Welcome to the Get Ready Money Club newsletter; a weekly newsletter with recommendations to help you succeed on your financial journey and one simple action item.
This newsletter is 1,710 words, a 7 minute read.
✅ Week #2 Action Item: Define your goals and priorities
🌎 The big picture: Financial success requires thinking about your goals first.
🤔 Why it matters: We often think about the financial product
first. We need to consider what we want to accomplish and then see what product will help us achieve our goals. Defining your goals helps you stay focused and on track.
💡 Here’s what works: Set your goals with the SMART principles + priority.
- Specific. What do you want to accomplish?
- Measurable. How much do you need?
- Achievable. How can you accomplish this goals?
- Relevant. Can you (and will you) meet this goal?
- Time-bound. When do you need to complete this goal?
- Priority. How important is this goal?
😎 Bottom line: Setting goals and priorities will give you a clear mission for your financial journey.
💭 Habit of the week: Think about whether a financial product fits your current needs.
🤔 Question of the week: Have you defined your current goals and if they are a priority?
💁♂️ Advisor/Coach Corner: Ask your clients what their 3 big goals are for the year? How can you help them?
📝 Resources:
Get Ready Money Club Members:
- The Get Ready Discussion Guide. Share your goals and priorities with your accountability team.
Get Ready Library and Toolkit members can access your resources for this week's action item (#2) from your dashboard (located in Monthly Focus Area 1: Habits and Planning):
- The Get Ready Blueprint week 2 worksheet where you’ll enter your three big goals for the years and apply the SMART principles plus priority.
Access Your Get Ready Resources here
The Get Ready Library:
The Get Ready Library expands on each week’s action item and provides worksheets to help you complete each week’s action item, create a to-do list, track your habits and organize your financial life. It also includes access to all of my books (The Get Ready Bookshelf).
- The Get Ready Bookshelf: The Get Ready Blueprint, Get Ready!, Questions and Answers on Life Insurance, The Questions on Answers Life Insurance Workbook, The Questions and Answers on Disability Insurance Workbook, Insurance Made Easy and The Questions and Answers on Insurance Planner (pdf editions)
- The Get Ready Toolkit: 150+ worksheets to complete each week’s action items step by step, add your weekly goals, use the positive habit maker, create your weekly money to-do’s and organize your financial life (fillable PDF worksheets from The Get Ready Blueprint (52 worksheets) and fillable PDF’s & Excel from Get Ready! (100+ worksheets)).
Become a Get Ready Library Member
💡 Are you ready to put the personal back into personal finance?
🙌 On this episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I was joined by Elliott Appel, Founder of Kindness Financial Planning; Faith Teope, multimedia journalist and CEO of Leverage Retirement; Laura Adams, author and host of the Money Girl Podcast and Marguerita Cheng, CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth. We discussed putting the personal back into personal finance.
🧐Here are some take-aways:
🔹 Every woman needs to take an active role with her money.
🔹 Think about goals first, what do you want?
🔹 Be intentional and talk with your loved ones about money.
🔹 Get curious, ask what am I missing?
🔹 Figure out what is important to you and prioritize it, it probably costs less money than you think. (Elliott Appel)
🔹 Create a life with your money, using it as a tool that brings you joy. (Laura Adams)
🔹 You don't need to wait till tomorrow to enjoy your passions and priorities. (Marguerita Cheng)
🔹 Take the time to really visualize how you want to live your life and then hold on to it. (Faith Teope)
🎙️Watch or listen to the podcast (here).
The Get Ready Money Podcast is also available on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.
💡 Create a Disaster-Proof Financial Life!
🧐 Thanks to Laura Adams for the opportunity to join her on the Money Girl podcast to share about what should be in your financial and first aid kit.
🔹 How to navigate open enrollment and choose the right insurance policies.
🔹 Exactly who needs life and disability insurance.
🔹 Why getting life insurance outside of work can make sense.
🔹 What disasters are never covered in standard homeowners or renters insurance.
🔹 How to save money on home insurance with discounts, remediation, comparison shopping.
😎 Check out the conversation (here).
🤩 Tony Steuer Recommends
📖 From Access to Mastery by Nicole Casperson for Fintech is Femme. Why Fintech Should Double Down on This Sector in 2025. As we move into 2025, one of the most promising areas for fintech innovation isn’t just about democratizing access to traditional investment options—it’s about shifting the very foundation of wealth creation. Read the article (here).
📖 Worth the Trouble by Julie Rains for SIPS (Save-Invest-Protect). The hurdle rate in investing and gardening. The concept of a hurdle rate guides us to identify a minimum return to justify the risk and cost of investing or planting a garden. Enjoyment, learning, and hedging against uncertainties (e.g., inflation or supply chain issues) may justify efforts that don't meet strict financial criteria. Read it (here).
📖 Aging Healthy: 4 Steps to Staying Well in Retirement by Stevyn Guinnip, MS, CWC for Sassy presented by Keena Pettijohn. Here's a surprising fact: While Americans are living longer than ever, many are spending their extra years managing chronic conditions instead of enjoying retirement. Since 1919, our average lifespan has increased by 23 years. But our "healthspan," the time we spend in good health, hasn't budged. Read it on (LinkedIn).
📖 Navigating the Decline of a Client’s Mental Capacity by Sheryl Rowling for Morningstar. Putting a plan in place now will safeguard your clients (and you) down the road. The best time to address potential mental decline is well before it becomes an issue. Advisors should initiate an aging plan for clients in their 50s or early 60s. Read it (here).
📓 The Unseen Shift: How Partnership Long-term Care Insurance Influences Caregiving Among Older Adults by Xianhua Zai, PhD in The Journals of Gerontology.The program positively affected LTCI coverage, increasing insurance uptake among older individuals in the long run. Conversely, a significant negative effect was observed on the receipt of assistance from any helper, indicating a reduced reliance on informal care. Check it out (here).
🎙️ Choices, costs, and challenges in US healthcare: insurance intricacies, drug pricing, economic impacts, and potential reforms with Saum Sutaria, M.D. and Peter Attia MD on the The Peter Attia Drive Podcast. Saum’s insights help connect healthcare spending to broader economic issues while exploring potential reforms and the role of technology in improving efficiency. Saum highlights how choice and innovation distinguish the U.S. healthcare system, explores the reasons behind exorbitant drug prices, and examines the potential solutions, challenges, and trade-offs involved in lowering costs while striving to improve access, quality, and affordability. Watch on (YouTube).
📓 Evaluating the Role of Life Annuities in Retirement Income Strategies with Stochastic Simulations Gaobo Pang and Mark Warshawsky for the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI). We study retirement income strategies, examine the distributions of their outcomes, and rank the strategies through a subjective utility function. Of particular interest are the use of systematic withdrawals from liquid assets, guaranteed immediate life annuities, and combinations of the two. Read the (paper).
Put These Charts on Your Wall (2024 Edition) by Charlie Bilello. Put these charts on your wall for reference the next time you think… All-Time Highs Are a Sell Signal, Investment Returns Are Linear, It’s Oversold/Overbought and Can’t Possibly Go Any Lower/Higher; Credit Card Rates Can’t Go Any Higher; Credit Spreads Can’t Get Any Tighter; Mortgage Rates Must Go Down When The Fed Cuts Rates and more. Check them out (here).
📓 Want to Be Happier? Use These Five Charts to Improve Your Life by Esther Haynes in The Free Press. In an adapted excerpt from his book “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life”, Sahil Bloom offers advice on how to build the five types of wealth—along with handy tools, graphs, calculators, and exercises—so you can design your own “dream life” around your priorities. Read it (here).
🧐 RTS Desktop Tax Guide 2025 from Retirement Tax Services and Steve Jarvis. This comprehensive guide includes tax brackets, thresholds and limits including social security, Medicare (IRMAA), retirement plans, kiddie taxes and state summaries. Download it (here).
🧐 2025 Retirement Planning Cheat Sheet from Lynn Toomey and Retirement Solved. All the 2025 facts & figures at-a-glance about Social Security, Medicare, retirement plan contributions and taxes in ONE document. Download it (here).
🎤 Trailblazers - The ETF Revolution with Bruce Lavine, Mark Butler and Sheryl O’Connor presented by Income Conductor on January 21, 2025 (11:30 ET and 4: 30 ET, virtual and free). Bruce will share his insights on The evolution of ETFs and the factors driving their growth, Strategies advisors can use to assess ETF managers and utilize ETFs to benefit their clients and Future trends and products in the ETF marketplace. Learn more and view registration links (for 11:30 ET)(for 4:30 ET).
🎤 2025 Trends Accelerating the Future of Insurance with Denise Garth, Andrew Johnston, Megan Kuczynski and David Gritz presented by Majesco on January 29th at 12pm ET (virtual and free). Risk is changing and intensifying. Technology adoption is accelerating. The pace of events is increasing and intensifying. Just look at the last 5 years’ experience with an average of 15-18 billion-dollar disasters a year. This is unsustainable for the industry. And unsustainable for insureds. The panel will explore a lens that sees the future differently. A lens that helps analyze and interpret the trends. A lens that helps us rethink and reimagine the future to make informed decisions that bring it to life. Register (here).
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Let’s Change The Way We Think About Money!
Tony
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