By the 25-year Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Fixed Income
Stop paying 1% to someone guessing at your future.
Do-It-Yourself Wealth Management is the playbook from Stanley J. Kon, PhD — 25 years as Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Fixed Income, a finance professor with 25 years teaching at Michigan, NYU, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Duke, plus 15 years in institutional investment management. A complete, math-honest, objective framework for managing your own portfolio for life.
PDF + EPUB · Instant download · Updated & Expanded 2nd Edition · 232 pages · Also on Kindle ($99.99 at Amazon)
Peer-reviewed · The Journal of Investing · Oct 2021
“Professor Stanley J. Kon is clearly establishing the need for a new paradigm for a large segment of the asset management industry… for the long-term benefit of individuals and their lifetime standard of living.”
“Many of the necessary concepts are explained with more intuitive economic reasoning and through many real examples. This writing style also makes his book a very effective supplement to a formal textbook course or as a central teaching device.”
Frank J. Fabozzi, PhD — Editor, The Journal of Portfolio Management · Professor of Finance, EDHEC Business School. From the published book review, The Journal of Investing, October 2021.
Why this book exists
The investing books in airport bookstores won’t make you wealthy.
Most personal finance books fall into two buckets. The first is motivational — they tell you to spend less than you earn. Important. Insufficient. The second is academic — they tell you, in equations, how a Nobel laureate would allocate capital under idealized assumptions. Rigorous. Unusable.
Do-It-Yourself Wealth Management is the third kind: the kind a finance professor writes after fifty years of actually doing the work, when he sets out to give his children — and yours — a complete operating manual for managing family wealth without paying someone 1% a year to do it badly.
Inside the book
14 chapters. A complete operating manual.
Quick Start → Financial Decisions → Investment Strategies and Evaluation. Each chapter is relatively independent, so skip to whatever decision you’re facing.
No-Brainers
Maximizing tax-deferred contributions, employer matches, rollovers, and the rest of the easy wins — plus the not-so-obvious suboptimal decisions to stop making.
A Real Case Study
A complete analysis of a real person’s wealth portfolio — a mortgage pay-down decision, fund selection inside an employer plan, and a full set of asset allocation revisions.
Lifetime Financial Planning, Portfolio Monitoring and Revision Decisions
The methodology for the simultaneous decisions on saving, retirement withdrawals, and an investment strategy tied to what the cash, bond, and stock markets are currently offering — plus a checklist for the disciplined revision process as your portfolio evolves.
Debt, Liquidity, Insurance & Retirement
Good debt, bad debt, and ugly debt. When you’re over-insured and would be better off self-insuring. And the psychological side of planning for — and living in — retirement.
Asset Allocation & Risk
The top-down risk decision across cash, bonds, and stocks — strategic, tactical, and dynamic strategies, and eliminating uncompensated risk through optimal diversification.
Downside Risk Management
Strategies that keep a floor on your portfolio no matter what — DIY annuities for retirees and stress-testing your portfolio against a market meltdown.
Stanley J. Kon, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Fixed Income · Chairman, Ripsaw LLC
25 years at the front of finance classrooms — University of Michigan, NYU, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Duke — plus 15 years inside the institutional investment management business at Smith Breeden Associates as a principal, director of research, Co-Director of the Investment Management Group, executive committee member, and board member. 25 years as Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Fixed Income, and author of papers in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Business, The Journal of Fixed Income, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Journal of Empirical Finance, and Financial Analysts Journal. He wrote this book because he wanted his children — and yours — to have the operating manual he uses himself. Meet Stan and the WealthFluent leadership team →
Get the complete playbook.
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