The Function of Wealth developed from a recurring observation: financial services had many good answers, but no consistent system for determining which questions should come first.
Gary Preisser began his financial career in tax preparation in 2000. He saw clients celebrate outcomes without necessarily understanding what those outcomes meant, and business owners make consequential decisions without complete information.
The recurring problem often existed before the answer: What question was being answered, and what outcome was actually required?
Rich introduced Gary to wealth management and taught him to examine decisions through Time, Rate, and Taxes.
Start With Why changed how Gary thought about decision-making and reinforced the importance of beginning with Why.
Gary encountered tax buckets, Lazy/Safe/Risky Money, investments, annuities, alpha, beta, and the danger of allowing implementation to determine the framework.
Real financial decisions sharpened the missing question: how much belongs in each role—and why?
The Cash Flow Clock—now the Functional Wealth Clock—helped make Timing an objective input into Design. But Timing created another question: how can we know when money will be needed without knowing what it is for?
Once Purpose and Timing were established, products and strategies could become tools within Design rather than starting points. The remaining question was whether the Design actually worked.
Once Function became the objective, the next question was how to measure whether wealth was prepared to fulfill Purpose.
Gary is a cofounder of Stonebriar Wealth Advisors and the author of multiple books exploring wealth, financial decision-making, taxation, risk, Timing, and financial Design.
Today, his work focuses on educating the public, training financial professionals, developing Functional Capacity, and encouraging the financial-services industry to begin with better questions.
The Cash Flow Clock—now the Functional Wealth Clock—helped make Timing an objective input into Design. But Timing created another question: how can we know when money will be needed without knowing what it is for?
Once Purpose and Timing were established, products and strategies could become tools within Design rather than starting points. The remaining question was whether the Design actually worked.
Once Function became the objective, the next question was how to measure whether wealth was prepared to fulfill Purpose.
Gary did not invent Purpose, Timing, Design, measurement, feedback, or continual refinement. His contribution was recognizing that these principles were not being systematically applied to wealth.
Discovered the gap → Developed the financial application → Codified the system → Champions its adoption.
The Function of Wealth is not an investment strategy, insurance strategy, tax strategy, portfolio model, retirement product, or proprietary financial product. It is a framework for determining how those tools should be evaluated and used.