What are your money decisions signaling?
Hi,
Welcome to this week’s Get Ready Newsletter—ideas, conversations, questions, and resources to help you prepare before life happens.
When there’s an emergency, our first instinct is to immediately jump in and take action.
What I learned from first responder and whitewater rescue training is that it’s critical to survey the scene first and try to get the full picture of what’s going on.
What appears on the surface to be the most important issue is often times a distraction. When there’s multiple patients, the one who’s loudest is probably not the one most urgently in need of care.
Money works the same way, it’s important to understand the whole situation. This includes our money stories which are our feelings about money and past experiences. This dictates our response and understanding these signals helps us from rushing in to make a bad decision.
The big idea: Every money decision sends a signal about what matters most.
Question to ask before life happens:
What past experience, belief, or value may be shaping this financial decision?
Featured Conversation: Every Money Decision You Make Sends a Signal
Your money decisions show what matters most to you.
Cecile Biccari, sustainable finance specialist and author joined me on the Get Ready Before Life Happens Podcast to talk about how money influences more than your personal finances. This conversation explores how anyone can align their money with their values and contribute to a more intentional future.
Key Takeaways
- Sustainable finance connects everyday financial decisions, from spending to investing, with real world impact.
- Your spending and investing reflect what you value.
- Impact can come from money, time, and attention.
🧠Tony’s Take: What stood out is that money is more than a financial tool. It’s a signal. When we align our decisions with what matters most, we create impact in our own lives and in the world around us.
This episode is a collaboration with The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards (the MAIAs) which celebrate the increasingly important work being done to help people understand money better. Learn more: https://www.maiawards.org.
🎙️Watch or listen to the podcast (here)
Related:
A Gentle Way To Unlock More Abundance. How our inner beliefs, emotions, and relationship with money shape the abundance we experience in life.True prosperity begins when we learn to create more clarity, appreciation, and alignment within ourselves first. Ellen Rogin (YouTube).
From Money Scripts to Financial Freedom with Danielle Howard. Knowing what to do with money does not always make it easier to act, childhood experiences shape financial behavior, and why changing a habit often requires changing the way we see ourselves. Danielle Howard and Diana Yanez on the Highly Sensitive Money Podcast (listen).
Mattress, Not a Hammock: Teaching Kids About Money. How everyday money conversations can help kids build confidence, maturity, and values. Julia Myers and Linda Grizely on the Real Money, Real Life Podcast (YouTube).
Tony’s Assessment:
Money decisions are both personal and public. They express values, but they are also shaped by beliefs, habits, family messages, and the systems around us. Financial readiness helps us slow down enough to ask whether their money is aligned with what matters most, or whether old scripts, outside pressure, fear, guilt, or avoidance are shaping a decision.
After nearly 40 years around insurance and financial decisions, I’ve learned that the policy, account, or investment is rarely the whole story. The real question is what the decision is trying to protect, express, or make possible.
Before making a meaningful financial decision, ask:
Does this choice reflect my values, or am I reacting to pressure, fear, guilt, comparison, or someone else’s expectations?
Why it matters: Money decisions are clearer when they come from alignment rather than reaction. A pause can help you recognize whether a decision is truly yours or being shaped by outside pressure.
One Step Before Life Happens
This week’s action: Review one recent or upcoming money decision and write down the signal it may be sending.
Ask:
- What does this decision say about what I value?
- What emotion is present?
- What past experience may be shaping my response?
- What do I want this money to protect, express, or make possible?
Why it matters: A few minutes of reflection can help you move from reaction to alignment. Better financial decisions start when you understand both the numbers and the story behind the decision.
👉 Create your in-case-of-emergency Financial First Aid Kit. Start Your Free Financial Readiness Plan
Also This Week: Why Financial Confidence Takes More Than Just Money
Danqin Fang joined me on Get Ready Before Life Happens to talk about how holistic financial planning evolves through a process of awareness, clarity, and alignment.
Even people who appear to have everything in place often feel held back by fear, scarcity, or limiting beliefs.
Tony’s Take: Financial readiness grows from awareness and alignment. When people understand their money patterns, gain clarity on what matters, and give themselves permission to act, they begin to build a life that feels both intentional and fulfilling.
🎙️(Watch or listen)
Stat of the week:
When people are asked about confidence in who they are (self-perception) versus confidence in their actual ability, by what percentage does confidence drop?
- 51%
- 32%
- 72%
- 81%
Answer: 72%.
According to MetLife’s Confident Pathways report (here), confidence drops sharply when people move from self-perception to actual ability.
Why it matters: Confidence matters, however readiness depends on turning confidence into capability. Financial readiness helps people connect what they believe, what they know, and what they are prepared to do.
Five Worth Your Time
Every Generation of Women Inherits the Last One's Relationship With Money. What Will We Pass Down? The relationship with money most of us were handed was not chosen. But the one we pass forward can be. Invest for Better (LinkedIn)
Help Me, I’ve Got Money. On buying help, being the helper, and why financial planning needs to have a help conversation. By Meghaan Lurtz for (Less) Lonely Money (read)
The Life You're Waiting For Is Waiting for You to Wake Up. Julie Murphy (read).
Living a Life of Purpose. Worried about purpose, legacy, and what all this wealth might be good for? Dr. Jordan Grumet and Barry Ritholtz on the At the Money Podcast (listen)
Align Desires with Documents. Spoken desires about wills and inheritances are not legally binding. Julie Rains for Save.Invest.Protect.Preserve. (read)
Why it matters: Having confidence in yourself is a key to financial success.
Final Thought:
In rescue work, the first step is to understand the scene before rushing in.
Money decisions deserve the same kind of pause.
Before making a decision, and especially a rushed decision, consider the signal that’s being sent. It may point to what we value, what we fear, what we learned, or what we hope to make possible.
Financial readiness helps us notice those signals before we act, so our decisions reflect the life we are trying to build and the people, values, and responsibilities we want to protect.
Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.
Tony
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