Recognizing financial warning signs
Hi,
Welcome to this week’s Get Ready Newsletter: 10 ideas, conversations, questions, and resources to help you prepare before life happens.
Here are this week’s 10 things.
1. The Big Idea
A nationally representative UK study* found that almost one in five adults, including one in five women and one in seven men had experienced financial abuse in a current or former relationship.
Over the course of my career, I’ve encountered financial abuse in many forms, from questionable life insurance sales practices to serious cases of elder fraud involving significant sums of money.
The circumstances were different, but many contained a warning sign that someone might have spotted earlier if they had known what to look for and which questions to ask.
It reminds me of whitewater kayaking. When I started, I learned about water dynamics and self-rescue. I practiced in a pool and on slow-moving water. I didn’t begin in Class IV rapids and hope to learn along the way.
Yet with money, people think they can learn by reading an article or watching a video rather than starting slow and learning the skills they will need to be successful.
Financial readiness includes learning to recognize warning signs around us, within our relationships, and in our own financial behavior.
The question: Do you and the people close to you know financial warning signs?
2. Recognizing Financial Abuse: How to Protect Yourself and Find Hope
Financial abuse often leaves no visible signs. Recognizing the warning signs can be the first step toward protecting yourself and finding hope.
Sandhya Gopal, divorce financial planner joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens podcast to discuss the warning signs of financial abuse and the steps that women can take to protect themselves during major life transitions.
- Financial abuse is often psychological, subtle, and difficult to recognize.
- Red flags include secrecy, gaslighting, and money moving to untraceable places.
- Access to cash and a trusted confidante are critical first steps to leaving an abusive relationship.
- Financial confidence grows when people realize they are not alone and have options.
Tony’s Take: Financial abuse often hides in plain sight. Financial readiness means making sure people know they have resources, support, and a path forward before life’s hardest transitions force decisions.
🎙️ Watch or listen to Recognizing Financial Abuse: How to Protect Yourself and Find Hope
3. How Curiosity Helps Rewire Your Relationship With Money
Recognizing financial risk is partly about noticing what other people are doing. It also requires understanding our own patterns, assumptions, and responses to money.
In my conversation with DonJay Rice on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast, we explored how curiosity, reflection, and self-awareness can help people examine their financial lives without judgment.
Tony’s Take: Curiosity helps us notice what deserves our attention. That awareness can lead to better questions, more thoughtful decisions, and a greater willingness to ask for help.
🎙️Watch or listen to How Curiosity Helps Rewire Your Relationship With Money
4. Why Don’t We Talk More About Risk Protection?
Insurance is a part of everyone’s lives and almost everyone has some type of insurance policy. Yet insurance is often either not part of a financial literacy program or it is a minor component.
We teach people how to budget, save, and invest. We should also help them learn how to:
- Identify the risks they face
- Evaluate insurance and other safeguards
- Recognize pressure and manipulation
- Know when to slow down
- Ask for a second opinion
Financial literacy provides knowledge. Financial readiness helps people use that knowledge when a real-life decision arrives.
Related: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Scammers with Neil Granger, Cathy Sikorski, Cameron Huddleston and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (watch or listen)
5. Ask What A Recommendation is Supposed To Accomplish
This question should always come before choosing a financial product:
How does this recommendation help me accomplish my goals?
A trustworthy recommendation should connect clearly to your purpose, circumstances, and plan.
Be cautious when someone pressures you to act quickly or focuses on a product before understanding what you need.
If you cannot get a direct, understandable answer, slow down and ask more questions.
6. Risk protection remains a knowledge gap
The 2026 TIAA Institute–GFLEC Personal Finance Index found that U.S. adults answered only 47% of its financial-literacy questions correctly which is the lowest result in the study’s 10-year history.
Risk was the weakest area. Only 36% of risk-related questions were answered correctly.
Financial knowledge also declined in five of the eight areas measured:
- Consuming
- Borrowing
- Earning
- Insuring
- Comprehending risk
Why it matters: People need more than information about money. They need opportunities to understand risk protection, ask questions, and apply what they know to real decisions.
Read the 2026 TIAA Institute–GFLEC Personal Finance Index.
7. Connecting the Dots
How Financial Betrayal Impacts Relationships and Healing. Misty Lynch and Sara Stalker discuss the complex intersections of financial betrayal, addiction, and relationships. Their conversation includes actionable insights on identifying red flags, repairing trust, and communicating effectively about money and addictive behaviors. The Demystifying Money Podcast (listen)
How Health and Decision-Making Can Affect Retirement Stability. Tina Beckwith and Chris Heye explore how living longer, rising health care costs, and changes in thinking and memory are reshaping what it means to retire successfully. New research shows that health risks and changes in decision making as we age may be some of the greatest risks to retirement stability. This is highlighted by how fraud and financial scams disproportionately affect older adults. Check out this episode of Insider Insights from LIMRA (YouTube)
Children taught to spot scams and money laundering. A BBC report examines efforts to teach children how seemingly harmless messages on social media, gaming platforms, and messaging apps can lead to scams or money-laundering schemes. Martin Jones for BBC West (read)
Tony’s Take: These resources share an important idea: financial protection depends on more than knowing the rules. It depends on recognizing what is happening, understanding the context, and knowing when to ask for help.
8. Start a family conversation about financial warning signs
Ask a parent, spouse, partner, or another trusted person:
- Have you received any unusual financial requests lately?
- Has anyone pressured you to move money or act quickly?
- Is there someone you would call before making an unfamiliar financial decision?
- Would I know how to help if you became concerned about an account?
Frequent, respectful conversations make it easier to notice changes without making anyone feel monitored or diminished.
Scam awareness is part of risk protection. Recognizing warning signs and having a trusted person to call can help protect both financial assets and personal independence.
9. Someone Helping Us Get Ready: Julia Chin
Julia Chin is bringing the human experience back into conversations about financial crime and scams.
Her work asks us to consider vulnerability, economic pressure, dignity, financial inclusion and the actual choices available to people.
Why her work matters: Telling people to “be more careful” is not enough. We also need to understand the circumstances in which people make decisions and the pressures that can make them vulnerable. Julia’s work asks us to look beyond the transaction and understand the person.
Check out my conversation with Julia Chin on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast: How Financial Resilience Protects People from Scams (watch or listen)
10. Curiosity is a form of financial protection
Scammers and dishonest salespeople often rely on urgency, confusion, and a reluctance to question authority.
Curiosity interrupts that process.
Ask for an explanation. Ask how the recommendation supports your goal. Ask what it costs, what could change, and what alternatives you have. Then give yourself time to consider the answer.
Questions cannot eliminate every risk. They can help you recognize when it is time to slow down, involve someone you trust, or walk away.
Start Your Free Financial Readiness Plan
The Financial Readiness Plan helps you identify the questions to ask, the conversations to have, and the information the people close to you may need.
👉 Start your free Financial Readiness Plan.
Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.
Tony
