What Is Financial Life Design? Mana's Alternative to Traditional Financial Planning
Most people come to a financial advisor with a question. How much do I need to retire? What should I do with these RSUs? Can I afford to help my parents?
These are important questions. A good financial planner can answer all of them.
But over and over, we've found that the clients who come to Mana aren't just looking for answers. They're looking for someone who will listen — really listen — before offering solutions. They want someone who will help them figure out what all of this is actually for.
That's what Financial Life Design is. And it's what makes Mana different from most advisory firms in the country.
The Problem With Traditional Financial Planning
Traditional financial planning is built around numbers. A planner collects your statements, runs projections, builds an allocation, and hands you a plan. If they're good, the plan is thorough. If they're great, they check in on it once a year.
But if you've ever taken a financial plan home and let it collect dust in a filing cabinet, you already know something is missing.
It doesn't ask why you're really afraid to spend in retirement after decades of saving. It doesn't sit with you when your mother is moved into memory care and you're suddenly managing her finances on top of your own. It doesn't help you define what "enough" actually means when you're earning more than you ever expected.
Traditional financial planning answers the how. Financial Life Design starts with the who and the why — and builds the how around them.
What Is Financial Life Design?
Financial Life Design is how we do financial planning at Mana. Most advisors start with your portfolio. That's like designing a house by picking out the furniture first. We start with your life, and not just your life as it is today, but the richest, most authentic version of it you can imagine. Then we bring everything we've got: deep listening, Life Planning, technical expertise, behavioral guidance, family facilitation, and the ability to walk with you through life's biggest transitions.
Deep Listening
This is the foundation of everything we do. Before we look at a single statement or run a single projection, we listen. The financial services industry trains advisors to solve problems quickly. It does not train them to listen. We take a different approach. We listen because the quality of the plan depends on the quality of the listening: we want to understand what's really going on in your life, what you're worried about, what you're hoping for, and what you haven't said out loud yet.
Life Planning
We are trained and certified in George Kinder's Life Planning methodology — a mindfulness-based process of structured, non-judgmental inquiry that helps clients discover their deepest goals. Life Planning is one of the most powerful tools we bring to Financial Life Design, but it's one ingredient in a larger framework. It helps us understand not just what you want to accomplish financially, but what kind of life you're trying to build.
Technical Financial Planning
Financial Life Design isn't soft. It's rigorous. We bring deep expertise in tax strategy, equity compensation, retirement planning, estate planning, and risk management. The difference is that we apply this expertise in service of something larger: your life, not just your balance sheet.
Behavioral Guidance
Some of the most important work we do has nothing to do with spreadsheets. It's giving a couple permission to spend after a lifetime of saving. It's helping a high earner push past the fear that stepping back from work will destabilize everything they've built. It's sitting with a client as they define what "enough" looks like, and then helping them trust that number. Financial decisions are emotional decisions. We treat them that way.
Family Facilitation
Money doesn't exist in a vacuum. It lives inside families. We hold family meetings so siblings can get on the same page about a parent's care. We help couples navigate the tension between competing priorities. We sit in the room when the conversations are hard, and we help families find alignment when the stakes are high.
Transition Navigation
The moments when people need us most are rarely about the markets. They're about life's inflection points: a career shift, a business sale, the transition into retirement, the loss of a parent, kids leaving home. These are the moments where financial and emotional decisions collide. Having an advisor who understands both makes all the difference.
Financial Life Design in Action
The best way to understand what Financial Life Design looks like is through the people we serve. Here are three stories from our practice.
The Couple Who Needed Permission to Live
They spent their entire careers doing everything right. They lived below their means, saved diligently, and still managed to enjoy life along the way. One partner spent most of his career traveling almost weekly across the globe for work.
When they came to Mana, they were approaching retirement with more than enough. But "more than enough" didn't make the transition easy. The shift from earning and saving to drawing down and enjoying is deeply psychological. It's harder than most people expect.
Before we asked for a single statement, we took the time to understand why they came to us. What we heard was this: they wanted to slow down. They wanted to say yes to friends inviting them over for dinner or a pickleball game — something they hadn't been able to do much as working professionals. They wanted to travel on their own terms instead of planning around corporate schedules. And they wanted someone who would give them permission to spend and withdraw from their accounts so they could make their lives easier and more enjoyable.
They didn't need a better portfolio. They needed someone who understood that the hardest part of retirement isn't the math — it's the identity shift. They found that with Mana.
The Family Navigating Everything at Once
They came to us as a couple in the thick of it. Just as their children were stepping into adulthood, their aging parents began needing more and more help. The emotional weight alone was enormous — and then there were the financial dimensions layered on top.
We've helped this family navigate liquidity events, job shifts, and complex tax planning. But we've also helped them with things that don't show up on a traditional financial plan: researching senior care facilities, connecting them with attorneys and elder care specialists from our network when urgent situations came up at a care facility, consulting with them after one of their mothers passed away, and holding family meetings so they could get on the same page with their siblings — who aren't Mana clients — about shared caregiving responsibilities.
No spreadsheet captures what this family is going through. But Financial Life Design does. It gives us the framework to show up for the whole picture — the financial, the logistical, and the deeply personal.
The Tech Worker Defining "Enough"
They came to Mana with significant equity compensation and a high income. On paper, everything was going well. The stock was performing, the career was on track, and the earnings were substantial.
But beneath the numbers, there was a question they hadn't been able to answer: What is all of this for?
We brought our technical expertise to the table: helping them diversify out of a concentrated stock position, optimize their tax strategy, and make the most of their high-earning years. But the work that mattered most was helping them define their "enough." We listened. We helped them paint a picture of what life would look like if they were truly living it on their own terms. And then we built a financial strategy that supported that vision, not just a portfolio that maximized returns.
How Is Financial Life Design Different From Traditional Financial Planning?
A traditional financial planner will tell you how to get there. They'll show you the trade-offs, build the projections, and optimize the strategy. That's valuable work, and it's part of what we do.
But Financial Life Design asks a different first question. Instead of "What are your financial goals?" we ask: "What does your life look like when it's everything you want it to be?" We start with your story, not your statements. We build a plan around your life, and then make sure the money supports it.
This isn't just philosophical; it changes the work we do every day. We spend more time listening before we recommend. We're as comfortable holding a family meeting as we are building a tax strategy. And we measure success by whether our clients are actually living the lives they want to live.
Who Is Financial Life Design For?
Financial Life Design is for anyone who feels like traditional financial advice isn't addressing the full picture. In our experience, that often includes:
Pre-retirees and recent retirees who have done the saving and now need help navigating the emotional and psychological transition into the next chapter — not just the withdrawal strategy.
Sandwich generation families who are caring for aging parents while raising children, managing careers, and trying to hold it all together. They need an advisor who can help with the finances and the complexity of the life surrounding them.
Tech workers and startup employees with equity compensation who are earning more than they ever expected and need both sophisticated tax planning and someone who will help them figure out what all of it is actually for.
If you've ever felt like your financial advisor answers your questions but misses the point, Financial Life Design might be what you've been looking for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Financial Life Design? Financial Life Design is Mana's approach to financial planning. It integrates your financial decisions with your life goals, values, and transitions — not just your portfolio. It combines deep listening, Life Planning, technical financial expertise, behavioral guidance, family facilitation, and transition navigation into a single, cohesive methodology.
How is Financial Life Design different from financial life planning? Financial life planning is a broad term used across the industry. Financial Life Design is Mana's specific methodology — it incorporates Life Planning as one ingredient alongside deep listening, technical expertise, behavioral guidance, family facilitation, and transition navigation. It's a more comprehensive framework built from over twenty years of experience in financial services.
What kind of financial advisor does Financial Life Design? Mana Financial Life Design is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisory firm. We are fully virtual and work with clients nationwide. We don't earn commissions and we don't sell products. Our only obligation is to our clients.
Is Financial Life Design only for wealthy people? We typically work with clients who have $3–10 million in assets, but Financial Life Design as a philosophy is relevant to anyone navigating a meaningful life transition. Our focus on this asset range allows us to bring the depth of attention this work requires.
Do you help with equity compensation and RSU planning? Yes. Technical financial planning — including equity compensation strategy, RSU planning, tax optimization, and concentrated stock diversification — is one of the six core ingredients of Financial Life Design.
Can you help if I'm caring for aging parents while raising kids? Yes. Cross-generational and sandwich generation planning is one of our core specialties. We help families navigate the financial, logistical, and emotional dimensions of caring for multiple generations simultaneously.
What does it mean that Mana is fee-only and fiduciary? Fee-only means we are compensated only by our clients — we don't earn commissions or receive compensation from product companies. Fiduciary means we are legally obligated to act in your best interest at all times.
How do I know if Financial Life Design is right for me? If you've ever felt like your financial advisor answers your questions but doesn't really understand your life, or if you're navigating a transition that feels bigger than just the numbers — Financial Life Design was built for people like you.
Mana Financial Life Design is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisory firm specializing in equity compensation planning, liquidity event and business exit planning, and cross-generational financial planning. We are fully virtual and work with clients nationwide. [Learn more about working with Mana here].
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Stephanie Bucko and Cristina Livadary are fee-only financial planners based in Los Angeles, California. Stephanie is the Chief Investment Officer and Cristina is the Chief Executive Officer at Mana Financial Life Design (FLD). Mana FLD provides comprehensive financial planning and investment management services to help clients grow and protect their wealth throughout life’s journey. Mana FLD specializes in advising ambitious professionals who seek financial knowledge and want to implement creative budgeting, savings, proactive planning and powerful investment strategies. As fee-only fiduciaries and independent financial advisors, Stephanie and Cristina never receive commission of any kind. Stephanie and Cristina are legally bound by their certifications to provide unbiased and trustworthy financial advice.