Harold Evensky

Harold Evensky is one of the most influential financial planners in American history, credited with helping professionalize fee-only financial planning. He co-founded Evensky & Katz, a pioneering evidence-based wealth management firm in Florida, and later became a professor at Texas Tech University. Evensky popularized the "bucket strategy" for retirement — dividing assets into near-term, medium-term, and long-term buckets with different investment approaches. He co-authored "Wealth Management: The Financial Advisor's Guide to Investing and Managing Your Client's Assets" and was a longtime chair of the CFP Board. His research on the tradeoffs between cash management and investment returns in retirement portfolios, and his framework for integrating tax planning with investment management, have been widely adopted in the fee-only financial planning community as best practice standards for serving affluent retirees.