I wassuddenly financially responsible for a spouse and a baby. There is nothing like a newborn to clarify yourpriorities — so utterly innocent, so utterly dependent. If something happened to me, what would happen to mywife and daughter?So we sat down with a planner to make sure we were doing the right things to provide for our family. She talkedto us about saving, investing, being properly insured — all the things a young family needs to think about.But what really resonated was something deeper. Here was a career where I could make a meaningful impact inpeople's lives. What I had lacked as a product manager, and what I could never quite translate into a career in thearts, was the one thing I wanted most: to know that my life had purpose, and that the purpose was expressed byhelping other people.I pursued the appropriate licenses, and in early 2003 I joined MassMutual as a career agent
Building LifeCraft, one step at a time.
I spent three years at MassMutual before moving to MetLife, where I spent another seven. 2009 was the pivotal year: I earned my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification, hired Tara Andre — who has been our Director of Client Services ever since, seventeen years and counting — and opened a d/b/a called LifeCraftWealth Management, an Office of MetLife. The name has been ours from that day. It was also at MetLife that we found the niche we serve best: empty-nesters in and approaching retirement. It grew directly out of my own experience. We committed ourselves to helping those clients build meaningful, purposeful lives of inspired action in their retirement years. By 2013 I had run into a problem I could not reconcile. Providing unbiased, objective advice runs into conflict under a parent company that has a vested interest in its representatives selling proprietary insurance and annuity products. So I left. I formed LifeCraft, LLC and affiliated with Cambridge Investment Research — one of the leading independent broker-dealers and registered investment advisory firms in the world. For the first time, LifeCraft Wealth Management was a genuinely independent entity rather than a name inside someone else'sfirm. From 2013 through 2024, I built a successful, planning-first advisory practice there. In early 2024, I took the last step. I left Cambridge and founded LifeCraft Wealth Management as my own Registered Investment Advisor, registered in the State of Florida. No parent company. No proprietary products.No quotas. Just advice.
What “LifeCraft” means:
The name came out of what the work had taught us. Retirement is not a number. It is a question about what the rest of your life is for. Our job is to help people craft that life — and then to build the financial plan that makes it possible. In twenty-plus years, we have had the privilege of serving clients from all walks of life and every background. We have watched parents become grandparents, retirees start new hobbies and new careers, and love stories blossom. Through it all, our purpose has stayed focused, and the fulfillment we take from helping others has only grown. I am grateful for the life I have been able to craft for my family, and for knowing we have played a part in others reaching their own. I remain deeply grateful to Sharon — my wife, my partner in this firm, and the reason any of it was possible. Together we have two children, Ariel and Jacob, who inspire us to leave the world better than we found it
What this means if we work together:
Three things follow from that history, and they are the three I would want to know if I were sitting where you are.
I am independent, and I gave up a good deal to be.
LifeCraft is not owned by a wirehouse, a bank, a fund company, or an insurer. There are no proprietary products to place and no sales quotas to hit. I left two firms to get here, which is a more expensive way of proving the point than writing it on a website.
We work with one kind of client.
Empty-nesters in and approaching retirement. Not because everyone elsedoesn't deserve good advice, but because doing one thing for twenty years is how you get good at it.
We start with the life, not the portfolio.
Every relationship begins with your Wealth M.A.P., which brings together three things: what you have, what your retirement will actually cost, and the risks along the way.
If that sounds like the help you are looking for, I would be glad to talk.