Robert Puelz
About
Robert Puelz
Professor Emeritus, Edwin L. Cox School of Business at SMU · FinPlan LLC
For most of my career, I taught students at SMU's Edwin L. Cox School of Business how to think about household finance using economics — not rules of thumb. This site is where that work reaches a wider audience.
I'm a Professor Emeritus at SMU, founder of FinPlan LLC, and the creator of Moneygimme — a guided learning platform built on the same economics-first framework. My writing, teaching materials, and podcast appearances are collected here for readers who want a more rigorous foundation than conventional financial advice provides.
Most financial guidance is built on rules of thumb designed for an average household that doesn't exist. Life-cycle economics models your actual income, spending, taxes, Social Security, and longevity together — and finds the plan that genuinely fits your household.
This site is for readers who want to understand that framework: where the ideas come from, how they apply to real decisions, and why the questions economics asks are more useful than the shortcuts most advisors offer.
The philosophy
Why economics-based planning is different
Rules of thumb were built for no one in particular. Life-cycle economics models your household specifically.
Rules of thumb are averages
Save 10–15% of income. Have 3x your salary by 40. Spend no more than 4% of your portfolio each year. These benchmarks describe the average household. They do not describe yours. Applied to your specific situation, they can produce guidance that is meaningfully wrong.
Life-cycle economics is specific
The life-cycle model treats your household as a single optimization problem. It asks: given your income, assets, taxes, Social Security trajectory, and longevity, what spending and saving path maximizes your sustainable living standard over a lifetime? The answer is a number, not a percentage.
The right question changes everything
Standard planning asks: are you saving enough? Economics asks: what is your household's optimal living standard, and what choices move it higher? That shift in framing changes every recommendation that follows — retirement timing, Social Security, Roth vs. Traditional, and more.
Education should build frameworks
The goal of this site is not to give you more tips. It is to give you a way of thinking that makes better decisions possible across all the questions your household faces — now and over time. A framework is more durable than any single recommendation.
Academic teaching
Decades of university instruction
Teaching areas drawn from years of coursework at SMU's Cox School of Business.
Life-Cycle Economics & Personal Finance
The foundational course that informs everything on this site.
Principles of Risk Management
How corporations manage uncertainty, insurance, and exposure.
Insurance Economics
The principles of risk and insurance.
Financial Literacy
Research on the causal relationship between financial literacy and economics outcomes.
Corporate Finance
Capital structure, valuation, and financial decision-making at the firm level.
The tool I recommend
MaxiFi Planner makes the economics computable.
Life-cycle economics is the right framework. MaxiFi Planner is the software that puts it to work for a real household. It models income, spending, taxes, Social Security, and longevity together — and finds the plan that maximizes your lifetime living standard. It is the only planning tool I recommend.
Try MaxiFi PlannerAffiliate link — I may receive compensation at no cost to you.
Models your specific income, assets, taxes, Social Security, and longevity — not population averages.
The output is a sustainable spending number your household can build a life around.
Compare retirement dates, Social Security strategies, Roth conversions, and life events side by side.
Want the guided version?
RobertPuelz.com is the library of ideas. Moneygimme is one of the classrooms — short lessons, decision frameworks, and a practical route to achieve a higher level of financial literacy.