Financial Confidence Starts With Small Habits
Hi,
Welcome to this week’s Get Ready Financial Readiness Briefing: ideas, conversations, research, and practical steps to help you prepare before life happens.
When I took a whitewater rescue course, we swam the same rapid over and over with variations with no gear, with swim fins and with a boogie board. We were also expected to reach a specific spot on the river bank. The idea was that we would get used to swimming a rapid and we would be confident in doing so with different resources available. Repetition helped us build confidence and develop good habits.
Financial readiness works the same way through repetition of building small habits and developing confidence from small successes. Saving a little bit. Asking another question. Reviewing a plan. Talking about money. Checking in with ourselves about what is working and what needs attention.
The big idea: Small financial habits practiced consistently can create more confidence, resilience, and choices over time.
Question to consider: What small financial habit would make you feel more prepared if you practiced it consistently?
Editor’s Note: Financial readiness is a global conversation. I share ideas, research, and voices from around the world because many of the challenges we face with money cross borders, cultures, and generations.
I’m also proud to collaborate on select podcast episodes with the Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards, which celebrate innovative work helping people understand and engage with money.
From the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast:
Your relationship with money shapes how you think, feel, give, and make decisions.
In this episode, Tony Steuer talks with Ellen Rogin about building a healthier, more intentional relationship with money.
Key Takeaways
- Your relationship with money influences financial decisions.
- Confidence grows you understand their money story.
- Visualization and generosity help people connect money with meaningful goals.
Tony’s Take: Money is personal before it is technical. The numbers matter, but they rarely tell the whole story. Our beliefs, memories, fears, hopes, and habits shape how we make decisions.
🎙️ How to Build a Better Relationship With Money (watch or listen)
Retirement is a life transition, not just a financial event.
Andrea Maizes, author of Your Next Edit joined me on Get Ready Before Life Happens to talk about planning for life after work with intention.
Key Takeaways
- Retirement is a life transition that unfolds over time.
- Life planning deserves as much attention as financial planning.
- A strong next chapter starts with something meaningful to move toward.
- Your next edit can grow through small steps, patience, and curiosity.
Tony’s Take: Retirement is about more than having enough money. Money can give you options; however purpose, connection, and curiosity help shape what comes next. Your next chapter can develop through small steps, testing and adjustments.
🎙️ Retirement Is More Than Money (watch or listen)
Savings is an important step on the road to financial resilience.
Andrew Gall, Head of Savings and Economics at the Building Societies Association and a leader of UK Savings Week joined me on Get Ready Before Life Happens and shared why saving is about more than pounds and pence. It is about habits, confidence, security, choices, and giving your future self more options.
Key Takeaways
- Small savings habits can help build financial resilience over time.
- Consistent saving matters, even when the amount feels small.
- Savings can provide security, peace of mind, and more choices.
Tony’s Take: Saving is one of the simplest ways to prepare before life happens. The goal is to find a way to save that fits your life, build the habit, and give your future self more choices.
🎙️ How Small Savings Habits Build Financial Resilience (watch or listen)
In collaboration with The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards. Learn more (here).
In The Conversation:
Better questions are one of your best forms of financial protection.
Thanks to Emily Bouchard for inviting me on the Wealth Coherence Podcast to talk about financial literacy, scam awareness, and empowering people to make informed financial decisions.
We explored:
- Why curiosity and better questions build financial confidence
- How scammers use urgency, fear, and isolation
- Why financial products should support a person’s real goals and needs
Tony’s Take: Financial empowerment starts when people feel comfortable asking questions and confident enough to keep asking until they understand the answer.
🎙️ Financial Empowerment: How to Protect Your Money (watch or listen)
Research and Reports:
New this week: Research & Reports highlights useful studies, surveys, and data that can help us better understand financial readiness. Have something worth sharing? Send it my way.
Understanding the reasons for and barriers to saving.
Key finding: Unexpected expenses are the most common reason people save, while having too little left after essentials remains the biggest barrier.
Why it matters: Savings is about more than accumulating money. Even modest buffers can create resilience, confidence, and options when life changes.
Source: The Building Societies Association Survey of Savings Attitudes and Behaviours by Andrea Finney, Social Research and Statistics & The Personal Finance Research Centre, University of Bristol, August 2026 (here)
The Rich in Context Report: Social, cultural and psychological factors shaping our financial wellbeing
Key finding: Money is deeply relational. Early experiences, relationships, trauma, and systemic factors can shape how people feel about and interact with money.
Why it matters: Financial readiness starts with understanding the person as well as the numbers.
Source: Tania Domett for Hi Money (here)
Understanding Financial Fulfillment
Key finding: Confidence in handling current finances rises substantially with age, yet confidence about the future remains much lower. Among U.S. Gen X adults, 59% report having a retirement plan, while only 26% express a great deal of confidence in managing future finances.
Why it matters: Again, there is an important distinction between planning and readiness. Having a plan is valuable; understanding whether that plan can respond to real life is another layer.
Source: Edward Jones/Gallup, Money and Meaning research (here)
5 Things Worth Knowing
When Should I Hire a Financial Advisor? By Elliott Appel for Kindness Financial Planning (here)
Retirement Myths, Busted: What Financial Planners Really Think About Retirement. Retirement talk tends to fixate on a magic number, however the real work happens well before and long after that number is reached.Stephanie McCullough and Melissa Joy on the Women’s Money Wisdom Podcast (listen)
Do we have enough? Four women get honest about retirement planning, financial peace and the money we leave behind. Hannah Williams, Viviana Vazquez, Ashley Parker, Carly Roszkowski and Jean Chatzky on the Her Money Podcast. (Here)
Icons Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem never officially retired. Why that’s a choice for some and requirement for others by Kamaron McNair for CNBC (read)
Know Where You Stand with AI. Your AI Readiness Starts Here: find Your Agentic-Human Advantage and get a personalized action plan (for free). From FlipWork (here)
Scam Fighter Tip
National Day of Action: Americans lose billions every year to AI and tech-enabled online scams.
Add your voice to the growing list of Americans who are fighting against online scams.
Live event online or in-person on September 30. From United to Stop Online Scams (learn more)
Action Step
This week’s action: Choose one small financial habit to repeat for the next four weeks.
It might be transferring money to savings, reviewing one account, talking about money with your partner, checking spending, or spending five minutes updating your Financial Readiness Plan.
Why it matters: Consistency builds familiarity, confidence, and resilience. Small actions repeated over time can prepare you for much larger decisions.
👉 Start Your Free 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.
Closing Thought: Financial readiness develops through the small things we practice: saving, asking questions, talking openly about money, reviewing our plans, and paying attention to what our habits are telling us.
Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.
Tony
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