How do you know which financial advice to trust? 

Hi,

Welcome to this week’s Get Ready Newsletter: ideas, conversations, questions, and resources to help you prepare before life happens.

Opening Thought: 

We have access to more financial information than ever. More information does not lead to greater financial understanding.

Financial guidance may be incomplete, taken out of context or based on assumptions that don’t fit your particular circumstances. It may come from someone who doesn’t have relevant experience and qualifications or someone who’s influenced by compensation or other incentives.

That makes evaluating the source of information, an important part of financial literacy. 

Before acting on financial information, consider:

• Who created it?  
• What qualifications or experience do they have? 
• What action are they encouraging?
• How are they compensated?
• Which assumptions support the recommendation?
• Whose interests they serve?
• Are they accountable for the guidance they provide?
• What additional perspective might be helpful?

The big idea: Informed trust considers competence, experience, transparency, incentives, and accountability.

Question to Ask Before Life Happens

What would I want to understand about the source before following this financial advice?

Featured conversation: How Do You Know Who to Trust for Financial Advice?

Financial decisions are becoming more complex every year and involve specialized fields ranging from investments and taxes to insurance, estate planning, caregiving and retirement income.

Tom Dickson, founder of the Financial Experts Network joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens, to explore why trusted expertise matters, how advisors can better serve clients through collaboration, and making more informed decisions about recommendations. 

Key Takeaways

• Financial planning requires expertise across many different and evolving areas.
• Credentials, experience and professional background provide important context when evaluating an expert.
• Consumers benefit from understanding both the source of the advice and the assumptions behind it. 

Tony’s Take: In a world full of information, trusted expertise becomes even more valuable. The right guidance usually comes from people who understand their specialty deeply and continue learning as the world changes.

🎙️Watch or listen this episode of the Get Ready Before Life Happens podcast (here). 

How to Build a Healthier Relationship With Money

Money works best when it supports the life you want to live.

Dana Miranda, author, content creator, and money writer joined me on Get Ready Before Life Happens to talk  about what it means to build a healthier, more empowering relationship with money. We explored why traditional money advice often misses the lived experiences of women, people of color, and LGBTQ communities, and how understanding financial tools can replace fear with confidence and choice.

One idea worth considering: Before following a financial rule, ask whether its assumptions reflect your circumstances, priorities, and lived experience.

Tony’s Take: Healthy wealth begins with self-trust. Understanding the tools available to you helps you use money to support the life you want to build.

🎙️Watch or listen to this episode of the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (here).

Three Perspectives on Financial Trust

Who Should You Trust With Your Money? (Friends, Family, Experts, AI, and Bad Advice). A look at where great advice comes from, why bad advice often comes from people who love you, and how to build a better filter before you act. Roger Whitney, Joe Saul-Sehy, Doug, Paula Pant, Jesse Cramer on the Stacking Benjamins Podcast (listen).

AI systems out-persuade expert humans. New research found that AI systems were consistently more persuasive than expert humans under the conditions studied. That makes source evaluation especially important: persuasive information and accurate, appropriate guidance are not necessarily the same thing. Read the whitepaper (here)

The gap in personal finance support for adults in Australia. Most financial education and money coaching is thoughtful, ethical and genuinely helpful. Some of it is not. This paper examines the regulatory gap and its implications for everyday Australians, and makes recommendations for government, practitioners and individuals. By Lacey Filipich,  Jenny Rolfe-Wallace, Dr Tracey West (here). 

Tony’s Take: Financial information can sound authoritative whether it is accurate, incomplete, or poorly suited to the person receiving it. As AI becomes more persuasive and financial education expands beyond traditionally regulated channels, understanding the source, incentives, assumptions, and limits of the guidance becomes increasingly important.

One Step For Your Financial Readiness Plan: 

Choose one piece of financial advice you recently received from a professional, article, podcast, social-media post, friend, or AI tool and run it through this short filter:

• Who provided it?
• What relevant expertise do they have?
• What assumptions are they making?
• How might they benefit if I follow it?
• What important context about my life might be missing?
• Would a second perspective help?

Why it matters: A short pause can help you separate useful information from guidance that is incomplete, conflicted, or unsuitable for your circumstances.

👉 You can create an in-case-of-emergency plan for the people who count on you by starting your free Financial Readiness Plan at https://www.tonysteuer.com/the-plan

Consider sharing this filter with a parent, adult child, spouse, or partner. Agree on the kinds of unfamiliar financial requests or recommendations you will discuss with one another before acting.

The Financial Readiness Plan is now free. 

I’ve made the Financial Readiness Plan free because everyone deserves the opportunity to prepare before life happens. If you believe in practical, consumer-first financial education, you can also become a Get Ready Insider and support my work.

Five Things I’ve Been Reading and Thinking About. 

1. The Quiet Search for What's Actually True. Making Peace with Your Financial Reality. Dr. Preston Cherry for Financial Harmony (read).

2. Productivity Guilt Is Weird. Financial freedom was never supposed to be the finish line. By Bernadette Joy (read).

3. Go While You Still Can. The time you have left and the quality of that time are two different things. Derek Hagen for Meaningful Money (read).

4. The Question You Stopped Asking Yourself. The greatest threat to progress is not ignorance, but the belief that there is nothing left to discover. By Nikki Barua (read).

5. FIAT - Fiduciary In All Things. George Kinder is proposing that a fiduciary standard be introduced for all corporate, non-profit and governmental institutions that would require them “to place the interests of all stakeholders, of truth, of humanity, democracy, and the living planet . . . above their own self-interest.” By Harry Margolis for Risking Old Age in America (read).

Final Thought: 

Good financial guidance should help you understand your choices, the assumptions behind them, and how they connect with your life.

Trust grows when we remain curious, ask informed questions, and give ourselves time to understand before we act.

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

Tony