WEALTH YOUR WAY

A debut manual offers a blueprint for taking greater control of personal finances in order to build monetary independence.

In his book, DeStefano urges his readers to take an objective, global view of their finances by using four “Buckets” in which to categorize expenses. Bucket A is your financial independence portfolio: 401(k) savings, CDs, IRAs, brokerage accounts, and real estate investments. Bucket B is fixed living costs like taxes, housing, groceries, and such. Bucket C is savings goals, both short-term (vacations, emergencies) and long-term (house down payments, for instance). And Bucket D is “Spending on Whatever” (dining out and other such purely optional expenses). One of the author’s central instructions is that every month, readers need to put money in Bucket A before they add any to Buckets B, C, or D. He deftly breaks down the mechanisms governing each of these Buckets, and the key insight in all of this takes the form of a question far too few people ever step back and ask themselves: “You use over 2,000 hours every year working to make money, but how much time do you put into managing that money?” DeStefano writes with clarity and energy, and readers with substantial amounts of disposable income will find much of his thinking to be bracingly useful. But his manual shares the same structural weakness that other books of this kind display: Most people have little or no disposable income—only one Bucket, in other words. Still, the author’s advice for the remainder is uniformly valuable, from elucidating the vagaries of the stock market (“Historically,” he writes, “dividends have been less volatile than stock prices”) to the tricks of investment.

An energetic, helpful, and very readable guide to strengthening your financial situation.