The Skills AI Won’t Replace
Hi,
Happy Saturday, and thanks for being part of the Get Ready Movement.
AI is changing how we access information, make decisions, and work with experts. This week’s issue looks at what still matters most: judgment, communication, preparation, and trust.
🧭 This Week’s Lens
The future of financial readiness is about better conversations, better questions, and stronger systems for life’s what-ifs.
🔟 10 Things I’m Thinking About This Week
1) AI Will Accelerate the Shift from Advisor to Coach
AI is moving fast. The real question isn’t whether it will replace jobs. It’s which advisory skills will still matter.
AI can democratize access to financial tools and knowledge. The differentiator becomes human judgment, empathy, curiosity, and relationship.
The future of advising leans toward the consigliere model: guide, coach, communicator.Develop the skills AI cannot replicate. Use AI to elevate your impact.
🎙️ Chris Heye and Tony Steuer on The Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (watch or listen)
2) AI, Work and the Coming Abundance Economy
The decline of travel agents offers a useful case study in job displacement. While the profession shrank dramatically in size, those who remain provide a higher-touch consigliere type service.
That may be one path for professionals in an AI-driven economy: fewer purely technical tasks, more judgment, guidance, and relationship-based value.
📖 Ernie Tedeschi for Stripe Economics (read)
A Robot Economy: Who Gets Rich, Who Gets Left Behind
The robot economy may create abundance, but it also raises an important readiness question: who benefits, who adapts, and who gets left behind?
📖 Lance Roberts for AdvisorPedia (read)
3) AI and Consciousness?
As AI becomes more powerful, the biggest questions may be less technical and more human: what are we building, what do we understand, and how prepared are we for outcomes we cannot fully predict?
Some thinkers see superhuman AI as a transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution. Others are asking whether consciousness, emergence, and autonomy may become harder to define as systems become more capable.
The practical takeaway: readiness begins with humility. We need better questions, broader conversations, and more thoughtful preparation.
📖 AI 2027 by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland and Romeo Dean for the AI Futures Project by (read)
📖 The moderately easy problem of consciousness. Noah Smith for Noahpinion (read)
📖 The Emergent Self Loop by Kevin Kelly (read).
4) Why Everyone Needs a Long-Term Care Plan
Long-term care will impact most families, the question is whether you plan for it or react to it.
Everyone needs a long-term care plan whether or not it includes insurance. Planning early reduces family conflict and preserves control.
Risk management is about being prepared for life’s what ifs. Long-term care planning allows families to make decisions thoughtfully instead of under pressure.
🎙️ Nathan Sanow and Tony Steuer on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast (watch or listen)
5) The $1 Million Mistake Families Make With Aging Parents
Caring for aging parents can be expensive, emotional, and logistically complex. Many families realize this only after a crisis begins.
This conversation covers the true cost of aging at home, the red flags of cognitive decline, and how to prepare before important decisions become urgent.
🎙️ Annalee Kruger and Lawrence Sprung on the Mitlin Money Mindset Podcast (Apple Podcasts)
6) It’s Time To Have A Family Financial Meeting
Regular money conversations with your spouse, partner, or family are essential to financial readiness. They create clarity before life transitions such as death, divorce, caregiving, or disability.
These resources offer helpful ways to restart stalled money conversations, rethink joint finances, and communicate clearly with a financially disengaged spouse.
📖 When Money Gets Quiet: Why You Stop Talking (And How to Start Again) by Prudence Zhu (LinkedIn)
📖 Why Modern Couples Are Rethinking Joint Finances by Leah Hadley. (Read on LinkedIn)
📖 Ask the Analyst: How Can I Illustrate Our Financial Position to a Spouse Who Shows Little Interest? By Amy Arnott for Morningstar (read).
7) Give Yourself Permission to Make More Money
Giving yourself permission to make more money is about more than thinking positively. It starts with understanding what money represents for you: freedom, safety, possibility, or proof that you are enough.
If you have ever felt guilty wanting more, afraid to earn more, or unsure whether you are allowed to receive more, this conversation offers a different way to think about money.
You don’t have to shrink your dreams to be responsible. You can be grounded and abundant at the same time.
🎙️ Cortney McDermott and Linda Grizely on the Real Life, Real Money podcast (listen)
8) Are you brave enough to change your mind?
Bill Ackman’s Herbalife bet offers a powerful lesson in investor psychology. Confirmation bias, sunk cost thinking, and public conviction can make it harder to change your mind.
The broader lesson: even smart investors need systems that protect them from themselves.
Seek disconfirmation. Set exits in advance. Review decisions with detachment. Conviction can build great investments, but humility helps preserve them.
📖 By Ceres Chua for Mind Over Money (read)
9) How to Prepare Your Kids for an Inheritance
Preparing children for an inheritance can raise difficult questions: how much to share, when to start the conversation, whether to use trusts, how to treat heirs fairly, and how to avoid creating dependency.
The goal is not just to transfer assets. It is to prepare the next generation to receive responsibility with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
📖 By Elliott Appel for Kindness Financial Planning (read)
📖 You Can’t Take It With You by Derek Hagen for Meaningful Money (read)
10) This Week’s Focus: Review Your Debts
Reviewing your debts helps you understand what you owe, what you are paying, and where you may be able to reduce interest costs.
Inventory your debts, calculate your debt-to-income ratio, and look for opportunities to improve terms or simplify payments.
Taking control of your debt portfolio can reduce financial stress and strengthen your overall readiness.
🧭 Your Financial Readiness System
AI, caregiving, family conversations, inheritance, and debt all point back to the same idea: readiness works best before decisions become urgent.
Check out my new resources (here):
- Review the Financial Readiness Quick Start Checklist to see where you stand.
- Create your Financial Readiness Plan. Organize your financial life, make confident decisions, and guide others when life happens.
👀 Coming Next Week
How Financial Abuse Begins and Why It’s Often Missed and What to When You Suspect Financial Abuse with Joy Slabaugh
💬 Final Thought
The future may bring smarter tools, faster answers, and more ways to access information. Financial readiness still comes from asking better questions, having better conversations, and preparing before decisions become urgent.
Stay ready.
Start the conversation.
Be curious and ask questions.
— Tony
