About Us

Founder, Mary Deutsch’s first priority is to take care of her clients and provide them with exceptional customer service.  Every day, she gets to help people plan for their retirement, so it’s not hard for her to love what she does. To meet the rising demand for her honest approach and direct financial guidance, she has expanded from Chicago to several suburbs and surrounding areas of Illinois. 

Who We Are

About MTD Financial

financial advisor plan for retirement portrait chicago il

Mary Deutsch

Mary Deutsch grew up on a dairy farm in Sycamore, Illinois, where she learned the value of a work ethic, integrity, passion, and commitment to excellence. For Mary, after many years of milking cows at 4 AM, baling hay, driving tractors, and helping with chores, being in the “working world” seems easy! She realized that the majority of people are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to realize their true potential.

From an early age, her father taught her the value of keeping your finances in order: He kept “IOU” post-it notes so she’d at some point have to pay for everything bought for her. Needless to say, Mary learned the value of money quickly. She won’t stand for losing money, nor for other people losing their own hard-earned savings.

Mary’s experience plays a large part in her education.  Mary has been serving clients since 2014. Her background and experience include finance, sales, management, and marketing. Always having a head for finance, she ran 2 separate independent businesses before the age of 21. She went to college for two years, and although she excelled (a 3.7 overall GPA), Mary eventually decided to start her own financial business and focus primarily on courses to become licensed and to maintain licensing requirements. She decided to go into this industry because it was a chance to make a real difference in people’s lives.

When she founded MTD Financial, she had three basic principles in mind: Keep her clients’ money safe, help them see a reasonable return, and keep retirement strategies simple. For example: You don’t need a 20-30% return if you don’t lose half your money. MTD Financial’s goal is to help people stretch their money further through retirement, by protecting what they already have, and reducing their taxes and fees.

She considers MTD Financial different from many companies in her industry, due to her work ethic and proactivity about reaching out to clients and keeping them updated. One of the most common things she hears from clients is that they got an account from a different financial advisor, but never heard back from them. Obviously, this will not happen with clients of MTD Financial.

Mary's awards and accolades include:

Mary Deutsch, with her experience, background, and capacity to help people, is more than happy to share her knowledge with clients, both current and prospective. It is common to see her teaching and presenting to others in her field.

On a more personal note: Mary currently lives in Chicago with her partner, Joe. They don’t have any children of their own but do sponsor 3 children in Kenya. She’s a 3-time published author, two of which were children’s books.

Christine Deutsch

Office Manager

Christine Deutsch began working with MTD Financial in 2022. Chris is the Director of Client Services. This entails overseeing new and existing client accounts, preparing annual client reviews, and transferring of clients’ money, among other things.

Chris enjoys her work at MTD Financial as it gives her the opportunity to help other people. She appreciates that the firm values honesty and integrity, and has a client-first approach. Chris could be described as honest, helpful, warm, friendly, patient, and hard-working.

Christine’s education mainly came from practice. She has worked in client services before, in fact, she worked in Client Services and Marketing for R. R. Donnelley for around 35 years.

Family is extremely important to Chris. She grew up in a large family on a farm (where she gets her excellent work ethic from) and now is married with four children and four grandchildren.

Holly Griffin

Holly Griffin

Scheduling and Events Manager

Holly Griffin began working with MTD Financial in 2022. Holly is the Director of Scheduling and Events. This job involves scheduling Mary’s appointments with clients, and doing a lot of the work in planning seminar events. 

Holly enjoys her work at MTD Financial as it allows her to get to know new people. She could be described as thoughtful, helpful, and a good listener. She has a Bachelor of Psychology from St. Xavier University. Prior to working with us, was the Director of Planning and Special Events for the College of Business Administration at the University of Illinois, and owned her own event planning company, Milestone Events Company. 

Holly loves to read, travel, and spend time with family and friends. She has three adult sons, and a dog named Louie.

Erick Lucio Headshot

Erick Lucio

Client Relations Specialist

Erick Lucio began working with us here at MTD Financial in 2023. Erick holds the title of Client Relations Specialist. This involves every task you can think of: attending and executing seminar events, scheduling appointments, building relationships with clients, conducting annual client reviews, and reporting on metrics associated with events, reviews, and client engagement. He’s previously worked in the financial services industry, but partnering with MTD Financial has given him the chance to build relationships with clients and truly help them as best he can. Erick is social, charismatic, thoughtful, driven, kind-hearted, and a family man. He lives in Woodstock, IL, with his wife and daughter. When not working, he spends his time with his family, exercising, reading, painting with his daughter, or watching movies with his wife. 

Luke-Nennig-Headshot

Luke Nennig

Business Processing Specialist

Luke Nennig began working with MTD Financial in 2023. He’s our Business Processing Specialist and is responsible for handling transfers of assets for new clients and various client service requests. He’s ambitious, smart, hard-working but fun-loving, and loves helping people. Luke has a BA in Business Management and Leadership from NIU, and has plenty of experience in financial services: he started his career at Dovenmuehle Mortgage as a loss mitigation underwriter and then moved to hold the title of Origination Mortgage underwriter at Baxter Credit Union. When not working, Luke enjoys watching sports, doing home improvement projects, and spending time with his family. He lives in Lakemoor, Illinois with his wife, Katie, and their two young children, Hollie and Chandler. They also have a dog, a Pitbull/Lab mix named Noelle.

Joe-Schaefer-headshot

Joe Schaefer

Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Joe is Mary’s husband and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of MTD Financial. He started part-time as MTD Financial’s tech specialist in 2022 and then moved to the full-time role of COO in late 2023. Joe does what he can to help grow the business, searching for opportunities to streamline our processes and do what we do more efficiently. He’s caring, empathetic, and always willing to listen, with a sense of humor about him. And, he loves solving problems. He has a B.S. in Industrial Technology with an emphasis in Process Efficiency and Lean Manufacturing from Purdue University. Prior to deciding to partner with Mary, he spent 15 years at AT&T working in various Marketing and Management organizations. When not working, Joe loves watching Formula 1 or his favorite Wisconsin sports teams, working out, golfing, skiing, and spending time with Mary.

Scroll to Top