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Wealth Planners
The firm emerged from a long-running Chicago-area partnership and now operates as Wealth Planners from Des Plaines, Illinois. The principals, Denny...
Wealth Planners
The firm emerged from a long-running Chicago-area partnership and now operates as Wealth Planners from Des Plaines, Illinois. The principals, Denny Gustin-Piazza and Dan Piazza, lead a team of 11 professionals. Their practice grew out of four decades of benefits consulting and personal financial planning for business owners, which created the multi-generational relationships that underpin the family-office structure. Investment deployment spans public markets, private equity, hedge funds, direct co-investments and SPVs, real estate, commodities, digital assets, private credit, and secondaries. The firm’s research records confirm positions across FinTech, digital health, energy transition, industrial tech, agritech, mobility, space tech, and quantum computing, among 17 tracked sectors. Geographic reach covers North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, South America, and the Caribbean. The firm avoids a pure fund-of-funds posture; architecture shows alternative VC models, infrastructure co-investments, and discrete distressed/turnaround allocations operating alongside traditional fund commitments. Total assets under management are undisclosed. The last public operational marker comes from the firm’s own website in 2026: Wealth Planners refined its core service model into the 'Legacy Wealth Optimization System,' bundling tax, estate, insurance, and philanthropic advisory into a unified family-governance framework. In addition to investment management, the firm fields business-focused services — qualified and non-qualified retirement plans, key-employee programs, and business-succession and coaching engagements through Kolbe Consulting — that effectively double as intergenerational wealth-preservation tools for owner-operator families. The structural differentiator is Wealth Planners' grafting of a behavioral 'wealth coaching' discipline directly into a family-office chassis. Most multi-family offices make planning a scheduling exercise; Wealth Planners mandates ongoing life-goal conversations before any capital is allocated, then maps hedge-fund and private-equity exposures against outcomes rather than benchmarks. This makes the firm more of a governance-and-psychology shop that runs money, rather than a money shop that sends a quarterly newsletter.
General information
Firm type
Multi Family Office
Year founded
2009
Location
Region
Africa
Country
United States
City
Des Plaines, IL
Corporate office
Des Plaines, IL, United States
Principals
Denny Gustin-Piazza
Principal
Dan Piazza
Principal
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at Wealth Planners?
Investment and strategic direction rest with principals Denny Gustin-Piazza and Dan Piazza, who appear as the named leads on the firm’s team page alongside eight additional professionals spanning planning, benefits, and client-care functions. The firm does not publicly identify a separate CIO, which is consistent with a principal-led multi-family office model.
Does Wealth Planners commit to funds or focus on direct deals?
The firm’s research record shows dual posture: it accesses private markets through direct co-investments and SPVs while simultaneously participating in fund-of-funds and hedge-fund commitments. This blended architecture is typical of a multi-family office that wants concentrated exposures alongside diversified manager sleeves.
How does the firm’s planning methodology differ from a standard wealth manager?
Wealth Planners requires what it calls 'Above The Line' conversations — goal-definition and life-vision work — before any portfolio construction begins. The process is closer to executive coaching than traditional financial-planning data gathering, and the resulting allocation is framed as a tool to reach personal outcomes rather than as an investment portfolio in isolation.
What is the Legacy Wealth Optimization System?
It is Wealth Planners’ unified client delivery framework, formalized in May 2026. The system bundles investment management, tax strategy, estate planning, insurance analysis, and philanthropic advisory under a single governance and implementation structure, then layers on the firm’s life-goal coaching discipline.
Does Wealth Planners have philanthropic or operating-business capabilities?
Yes. The firm advises on philanthropic structures as part of its core offering, and it directly consults on operating-business issues — succession planning, key-employee programs, and qualified/non-qualified retirement plans. Its Kolbe Consulting affiliation adds a psychometric-assessment practice that supports owner-operator families in governance and hiring decisions.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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