Are Your Plans Adaptable?
Hi,
Welcome to this week’s Financial Readiness Briefing—ideas, conversations, resources, and practical steps to help you prepare before life happens.
On a whitewater rafting trip, you encounter a variety of rapids. Different rapids require different strategies, or how you run the rapids may change based on river dynamics (high water vs. low water. River guides must be flexible and adapt to the conditions, rather than relying on one strategy.
Our financial lives are like this. We may expect a specific event and have a plan for it, however even if we’ve experienced it before or know others who’ve gone through it, it will always be a unique experience.
The Big Idea: Be prepared to adapt your plan based on the actual conditions encountered.
Question to Consider: Are your plans adaptable?
Featured Conversation: Rethinking Retirement and Unretirement
Richard Eisenberg, writer of The View From Unretirement column for MarketWatch joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens podcast to talk about about unretirement, the connection between work and identity, and why everyone’s vision of retirement is different.
- Spend less time thinking about what you are retiring from and more time imagining what you are retiring to.
- Talk with the important people in your life about what retirement means to each of you.
- Give your plans room to evolve as you discover what the next chapter looks like.
The Bottom Line: Retirement planning works best when it connects the financial pieces with how you want to live.
🎙️Watch or listen to the podcast (here)
Also From The Podcast: Why Planning for Caregiving Is a Gift to Your Family
Suzanne Scheer, founder of SGS Insurance Services, joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast to talk about preparing for future care needs while everyone is healthy.
- Early conversations help families understand care preferences.
- Recognize caregiving’s financial and career impact, particularly on women.
- Planning while everyone is healthy gives families more choices.
The Bottom Line
Planning for care is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and your family.
🎙️Watch or listen to the podcast (here)
Also From The Podcast: How to Build a Healthier Money Story
Christine Luken, Financial Dignity® Coach and Merchant Priestess™ joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast to talk about the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of our relationship with money.
- Notice the stories you tell yourself about money.
- Financial mistakes are choices you made, not who you are.
- A healthier money story can help you make the next decision differently.
Bottom Line: When we recognize the emotions and stories connected with money, we can take the next step with greater awareness and self-compassion.
🎙️Watch or listen to the podcast (here)
Featured Resource: MAIApedia: The People Making Money Better
What it is: The MAIApedia brings together the best financial literacy and education projects recognized by the Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards from around the world.
What stood out: The projects take very different and innovative approaches to helping people understand and engage with money.
Why I recommend it: It gives you a useful place to discover unique financial education resources and see how different organizations approach the same challenge.
Do you want to be in this database? The only way is to become a finalist at the MAIAs. Find out more at maiawards.org
From My Library: The Get Ready Blueprint
Life changes can happen all at once or over time. The Get Ready Blueprint helps you review all areas of your financial life with one simple action item each week. Over the course of a year, you’ll review all areas of your financial life.
👉 Pick up your copy of The Get Ready Blueprint: A 52 Week Guide to Changing the Way You Think About Money (Amazon) (Bookshop)
Worth Your Attention
Retirement is an opportunity to rewire rather than simply retire. Andrea Maizes explores how the next chapter may involve reshaping work, purpose, and identity. For The Next Edit (read).
Grief needs room rather than a silver lining. Kathi Balasek looks at how attempts to make grief feel better can unintentionally leave people feeling less understood.
You Can’t Cheer Grief Away. Kathi Balasek explains why silver linings and “count your blessings” are the top ways we disenfranchise grief (read).
Major life changes do not require every financial decision to be made immediately. Philip Weiss looks at what to decide, delay, and delegate during the first 90 days (read).
The rise of prediction markets and online gambling is having a huge impact on our lives. Meghaan Lurtz takes a look at The (Young) Gambling Man for (Less) Lonely Money (read).
While taxes are not the most exciting topic, they play a critical role in our lives and society. Our Inequitable Tax System and How We Can Reform It with Ray Madoff and Harry Margolis on the Risking Old Age in America Podcast (here)
Research Worth Knowing: Fidelity: The Transition Ready Family
Key finding: Only 37% of older adults reported high peace of mind about their overall planning. Parents who communicate completed plans to family were more than three times as likely to feel confident about their planning. Fidelity’s broader conclusion is that readiness involves documents plus communication, shared understanding, and preparing other people to carry out the plan.
The Bottom Line: A financial plan works better when the people who may need to carry it out understand it.
Check it out (here).
Scam Fighter Tip: Deception in the AI Age 2026: Understanding, Preventing & Fighting Financial Scams
The report puts estimated 2025 financial-scam losses at approximately $20 billion, up 26% from the previous year, and examines how AI makes sophisticated social engineering easier to produce and scale. Many scams now involve victims themselves authorizing transactions, meaning conventional fraud controls may see a seemingly legitimate customer completing a legitimate authentication process.
Why it matters: identity verification increasingly needs to occur outside the communication that initiated the request. A familiar voice, video image, text message, or email is becoming weaker evidence of identity.
The Bottom Line: Seeing or hearing someone you recognize may no longer be enough to verify who they are. Families should establish a verification habit before an emergency arises: end the communication and contact the person independently through a known number or another agreed-upon method.
Source: Thomson Reuters Institute (here)
One Step Before Life Happens:
This week’s action: Identify one life transition you expect in the next few years.
Create or review your plan and assure that it’s adaptable.
Why it matters: Preparing early gives you more choices when life changes.
Closing Thought
Every river trip is unique, even on a river that you’ve rafted many times. While there are times, rapids are mostly the same, they can also change.
Life works much the same way. Things can be overall the same, while also being new.
Being prepared to adapt leads to success.
Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.
Cheers,
Tony
👉 Check out The Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast. Conversations with professionals, advocates, authors, researchers, and other informed voices who help people ask better questions, understand financial guidance, and make more informed decisions. (Apple Podcasts)(YouTube)
