Hi,
Preparedness isn’t about knowing every financial product, it’s about your purpose.
When you start with your values, your goals, and your story, the numbers follow. This week, we go beyond the spreadsheets to explore how meaning, mindset, and habits shape every money decision.
This week:
💡 Beyond the Numbers: How Psychology Unlocks Better Financial Decisions
💡 Feel-Good Finance: Healing Your Relationship with Money
💡 Financial Caregiving: How to Go from Panic to Prepared
🧠 Thought of the Week
Money is deeply personal. The better we understand our motivations, the better we can align money decisions with who we are and what we stand for. Financial fluency begins with self-awareness.
1️⃣ Beyond the Numbers: How Psychology Unlocks Better Financial Decisions
Money alone doesn't create fulfillment. Aligning your financial strategy with purpose, values, and clear goals creates real impact.
🔹 Listening goes deeper than just hearing.
🔹 Attach every recommendation to a goal or value - to a reason specific to the yourself (or your client).
🔹 A meaningful life starts with understanding what’s meaningful to you.
💭 Tony’s Take: Great financial plans don’t start with numbers—they start with meaning and listening.
🎙️Derek Hagen and Tony Steuer on The Get Ready Money Podcast. Check it out (here).
2️⃣ Feel-Good Finance: Healing Your Relationship with Money
Why it matters: Emotions, upbringing, and self-worth shape the way we earn, spend, and save.
From “Target trips gone wild” to understanding the dopamine behind shopping, Aja explains why awareness—not shame—is the first step toward financial peace.
🔹 Uncover emotional roots behind your money habits
🔹 Reframe guilt or scarcity into confidence and clarity
🔹 Build a “feel-good” financial plan rooted in contentment, not comparison
💭 Tony’s Take: Your money mindset drives all of your money decisions. Change the way you think about money and your relationship with money will change with it.
🎙️ Aja Evans and Melissa Joy on the Women’s Money Wisdom Podcast. Listen (here).
3️⃣ Financial Caregiving: How to Go from Panic to Prepared
“How are we going to pay for all of this?” It’s a caregiver’s biggest fear, and few have an answer. Too many families face a loved one’s health crisis unprepared for the financial chaos that follows — unable to access accounts, overwhelmed by insurance and medical decisions, and unsure where to even start.
The Win: Beth shares how to make financial caregiving feel more manageable, which legal documents to have in place, and when to start having hard conversations.
💭 Tony’s Take: As we age, it becomes important for aging parents to have conversations with their adult kids about their money and wishes. If your family doesn’t know what your plan and wishes are, they won’t be able to meet them.
🎙️ Beth Pinsker and Larry Sprung on the Mitlin Money Mindset Podcast. Watch on (YouTube).
4️⃣ Purpose-Driven Retirement: Why You Need a Mission Statement for Your Next Chapter
What will your next chapter stand for?
Rethink retirement by crafting a retirement mission statement that focuses on purpose.
🔹 Money gives you liberty to make the decisions you want to.
🔹 A retirement mission statement helps set a clear intention for your next chapter
🔹 Human-centered planning will differentiate advisors in the age of AI
💭 Tony’s Take: Retirement isn’t the end of your journey—it’s the start of your legacy.
🎙️ John Kailunas and Tony Steuer on The Get Ready Money Podcast. Watch or listen (here).
5️⃣ Align Your Spending, Giving & Investing with Your Values
An exploration of the gap between what we believe and what our money is quietly doing in the world.
🔹 The donate-with-one-hand, invest-against-values moment
🔹 From skepticism to practical tools for values-aligned portfolios
🔹 Abundance vs. debt and redefining wealth as stewardship
🔹 From self-rejection to sustainable self-care
💭 Tony’s Take: Our money stories impact how we earn, give and invest. When your money aligns with your values, you shift from reaction to intention.
🎙️ Genet “GG” Gimja and Diana Yanez on the Highly Sensitive Money Podcast. Listen (here).
6️⃣ Preparing Young Adults to Launch
College graduates face financial challenges.
Parents can learn strategies parents to support their children transitioning into adulthood.
🔹 Drafting a launch contract for recent grads
🔹 Navigating job searches in a challenging market.
🔹 Establishing minimum viable money system.
🔹 Understanding credit.
🔹 Key legal and financial documents you need to have.
💭 Tony’s Take: Having family money meetings allows for open communication, aligning goals and improving financial fluency.
🎙️ Cameron Huddleston and John Lanza on The Art of Allowance Podcast. Listen (here).
7️⃣ Are you paying for insurance you don't need?
I joined Bernadette Joy to debunk the biggest insurance myths (like "be your own banker") and revealed the policies that are crucial for your financial safety net. Learn how to protect your income and avoid costly mistakes.
Some of my favorite highlights:
🔹 The Biggest Myth: Is Insurance an Investment?
🔹 Term vs. Whole Life Insurance: What's Right For You?
🔹 Disability Insurance: Protecting Your Greatest Asset
🔹 How to Navigate Health Insurance & Avoid Medical Debt
🔹 The Future of Insurance: A Positive Trend for Consumers
🎙️ Term or Whole life insurance - Which you actually need! Watch (here)
➡️ If you’re looking for tips to optimize your insurance, check out Insurance Made Easy: A Comprehensive Roadmap to the Coverage You Need (Amazon)
8️⃣ Does Your Holiday Spending “Make Sense”?
A look at how the DIMS – DOES IT MAKE SENSE?® SCORE Calculator works. It gives kids a fun, fast way to think through what they’re asking for — and gives parents, grandparents and the rest of the gift-giving family valuable peace of mind.
Tony’s Take: Thinking before spending is an important skill for all of us. The DIMS calculator also helps with understanding the true cost of a purchase such as the “convenience” fees when buying a concert ticket.
📖 Karen Holland in Money Explained for The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards. Read on (LinkedIn).
9️⃣ Quick Hits
📖 The Case for a ‘Good Enough’ Portfolio by Christine Benz for Morningstar. Read (here).
Health Insurance:
🎙️ How To Prepare For Rising Healthcare Costs in 2026: Medicare, ACA and More. Marcia Mantell, Jae Oh and Jean Chatzky on the HerMoney Podcast (Apple Podcasts).
📖 How to navigate open enrollment as health insurance premiums increase by Sharon Epperson and Stephanie Dhue for CNBC. Read (here).
Tax Planning:
📖 2025 Year-End Tax Planning Checklist. 7 ideas to consider before the end of the year to strategically reduce the taxes you pay over your lifetime. By Elliott Appel for Kindness Financial Planning. Read (here).
📖 Year-End Planning 2025. Changes to deductions by Jill Schlesinger, CFP®, for the Jill on Money Substack (read).
📖 How Tax Brackets Work for 2026 by James Dahle for The White Coat Investor. Read (here)
🔟 Week 45 Action Item: Check your credit score
🌎 The big picture: Your credit scores predict how likely you are to pay back a loan on time.
🤔 Why it matters: Lenders look at your credit scores to help decide whether to offer a loan and at what interest rate. Credit scores are also used by utilities and cell phone providers.
💡 Here’s what works: Many major credit card companies, banks, and personal finance websites offer credit scores for free, so be sure to check with the companies that handle your loans and credit cards.
💭 Tony’s Take: Monitoring your credit score will help you understand how you’re managing debt so you can get better rates and terms.
🛠️ Resources:
Access your resources for this week's action item (#45) from your dashboard (located in Monthly Focus Area 11: Monitor Your Personal Information):
- The Get Ready Blueprint week 45 worksheet where you’ll review how a credit score works and where you can get a free credit score.
🧠 Final Thought
Beyond the numbers lies your real wealth; the clarity of knowing what matters and why.
When you start with purpose, every decision becomes easier.
✅ Stay ready.
💬 Start a conversation.
💡 Share what sparked something — with a friend, client, or in the comments.
— Tony
Coming Next Week: Listening, Trust & Curiosity: What Improv Teaches Us About Money
📚 Explore The Tony Steuer Bookshelf - a digital collection of my books (here)
