How Better Questions Protect Financial Agency

Hi,

Welcome to this week’s Get Ready Newsletter. I’m trying a new format focused on one reflection, one question, a few useful recommendations, and one readiness step to help you prepare before life happens and to help you ask better questions. 

What I’m Thinking About This Week

This week, I’ve been thinking about how financial readiness starts with paying attention.

Financial harm often begins quietly, through control, confusion, silence, missing information, or decisions made without everyone having a voice.

Over the course of my career, I’ve seen many versions of this: a spouse left out of key decisions, a family member pressured into financial choices, or a client who was talked into something by someone they thought they could trust.

That is why better questions matter. They help us notice patterns, create space for clearer conversations, and protect financial agency before life’s what-ifs become urgent.

The Question to Ask Before Life Happens

Would you know how to spot financial abuse?

A second question may matter just as much:

Would the people around you feel like they could tell you?

From the Podcast

This week, I’m featuring a two-part conversation with Joy Slabaugh, CFP®, on how financial abuse begins, and what to do when you suspect it.

In Part 1, we explore how financial abuse often begins quietly, with small patterns of control that  limit another person’s autonomy, access, choices, and confidence. It can exist at any income level, in any type of relationship, and often alongside other forms of abuse.

Tony’s Take: Financial readiness includes recognizing coercion, imbalance, and control in money relationships. Listening carefully may be one of the most important skills advisors, families, and advocates can develop. 

🎙️ How Financial Abuse Begins and Why It’s Often Missed (watch or listen)

In Part 2, we discussed how to respond thoughtfully when you suspect a power imbalance is shaping financial decisions.

The key is to protect agency: be curious, let people describe their experience in their own words, focus on access, options, and safety. Avoid exploring sensitive concerns in front of a potentially controlling partner.

Tony’s Take: When we listen first and protect agency, we create a safer space where clients can find clarity and options on their own timing.

🎙️ What to Do When You Suspect Financial Abuse (watch or listen)

In the Conversation

This week’s theme connects to my recent guest appearance on the Real Money, Real Life™ podcast with Linda Grizely: Don’t Let Your Life Insurance Policy Die.

Many people buy life insurance and rarely review it again. Yet life changes. Interest rates change. Insurance costs change. And some policies can deteriorate quietly in the background.

Why it matters: A policy that looked solid years ago may need attention today.

Tony’s Take: A policy that made sense years ago may still be valuable today. It may also need attention, adjustment, or a clearer understanding of how it works. The key is to ask better questions before life happens.

🎙️ Watch the conversation (YouTube)

Related note: Laurence Kotlikoff raises concerns about private credit, private equity, and the financial strength of life insurance companies.

Why it matters: reviewing a life insurance policy is about more than the illustration. It also means understanding the strength of the company standing behind your life insurance policy.

📖 Does Private Credit/Equity Threaten the Life Insurance Industry and Your Individual Policy? by Laurence Kotlikoff for Economics Matters (read).  

Recommended This Week

Mindset and Life Transitions: 

Before the Merge: What Financial Planners Need to Know About Premarital Planning

Overview: Premarital financial planning helps two people build a financial relationship that can support a shared life before the pressure arrives.

Tony’s Take: Couples need to talk about money before they share their lives. Asking the right questions early helps both partners feel seen from the start.

📖 By Ashley Quamme for the Journal of Financial Planning (read)

Making Better Divorce Decisions to Protect Your Financial Future

Overview: Divorce can feel overwhelming when emotions and financial uncertainty collide. Carolyn Daly and Eric Blake discuss how women can approach divorce with clarity and structure, how to understand assets, avoid emotional decisions, and work with the right professionals early.

Tony’s Take: Structure creates a path to follow and reduces stress leading to better outcomes. The earlier people understand their assets, options, and tradeoffs, the better prepared they are to make grounded decisions.

🎙️ Carolyn Daly and Eric Blake on The Simply Retirement Podcast (watch or listen).

Worth Reading

Consumer Beware

Bobbi Rebell shares a reminder about how easy it is to miss something when we trust the system, the receipt, the machine, or the moment.

Tony’s Take: Financial readiness includes awareness. Small moments of attention can protect us from costly mistakes.

📖 Bobbi Rebell (read)

Worth Considering

Is Paying a Financial Advisor 1% Too Much?

Dr. Preston Cherry explores what a 1% AUM fee really costs over time, how pricing models shape trust, and why people are rethinking the traditional advisor-client relationship.

Tony’s Take: Cost matters, but structure matters too. Understanding how advice is priced helps you understand what you are choosing and how that choice works over time.

🎙️ Dr. Preston Cherry (YouTube)

Related: Fee-Only, Flat Fee, Fee-Based?! A Full Description of How Financial Advisors Charge Fees by Jesse Cramer for the Best Interest blog (read)

Worth Noticing

The Gaslight That Built an Industry

Stoy Hall writes about the disconnect between women’s investment outcomes and the way the financial industry has historically communicated with women about investing. Bottom line: women outperform men when they invest. 

Tony’s Take: Financial readiness grows when women feel confident and have opportunity.

📖 Stoy Hall (read)

Pink Tax: What Does Price Discrimination Cost Women?

Kelley Taylor explains how gender-based price discrimination can increase costs for women over time, even when the individual differences seem small.

Tony’s Take: Small amounts compound. Awareness is part of readiness, especially when hidden costs shape long-term financial outcomes.

📖 Kelley Taylor for Kiplinger (read)

Financial Literacy Professionals: Input Needed: 

The Money Mammals powered by The Art of Allowance has upgraded its parent experience with age-and-stage guidance to help families build practical money habits from first allowance through the teen years. Financial literacy professionals who would like to preview the new parent experience can contact John Lanza directly for demo access, [email protected].

This Week’s Readiness Step

Identify one financial relationship where clarity matters.

It could be with a spouse, partner, parent, adult child, advisor, or trusted contact.

Then ask one question:

Do we both understand what decisions need to be made, who has access, and where the key information is located?

Go Deeper

Join The Get Ready Movement at tonysteuer.com to receive the newsletter and the Financial Readiness Quick Start Checklist. The checklist helps you see where you stand and what to focus on next.

Final Thought

Financial readiness is about agency, not just information.

The ability to ask questions, understand choices, notice imbalance, and participate fully in financial decisions can change the path forward before life becomes urgent.

Curiosity is where financial readiness begins. Ask better questions, and the path forward becomes clearer.

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

— Tony