Hi,
Thanks for being part of the Get Ready Movement, where we prepare for life’s transitions by changing the way we think and talk about money.
This week’s issue centers on one idea: confidence grows through awareness and conversation.
Inside this week:
• How digital literacy strengthens financial safety
• Why financial health creates the foundation for learning
• One move to strengthen your full financial picture
🧠 Thought of the Week
Preparation often begins with a conversation.
Whether it’s about scams, grief, income, or family patterns, talking about money creates space for better decisions.
And, that’s where readiness begins.
🎙 Featured Conversation: Scams, Digital Literacy, and How to Stay Safe With Your Money
Digital safety starts with simple conversations. Checking in with loved ones, asking the right questions, and building confidence can make all the difference.
🔹 Scams can happen to anyone, regardless of age, background, or education
🔹 Open, respectful conversations with family build awareness and trust
🔹 Digital financial literacy includes the ability to communicate and transact safely using technology.
🔹 Digital literacy expands access to financial services and opportunities for marginalized groups
💭 Tony’s Take: Financial readiness includes digital financial literacy, fraud awareness, and families and communities working together to stay safer with money.
🎙️Frances Yong and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast in collaboration the Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards (Watch or listen)
➕ Also This Week: How financial literacy builds confidence and changes family patterns.
🔹 Financial literacy begins with lived experience rather than formal education
🔹 Open conversations about money help reduce shame and normalizes it
🔹 Money and prosperity are everyone’s birthright
💭 Tony’s Take: Open money conversations can change family patterns and create a more equitable future.
🎙️Sharan Kaur Varaitch and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (watch or listen)
🧭 The Readiness Brief
Navigating Money After Loss What Widows Need to Know. Money after loss is about more than numbers, it’s about grief, identity, and rebuilding confidence when everything has changed. How traditional financial advice often misses the emotional reality of widowhood, and why meeting women where they are matters just as much as the strategy itself.
💭 Tony’s Take: The most meaningful financial conversations after a loss begin with compassion, emotional awareness and moving at one’s own pace.
🎙️ Paula Harris and Linda Grizely on The Real Money, Real Life Podcast (YouTube)
Why Financial Health Must Come Before Financial Education. Financial education only works when you’re already financially healthy enough to use it. Financial health isn’t about knowing the right answers, it’s about having the systemic conditions that make those answers applicable. Until we fix the structural barriers, we’re just teaching people to swim in a riptide.
💭 Tony’s Take: The best way to learn something new is to start at the beginning. Education has the greatest impact when people have a solid foundation.
📖 Scott Glasgow, Finmango (LinkedIn)
🛠️ Check out the Financial Health Barometer from FinMango (here)
The Real Cost of the Pay Gap for Women. The gender pay gap is still real, and it impacts everything from retirement savings to generational wealth. The hidden ways pay inequality affects retirement, healthcare, and generational wealth. Financial freedom is about about dignity, safety, and having the power to make choices for yourself and your family.
💭 Tony’s Take: The pay gap impacts women on a deeper level than just pay, it impact their long term savings, stability and legacy planning.
🎙️ Deborah Vagins, Barbara Provost and Maggie Nielsen on Women & Money:The Sh*t We Don’t About Podcast (Apple Podcasts)
Do you know who is actually running your business? You may believe you are making logical, data-driven business decisions. Up to 90% of our decisions are emotional, guided by mental "scripts" written before we turned seven. Which means your business is often a reflection of your internal financial landscape. If that landscape is shaped by scarcity, fear, or avoidance, your strategy will unconsciously bend to match it.
💭 Tony’s Take: Understanding how we think about money allows us to make better choices and change the way we run our businesses.
📖 By Ceres Chua for Mind Over Money (read).
⚡ Quick Hits
📖 The Quiet Rise of Grey Divorce. Why more couples are separating after 50 and the financial decisions that will shape the next 20 years by Jacqui Clarke for Your Personal CFO (read)
🎥 How High-Earning Ambitious Women Build Wealth by Alissa Maizes (YouTube)
🎙️ Preparation or Timing: What Really Determines a Successful Retirement with Eric Blake for The Simply Retirement Podcast (here)
📖 Be Your Client’s Retirement Sherpa (Read Part 1: The Ascent) (Read Part 2: The Descent) by Sheryl O’Connor for the Sassy Septuagenarian presented by Keena Pettijohn
🎙️ You Can Spend More in Retirement with Bill Bengen and Jon Luskin on the Bogleheads® on Investing Podcast (listen)
🧭 One Move to Get Ready: Define your total income.
🌎 The big picture: Knowing your total income from all sources helps you with your overall planning.
🤔 Why it matters: Understanding your income helps you decide how much you can spend and how much you’ll be able to save.
💡 Here’s what works: Calculate your total income, which includes wages, commissions, consulting fees, interest, dividends, capital gains, online sales, royalties, distributions, and more.
💭 Tony’s Take: Understanding your full financial picture requires that you know your total income.
🛠 Resources:
Access your resources for this week's action item (#14) from your dashboard (Monthly Focus Area 4: Cash Flow):
- The Get Ready Blueprint week 14 worksheet where you’ll walk through calculating your total income from all sources.
- Review the relevant fillable PDF’s and excel worksheets: Cash Compensation; Other Earned Income, Online Income/Sales, Royalties; Investment Income and Retirement Income.
Source: The Get Ready Blueprint: A 52 Week Guide to Changing the Way You Think About Money - an easy-to-use road map that illuminates how everything in your financial life fits together and shows you how to take the steps toward financial preparedness. (Amazon) (Bookshop)
🧠 Final Thought
Life brings change, and readiness helps us be prepared for all of life’s what-if’s.
Each conversation, question, and small action builds a stronger foundation for what comes next.
👀 Coming Next Week: What a Video Game Can Teach Kids About Money with Mac Gardner
☕ Support the Get Ready Movement
If these conversations help you think differently about money or prepare for life’s what-ifs, your support helps expand financial readiness education and keep this work accessible.
👉 Support here → www.buymeacoffee.com/tonysteuer
Stay ready.
Start the conversation.
Be curious and ask questions.
— Tony
