Fear destroys more wealth than market crashes.

Eric Maldonado learned that at nine years old, watching his grandmother lose her fully paid-off home to foreclosure. Not from a disaster. From a handful of financial decisions made alone, without anyone to call, driven by fear and confusion. That experience shaped everything about how he works. He spent more than a decade as a fee-only, fiduciary CFP® helping people who came into real money suddenly: inheritances, business sales, decades of saving that finally added up. In The Fearless Wealth Plan, he writes about what he's seen and what actually helps.

The book isn't about picking stocks. It's about learning to invest despite fear.

He starts not with numbers but with what a person actually cares about. When you know why you're investing, sitting through a 30% drop becomes something you can do. Without that, even a solid strategy falls apart when things get uncomfortable. The chapters work through the obstacles that wreck most wealth-building plans: the complexity trap and why simple, low-cost index ETFs outperform elaborate strategies almost every time; the emotional spiral of fear and FOMO; what to do when you suddenly have more money than you've ever had; the cost of having no one in your corner; and the harder question of whether your money actually reflects what you believe.