Financial well-being starts with understanding what you want from life.

Silvana Leon, founder of Somosfin, joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast to talk about how financial stress influences our decisions and how personalized financial coaching can help people build confidence and work toward their goals.

What Stood Out 

• Financial stress can affect how people think, feel, and make decisions.
• Reducing financial stress creates more room for learning and planning.
• Human financial coaching provides encouragement, accountability, and personal connection.
• Understanding your own goals helps you make financial choices that support the life you want.

The Bottom Line: Financial well-being begins with knowing what matters to you and taking practical steps toward the life you want.

 🎥 Watch this episode below: 

🎧 Listen to the podcast below or on your favorite podcast app. 

Connect with Silvana Leon: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvanaleon/

Connect with Somosfin:  

• Website: https://www.somosfin.com 
• Instagram: @somos.fin /somos.fin
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/somosfin

Bio: 

Silvana Leon is a seasoned professional with 10+ years of experience in finance, business, and technology. With a strong background in product development, she has successfully launched innovative solutions to tackle financial inclusion through digital payments and improve financial literacy both in Latin America and London. Currently, Silvana is the founder of Somosfin, an early-stage business focused on empowering individuals and addressing the issue of financial illiteracy and stress in the Spanish-Speaking population. Through her work, she is dedicated to making a positive social impact by providing accessible financial education, resources and support to these communities.

👉 Start Your Financial Readiness Plan: A free, practical plan that helps you create your in-case-of-emergency Financial First Aid Kit, organize what matters, and prepare before life happens. Start Your Free Financial Readiness Plan  https://www.tonysteuer.com

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Transcript

Tony Steuer:
How would your life improve if you had someone by your side whose only priority was your financial well-being?

Welcome to Get Ready: Before Life Happens. I’m your host, Tony Steuer.

Today, I’m joined by Silvana Leon, founder of Somosfin.

Silvana, welcome to Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

Silvana Leon:
Thank you so very much, Tony. I’m so happy to be here talking to you.

Tony:
I am as well.

Tell us about yourself. What led you to focus on financial well-being, and why are you so passionate about it?

Silvana:
I grew up in Argentina. I’m Argentinian, so basically, we grew up in the middle of crisis.

It didn’t matter which year. Every single year was a financial crisis. I grew up seeing that around me: my parents, my family, my extended family, friends, and so on being so stressed about money.

I saw how that impacts people, not only economically, but also in their moods, in the way they live, and in what they believe and feel they can achieve in life.

With that in mind, from a very early age, sadly, I was passionate about accounting and math and things like that because I saw that people who knew and understood a little bit more were a little less stressed.

My parents are a doctor and a teacher. They are geniuses at what they do. But when it came to money, it was so hard.

It wasn’t just about the numbers because they know how to run numbers. It was something more. Something else was missing.

On the other hand, I could see people who were accountants or people who knew a little more about financial education and finance. In the middle of a crisis, they were changing their cars, upgrading their cars, or going on holidays.

I was like, why aren’t these people as stressed as the other people?

With that in mind, I always wanted to learn more about this so I could teach about it or distribute this knowledge.

Little by little, my whole career moved toward that goal until, four or five years ago, I finally got the courage and confidence to start Somosfin.

Since then, we’ve been living the dream, with all that comes with that.

Tony:
That’s awesome.

As people start to understand their money, or really anything, their stress goes down. When you feel at ease with a topic or area, that helps.

Unfortunately, money is one of the biggest stressors for people, so this is a huge piece.

Tell us a little bit about Somosfin and how it helps people feel more in control of their money.

Silvana:
Somosfin is a social startup because we are changing the way people feel about money and how they engage with money.

We do that through three things that create one big product, one big solution, that we call financial well-being as a service.

Of course, you have an app. You have a platform where you can see all your money. Information is king, as always. It’s really important that you don’t have everything in your head.

You can download all that information and data into one place that reflects what you actually live.

So the app is one side.

But if you don’t have the other two things, you can get confused. There are so many apps out there, and apps alone are clearly not the solution.

The second part is education. But again, who wants to study something when they are stressed? Who wants to read about something that is stressful for them? It is almost impossible.

You won’t make the time to sit and do that. But we do have education because it is important.

In order for people to use the app and education properly, they need to lower their stress first.

How do we do that? With a financial coach.

The financial coach is key. It is a human coach, a real person who will understand you and guide you through whatever you need.

Maybe you need to learn how to use the app. Maybe you need to make the app useful for you. Maybe you need to learn or discuss a topic, like compound interest, that everyone talks about.

Maybe you read about it, but you don’t really get it.

Imagine having that space, that confidence, and that trusted space where you can share all your thoughts about money.

Money is one of the most stressful things, and it is also one of the biggest taboos. You don’t talk about money with anyone, especially if you come from a Spanish-speaking family or community, where it can be even more taboo.

Sometimes talking about money means you are not enjoying life. It comes with a lot of cultural context.

That is Somosfin: those three components in one solution. You get the app, you get the education, and you get the support. For us, that is key for people to get control over their finances.

Tony:
That’s great.

You said so many things that we could go deep on.

One thing that is interesting right now is the use of a human coach and the role of a human coach.

How are you thinking about the role of AI and the trade-off with a human?

Silvana:
Of course we use AI in Somosfin. It is all over Somosfin.

But the way we see AI is to augment the capacity of us as humans.

There is a certain humanity that we need.

The other day, one of our users, we call them “finners,” was telling me, “I’ve tried with ChatGPT so many things. Here are all my bank statements, but it is never the right thing. It doesn’t get me.”

We asked, “Okay, what are you trying to do?”

The person was trying to organize money and create a system.

It was like, you need to talk to someone.

At the end of the day, money is not just the numbers. It is about the emotional aspect and accountability.

Bots are amazing, but they don’t create that accountability. They don’t get that emotion from you.

Even though sometimes they say, “I understand how you feel,” you know the bot doesn’t really understand how you feel.

But when a human tells you, “I understand how you feel,” it changes everything. Your body relaxes.

From there, we start building everything.

Yes, we use a lot of AI for recording meetings, helping the coach remember what they need to do, helping the user remember what they said they wanted to achieve, and all of those things.

But at the end, humans need other humans when it comes to this.

We have tried so many times to solve this problem, and money is still the number one stressor in the world. Clearly, the way we are trying to solve it has not fully worked.

This is how we are approaching it, and this is why we believe the human coach is fundamental to actually solving this problem.

Tony:
A human coach is fundamental. I’m making a note because I think that is such an important point.

There is a lot of discussion in the financial planning community about whether AI will replace financial planners. It seems more like AI can augment planning because there will always be a role for the experience a human provides.

A bot can do the plan, create the plan, make sure you are doing the things, and make sure the math is correct. But that humanity is what we need at the end.

Silvana:
Exactly.

Otherwise, anybody could solve it. But if someone does it for you, you don’t feel it.

You have to be aware of your finances to feel in control and to feel confident. Otherwise, you’re going to say, “Whatever, I don’t understand, but my bot did it.”

That is the same thing as not knowing for me. The bad feelings remain. You still don’t feel in control.

Tony:
That is such an important point.

So much of this is about building confidence, especially for women. You have to build it yourself and be part of that process to build confidence.

We don’t talk enough about confidence and the role of confidence in money.

Is that a big part of the approach for you with Somosfin, helping the user create that confidence?

Silvana:
One hundred percent.

For us, it is these three things: knowing, feeling in control, and having support.

Support gives you the confidence to achieve anything you want in life.

Imagine if you have the data, the knowledge, and the support, whether we are talking about money or anything else. You are going to feel that you can.

That is what we are trying to achieve: letting you know that you know what you need to know.

It is about having the confidence and the clarity that comes with that confidence.

If you have confidence, your stress level is going to get lower, and you are going to start having more clarity. You are going to be able to plan ahead and see ahead.

What happens to many of our users when they start with us is they say, “No, it’s impossible to plan. What are you asking? A budget? A plan? I don’t even know what we’re going to have for lunch tomorrow. And you’re asking about next year or retirement?”

It is impossible for people to think about next year, or even next month, if they are stressed. There is so much noise. You are afraid. You are scared. You don’t know what you don’t know.

That is what we are trying to tackle.

Tony:
That is a really important point.

We expect people to do all this planning, but if they are in a spot where they are not comfortable doing the planning, they need to get started in a way that feels good.

What would you say to someone who feels overwhelmed and doesn’t even know where to start?

Silvana:
That is a great question.

It makes me think of all the changes we made in the app.

At first, we started with “create your own plan,” but people don’t even know what a plan is. When you say “plan,” they wonder: plan for how many years?

The way we approach it at the beginning is to say, let’s start with your income and expenses. Try to name them and list them. Tell me about your rent, your supermarket, your internet. Tell me more.

That is how we start.

They start creating their budget without knowing they are creating a budget.

Yesterday, I was talking to a user who said, “I have my spreadsheet. My project is for 10 years.”

I asked, “How do you split those things?”

He said, “Fixed, variable, credits.”

I asked, “Are you comfortable with that?”

He said, “No, I don’t understand anything. I never feel in control.”

This user had been typing in his spreadsheet for 10 years, doing something that did not solve the problem.

So the way we do it is we start with that approach: tell me about your life. Then we try to put that life into a budget and create that budget.

From there, we tell them, “Now the only thing you have to do is register and be aware that this is actually your plan.”

The way we do that is through the app. You can use the app, text it through our WhatsApp AI so it goes straight to the app, send a voice note, or write it down.

We don’t care. It is just an exercise of being aware.

That gives you the sense of, “Okay, this is actually my life.”

Sometimes people don’t even know how much money they are saving. They feel they are not saving any money, but they are. The thing is, they are spending on goals beforehand.

They may say, “I don’t have anything left at the end of the day.”

But then they went on a trip during the weekend. So basically, they saved money and decided to spend it on that goal.

Sometimes our goals are not well organized, and that is another big topic we touch on at Somosfin.

Tony:
That is a really important point: organizing and prioritizing our goals.

You decide whether you want to go on this vacation or save for retirement. It is not always one or the other. It is finding the balance so you can work toward both goals.

Silvana:
Correct.

The first step is what I told you. The second step is that we ask you about your goals.

In the Somosfin platform, you have a big space for your goals.

The way we think about money is all about your goals. It is not about the number itself. It is about what you want to achieve in your life.

What do you want? From there, we start building.

That becomes your motivation, and it probably allows you to achieve those goals.

A lot of people are stressed because they don’t feel they can achieve their goals. But then you ask them, “What are your goals?” and they say, “I don’t know. I never had the time to know what I want.”

That is the second and most important thing: knowing what we want and then aligning our finances to live that life and achieve those goals.

Tony:
Align your life to achieve those goals. I’m making that note because it is so important.

Sometimes we let things dictate our life rather than taking control.

Another important takeaway is taking the time. People may be living paycheck to paycheck. They may have kids, be helping take care of parents, or both. They may have a career.

Slowing down to take that time can be a challenge.

We’ve talked about emotions. How does Somosfin help people build confidence? Is it just by organizing goals, or are there other ways you provide emotional support?

Silvana:
That is a great point.

The way we say it is: the fact that you are making space for this matters.

We often tell people it is just four hours a month.

If you spend four hours a month at the beginning, then probably in four months you will be spending one hour a month, and you will feel so in control.

Our goal is for people not to be making decisions about money every single day or every single hour. That is so stressful.

As you said, people are juggling their job, their kids, and everything else. Everything is chaos, and then on top of that, they have to manage their money.

It is impossible, because managing money is stressful. You need time to do things that are stressful. We are asking a lot of people.

From Somosfin, we say, “Let’s sit down together.”

The beginning is hard, but let’s do it. I promise you, it’s only four hours, or maybe a little bit more if you are very stressed at the beginning. Maybe six or eight hours max, with two hours a month meeting with someone.

You are going to feel that you are advancing, progressing, and changing a lot of your habits.

Once you start changing those little things and feeling that improvement, you start thinking, “Okay, there is something here.”

You start feeling motivated.

That motivation creates mental space to learn about other financial topics.

It is step by step.

Recently, someone told me that in two sessions, their stress came down so much. They stopped fighting as much with their husband about money because they understood why they felt how they felt.

That came from learning about the budget and the person’s goals.

The fact that they could talk to someone, and that someone could listen, gets you little by little to a place of confidence where you feel you can see ahead, plan ahead, and most importantly, live the life you want to live.

That is what we all want at the end.

Tony:
Definitely.

I want to go back to what you said about making space.

With a lot of these platforms, they make people feel like they have to spend a significant amount of time. It is hard, as you pointed out, for people who don’t want to do this every day. They just want to deal with it every once in a while.

They don’t want to become financial professionals.

I think that has been a problem with a lot of financial literacy programs and the financial planning community. Sometimes we expect clients or our community to become financial experts, and people don’t have that as their goal.

Silvana:
Exactly.

The artist wants to create art. The doctor wants to save lives. The teacher wants to teach kids.

Our approach is that we have to help them simplify their finances so they have time to live the life they want to live.

If people spend those first few hours, let’s say 15 hours in a year, their life can change forever.

They still have to reset goals and calibrate spending, but they are not going to be in that same level of stress.

Right now, people who don’t deal with money still have it in the back of their heads. It is not that they are not doing it. It is even worse. They are thinking about money all day long.

That is why we say we have to create a system and simplify the lives of our users so they have time to live and do the things they actually like and enjoy.

For us, this is our job. But their job may be to save lives, entertain us, or create beautiful things.

We have to understand that as people who work in this field.

Tony:
That is such an important point.

We can’t expect people to become experts. They have their passion. You and I have a passion for financial literacy, but not everybody shares our passion, unfortunately.

Silvana:
But we’re trying. We’re getting there.

Tony:
Exactly.

Before we start to close, what is one of the most surprising things you have learned from the Somosfin platform and your work in financial well-being?

Silvana:
One thing that always strikes me is that people often come thinking that more money means more happiness.

I know that is a cliché, but I would put it another way: they think if they had more money, their problems wouldn’t exist.

But we have seen many times that people who earn a lot of money have a lot of stress and a lot of expenses.

Sometimes we see people with much lower income saving more money.

It is not about how much more you earn. It is about what you want, and having the clarity and peace of mind to live the life you want.

Maybe you need a lot of money to live the life you want. Maybe you don’t.

At the end, it is something really simple: sitting down and being true to ourselves.

What do we want? What do we actually want?

Not the neighbor. Not our friends. Not our parents.

What do we want?

I think that is key.

Tony:
That is so important.

I have heard that from so many guests. We have to ask: what is enough for us? What is our goal?

It is called personal finance for a reason. It’s personal.

Silvana:
One hundred percent.

We always say that. It is personal finance. It is personal.

That is why we want to create a personal experience. Our platform adapts to you.

For instance, people ask why we don’t have preloaded categories like supermarket or rent.

It is because some people don’t go to a supermarket. They eat out every time. Some people don’t pay rent because they have their own house.

It is personal.

Maybe you always give money to your mom, but you don’t want to call it family support. You want to call it “Mom heart.”

We have to make something stressful feel more friendly, something people actually want to see and use.

Tony:
You brought up something really important.

Sometimes there is a cultural thing, like taking care of parents. For one person, that may not be an expense. For somebody else, especially in a lot of cultures, supporting parents is simply the way it is.

That is a personal part of the plan.

The other thing you said that is important is that you don’t necessarily need a lot of money to be happy.

We can all think of people in our lives, maybe a retired teacher, who are perfectly fine. They don’t have millions in the bank, but they have what they want in their life.

Silvana:
Exactly. It is about what they want.

Sometimes people are stressed by wanting more and more, and you can also see people who are happy without that.

The most important thing is knowing what we want and not living the life of others.

Nowadays, with all this information, influencers, and the feeling that we are missing something or not living at our maximum because someone else has this house or is traveling, we have to ask ourselves: do we actually want that?

If you want that, okay, let’s build your life so you can do that.

But once you start knowing and learning more about yourself, you may say, “Actually, I didn’t want to travel that much. I love having barbecues on Sunday with my family. Why do I want to be traveling?”

Or maybe you say, “I want to buy a house.” Okay, where?

Or maybe you say, “Actually, I want to travel around the world.”

It is about asking ourselves the question.

Then everything can organize around that.

Tony:
It puzzles me sometimes when I am connected to people who do all this traveling. I don’t understand how they can afford it.

They may be sacrificing tomorrow for today. Or they could be in debt.

Silvana:
Exactly.

There are so many things we don’t see.

Some people are in debt because they travel. They didn’t have the money to do it, so they took a loan and now they are paying for that loan. Now they are stressed about it.

At the same time, maybe they saved money and traveled because that was their goal. I have done that.

Then, at some point, you may say, “That’s enough. I don’t want to travel anymore.”

Those are the little things. Maybe you want something for now, and then it can change again.

That is the beauty of goals.

Tony:
I love that.

We don’t see what is behind other people’s lifestyles.

Everybody is dealing with things we don’t see. People are making decisions, and we do not always see the full impact. We do not have all the information behind those decisions.

Silvana:
Exactly.

If we want to compare ourselves with them, we would have to do it fully.

Ask them about their money if you want. Are you traveling on loans? Have you saved money?

But don’t compare only with the superficial part, because we don’t know.

It is the same with anything in life.

Tony:
Exactly.

To wrap up, I have the Get Ready Hot Take Trio, three quick questions I ask all my guests.

What is one myth about financial well-being that you would like to break?

Silvana:
I think we discussed this: that more money solves all your financial problems.

Definitely not.

Probably you are going to get more problems if you don’t have the financial education, clarity, and other things you need to solve before having more money.

More money, more problems.

Tony:
Isn’t that the rap song? More money, more problems?

Silvana:
More money, more problems. More taxes.

Tony:
Let’s get out the time machine for a minute.

What advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know now about money?

Silvana:
I think I would start earlier with the S&P 500.

That is something I learned a little later in life: stocks, risk, and things like that.

Early on, I knew about budgeting and those types of things, but investing I learned later in life.

It would be great from 10 years old to put $20 each month into something like that.

Tony:
For parents out there, something to consider for your kids.

What is your number one tip to help people change the way they think about money?

Silvana:
Sit down, calm down, breathe, and be honest with yourself.

What do you want in your life?

Then find someone to help you be accountable to those things you want.

It is about alignment between what we say we want, what we want, and what we do.

The rest will come up.

The math behind personal finances is easy. It is adding and subtracting. It is easy math.

It is the emotional aspect that makes it hard.

So sit down, learn what you want, and create the life you want to live.

Tony:
Sit down, learn what you want, create the life you want. I love that.

Silvana, where can people learn more about you and Somosfin?

Silvana:
You can go to our website, somosfinn.com, or find us on Instagram. We are somos.finn.

You can also send us an email at [email protected].

There will always be someone human replying to your inquiries and questions.

Tony:
Fantastic.

For everybody watching and listening, if you have access to the show notes, you will be able to find those links there.

Silvana, thanks for joining us on Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

Silvana:
Thank you so very much, Tony, for having me.

Tony:
I appreciate it.

Thank you, everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

If you learned something today that changed the way you think about money, please be sure to share and subscribe.

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Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.