A Better Way to Think About Financial Readiness

Hi,

Welcome to this week’s Get Ready Newsletter: 10 ideas, conversations, questions, and resources to help you prepare before life happens.

Thank you for being a subscriber. As you've probably noticed, I’ve been trying out different formats to help make this newsletter as useful and easy to read as possible. Please let me know what works and doesn’t work. 

Here are this week’s 10 things.

1. Financial readiness starts with understanding the system you are in

This week, I’ve been thinking about how much of our financial behavior is shaped before we ever make a conscious financial decision.

Childhood experiences matter.

The country and financial system we live in matter.

Health insurance matters.

Family responsibilities matter.

Access to good information matters.

Financial readiness is the decision-making layer that connects all of those realities to real life.

The more we understand the system around us, the better questions we can ask and the more thoughtful our decisions can become.

Tony’s Take:

💭 After more than 30 years working around financial decisions, one thing keeps showing up: people often blame themselves for choices they were never given enough context to understand. This pattern showed up when reviewing instances of financial abuse as a litigation consultant. 

Question to consider:

What part of your financial life would become easier if you understood the system behind it better?

2. How Early Money Conversations Shape Financial Behavior

What we learn about money as children can shape our decisions for life.

On Get Ready: Before Life Happens, I spoke with Dr. Bilal Pandow about how childhood experiences influence lifelong money habits, why even highly educated people can struggle with financial decisions, and how simple conversations can build confidence over time.

Why it matters for Financial Readiness:

Financial literacy is about behavior as much as knowledge.

Children learn through observation, repetition, and everyday conversations. Adults do too.

Simple, consistent habits can matter more than complicated strategies.

Tony’s Take: Financial readiness starts earlier than we think. The habits, conversations, and experiences we have around money shape how we make decisions for the rest of our lives.

🎙️ Dr. Bilal Pandow and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (listen or watch)

3. How to Build Financial Confidence in a New Country

Starting over in a new country means learning how money works there.

On Get Ready: Before Life Happens, I spoke with Bisola Tijani, the Whiz Queen, about building financial confidence when navigating a new country, learning how money works in a different system, and taking ownership of your financial future.

Tony’s Take: Starting over creates opportunity. Financial readiness begins with understanding the system you are in and taking ownership of your decisions.

The question I’m left with: How many financial mistakes are really knowledge gaps created by an unfamiliar system?

If you are starting over, or helping someone who is, this is a conversation worth sharing.

🎙️ Bisola Tijani and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (listen or watch)

🎙️ Related: Empowering First-Generation Women with Financial Confidence with Linda Ta Yonemoto and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (watch or listen)

4. What happens to financial readiness when health coverage becomes less affordable?

I’ve been thinking about the impact of health insurance on household finances.

Medical costs can destabilize even thoughtful financial plans. And recent developments raise a bigger question about what happens when coverage becomes harder to afford.

New federal data cited by Cynthia Cox at KFF shows ACA Marketplace enrollment fell from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million in February 2026 following the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits.

At the same time, KFF’s review of early 2027 rate filings found a median proposed premium increase of 14% among the available filings it analyzed. In 2026, the median finalized rate change was 20%. 

The impact is real. A household can budget carefully, save consistently, and make thoughtful decisions and still be financially vulnerable to health costs it cannot control.

Why I’m paying attention: Health coverage is a financial readiness issue. It affects cash flow, debt, retirement savings, career decisions, caregiving, and the ability to recover from a health event.

This is also why I’m wary of treating every financial struggle as a budgeting problem. Sometimes the issue is structural.

📖 ACA Marketplace Enrollment Is Down By 3 Million After Big Jump in Premium Payments by Cynthia Cox for the Kaiser Family Foundation (read)

📖 How much and why ACA Marketplace premiums are going up in 2027 from Peterson-KFF (read)
📖 Increasing Burdens Of Medical Debt And Bankruptcy Are Uniquely American by Joshua Cohen for Forbes (read)

5. A Better Question to Ask

Do I understand the system behind this decision, or is this the only choice?

This is a useful question before:

Choosing insurance.

Building credit.

Taking financial advice.

Helping an aging parent.

Responding to a scam.

Making a healthcare decision.

Starting over after divorce.

Try this:

Before acting, write down three things:

1. What do I understand?
2. What am I assuming?
3. What information is still missing?

Better decisions often begin by separating what we know from what we think we know.

6. A thought provoking read: We Can’t Awareness-Campaign Our Way Out of Poverty

Julia Chin makes a powerful argument about scams, vulnerability, and desperation.

Her point is uncomfortable and important: Scammers do not create desperation. They exploit it.

We can warn people to be vigilant, but vigilance is harder when someone is struggling to pay for food, housing, healthcare, or basic necessities.

Why it caught my attention: I’ve been sitting with Julia’s analysis because it challenges the way we frame both scams and financial literacy.

It is easy to treat the symptom instead of the underlying condition. When someone is struggling to pay the bills, the answer is not always “budget better.” Sometimes they have too little income, too few options, and too much pressure.

Tony’s Take: Vulnerability and desperation can put people in a place where poor choices feel like the only choices. Better financial education matters, but so do the economic conditions that shape the decisions people are able to make.

📖 Julia Chin for The Fourth Perspective (LinkedIn)

7. Connecting the Dots: The hidden risk of being asked to make hard decisions when your capacity is already stretched

This is How Much Your Parents’ Final Years Will Cost You. A look at what really happens when you step into a parent’s financial life, from the first power of attorney to the final tax return. We dig into the emotional and logistical realities of dementia care, Medicaid, trusts, probate, and even how a single smartphone setting can make or break access to vital information. The most important “plan” is knowing a loved one’s wishes for quality of life and end-of-life care, so financial and medical decisions feel like honoring them instead of guessing in the dark. Beth Pinsker and Paula Pant on the Afford Anything Podcast (YouTube)

📖 Cognitive Decline Is The Overlooked Risk For Pre-Retirees And Retirees. Self-confidence in financial decision-making often doesn’t decline with age, even if people might be experiencing some form of cognitive decline. So, don’t think it won’t happen to you. Instead, remember that it’s never too late to take action steps to protect your retirement. Steve Vernon for Forbes (read)

📖 They're Counting On You Being Tired. The financial industry has built an entire profit model on your exhaustion. Every default, every fee, every fine print disclosure is priced for the version of you that shows up at 10:47pm with no energy. By Stoy Hall (read)

🎙️ Divorced and Broke? How to Rebuild Credit, Cash Flow & Confidence Fast. Financial healing must be part of the divorce recovery process. Divorce changes a woman’s financial reality. With the right support, clarity and confidence are possible. Linda Grizely and Deborah Griffiths on the Bent Not Broken Podcast (Apple Podcasts)

🎙️ Divorce by design. Divorce is not just a legal process but one of the largest financial transactions most people will ever experience, making it essential to have both emotional and financial support throughout the journey. Melissa Murphy and Christine Luken on the Money is Emotional Podcast (Listen)

What connects them:

Life transitions create financial complexity at exactly the moment people may have less time, energy, confidence, or decision-making capacity. That is the readiness problem.

We often assume the person facing the decision will be able to gather information, understand tradeoffs, coordinate professionals, manage emotions, and act clearly.

Real life does not always work that way. Fatigue matters. Stress matters. Cognitive capacity matters. The design of the system matters.

Tony’s Take: Financial readiness is partly about reducing the number of decisions someone has to figure out from scratch when life is already hard.

8. One Step for Your Financial Readiness Plan: Identify one decision someone else may someday need to make for you

This week, take a few minutes to write down one decision another person might have to help with if you were unavailable.

It could involve:

• Paying bills
• Accessing an account
• Managing insurance
• Making a healthcare decision
• Handling a property
• Contacting an advisor
• Finding an important document

Then ask: Would they know what to do?

Why this matters: A plan becomes useful when it helps another person act with less confusion.

👉 Start Your Financial Readiness Plan. The Financial Readiness Plan helps you connect your financial decisions, plans, relationships, and responsibilities to real life. Begin with the free **Financial Readiness Quick Start Checklist (here). 

9. Someone Helping Us Get Ready

Andy Lang, Founder of Munny.  Andy is helping people build financial confidence through practical education, coaching, and technology. Andy founded Munny to help people navigate real financial challenges with greater understanding and support.

What he is helping people understand: Money decisions happen in real life. People need practical information, accessible support, and tools that help them understand their options and take the next step.

Why his work matters: Financial readiness grows when people can connect knowledge to action. Andy’s work combines education, human support, and digital tools to help people build confidence and make more informed decisions.

Learn more (here) 

10. One Final Thought

Financial readiness is often described as preparation.

I think it begins one step earlier. It begins with understanding. Understanding what shaped us. Understanding the system we are in. Understanding what we do not know. And understanding when someone else may need to help.

The goal is to think clearly enough to know what deserves your attention before life happens.

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

Tony

P.S. Have a new podcast episode, book, article, research report, tool, or project that helps people think differently about money or prepare before life happens? Send it my way. I’m always looking for thoughtful resources to consider sharing in a future Get Ready Newsletter.