(NOTE: We will use Fun Financial Fridays as a way to provide insights on how financial and money professionals think about, lecture on and practice financial discipline. These posts will follow Tony Steuer’s Get Ready Formula and we will provide a summary of his weekly recommendations from this 52 week workbook titled The Get Ready Blueprint – A 52 Week Guide to Changing the Way You Think About Money. This is a true workbook with areas to pencil in responses, habit and journaling.)
- In week 1️⃣ you should’ve set your North Star, your mission to financial competency
- In week 2️⃣, you should’ve defined your goals and priorities
- In week 3️⃣, you should match you goals to the life stage you are preparing for
For week 4️⃣, Tony walks you through planning for upcoming life events. Life events are the good events and bad events that we all go through during life. Here is a list that Tony provides (list in alphabetical order. Tony provides more detailed descriptions in his workbook):
- Business ownership
- Caregiving
- Disability
- Disaster recovery
- Divorce
- Financial independence and retirement
- Home purchase
- Inheritance and windfalls
- Leaving a job
- Marriage and domestic partnership
- Military
- Moving
- Parenthood
- Pet ownership
- Special-needs child
- Starting a job
- Starting out (turning 18) and college years
- Widowhood
Tony goes into more detail in this chapter and his workbook provides space for you to pencil in your thoughts, ideas and a to-do list. For example, as you recognize certain life events, you should add them to your year-end summary. Which life events are coming up in the near-term? These should be planned for by using your GET READY goal chart. As a reminder, GET READY goal system looks like this:
Goals Defined
Educate Yourself
Think about how you think
Relevancy to you
Evaluate your options
Assemble the pieces
Detailed focus
Yearly review
Next week (week 5️⃣), you have now made it through the first month. Reflect back. Were you able to define your goals? Were you able to tie your goals to both your Life Stages AND your Life Events (this week’s lesson)? The to-do for week 5️⃣ will be to Organize Your Financial Documents.
(This workbook is meant to tie to the calendar year, so that you can tie specific dates, like income tax due dates, to your goals and planning. For this date, October 20, 2023, we are in week 42 of the year)
About Tony Steuer
I make the complex world of financial services easy to understand so that people feel empowered to take control of their financial lives. A recognized authority on financial preparedness - in case of that disaster you did not expect - I advocate for ethics, integrity and consumer protection within the financial industry.
I make the complex world of financial services easy to understand so that people feel empowered to take control of their financial lives. A recognized authority on financial preparedness - in case of that disaster you did not expect - I advocate for ethics, integrity and consumer protection within the financial industry.
