Episode 312: Building Financial Fluency and Asking Better Money Questions with Tony Steuer

Financial confidence doesn’t come from knowing everything. It comes from knowing what questions to ask.

In this episode, Melissa Joy, CFP®, is joined by Tony Steuer, a longtime personal finance educator, insurance analyst, and host of the Get Ready Before Life Happens podcast.

Tony shares how his early career as an insurance agent led him to a deeper mission: helping people understand why smart, capable individuals often end up with financial products that don’t truly serve them. Over decades of consulting with financial planners, attorneys, and trust officers, Tony saw firsthand how complexity, commissions, and behavioral blind spots can quietly derail good financial decisions.

Together, Melissa and Tony unpack how behavioral finance shows up in real life, especially around insurance and risk management. They discuss why permanent insurance products are often misunderstood, how surrender charges and commissions impact long-term outcomes, and why many people feel emotionally stuck in policies that no longer fit their lives.

The episode wraps with an important discussion on financial scams and red flags, including pressure tactics, secrecy, and “too good to be true” promises, and why these warning signs matter not just for ourselves, but for aging parents and the next generation.

Key Takeaways

• Why financial fluency starts with asking better questions, not memorizing answers
• How behavioral finance influences insurance and investment decisions
• When permanent life insurance can make sense and when it usually doesn’t
• What surrender charges really mean and why they matter
• Common red flags of financial scams and bad actors
• How values, communication, and education shape long-term financial confidence

To learn more about Tony’s work, tools, and resources, visit tonysteuer.com and listen to Get Ready Before Life Happens wherever you get your podcasts.

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only.  No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https...

Transcript

Meet Tony Stewart And His Mission

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate big money decisions with confidence, and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money, and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show. I got the chance to meet our guest today because I have been a guest on his podcast. Today I we will be joined by Tony Stewar. Tony is a personal finance evangelist. He really believes that he can help to increase your financial fluency and that that is something that we so also need, which is also one of the missions of this podcast. And in his role as a very experienced career in personal finance, he has evolved to create the Get Ready Money podcast. And he also has a get ready toolkit. So we're going to learn all about why he has this mission and a little bit about his life's work before he started the Get Ready Money podcast as well. Tony, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Hi Melissa, glad to be here today.

From Insurance Sales To Analyst

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Well, I was thrilled to join you on your podcast. And I also know if you um for those of you out there listening, when you finish up this episode, if you'd like to kind of stay um on top of personal finance topics, Tony has a really great kind of weekly shout out of um news and notes when it comes to personal finance and really shouts out great content. Um but tell me a little bit about how you started in this financial and money world, um, the work that you've done. And then we're going to talk a little bit about what you're doing today.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Fantastic. Well, it started out years ago. I was an insurance agent and I quickly discovered that I didn't really like selling insurance, but that also there were a lot of complicated insurance policies out there. So I became in California, it's called a life and disability insurance analyst, which allowed me to charge a fee for doing insurance consulting work. And I spent the bulk of the next 30 years working mostly with financial planners, but some litigation attorneys, trust officers, and related in reviewing existing insurance policies. And that got me really interested both in best practices, it got me interested in the educational aspect, because I couldn't figure out why smart people would buy these insurance policies that didn't benefit them. So that led me to the whole education thing. Uh, it got me interested in the psychology because it wasn't a question of clients not understanding, not having the intelligence, not having the educational background. It was there was something else going on behind the scenes, which got me really thinking about behavioral science and behavioral finance long before other people were talking about it. Not really on purpose and not naming it, but going, okay, what are people thinking and why are they thinking it? And um, that led me to start the podcast and doing the work that I do today.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

I am so interested in this because insurance is something that is basically another word for risk management. And in the financial planning, the world of financial planning, this is a core component of the education that we receive to become certified financial planners, as well as the it's just an important component of having a sound um game plan when it comes to your money. But it is also primarily sold to people in, you know, kind of a commission-based world. And there is a lot of can be a lot can be a lot of complexity when it comes to insurance and um kind of varying scales of how people are regulated in terms of how they communicate about insurance. So it's very rare to have someone like you, Tony, who is an analyst who could be paid to consult. Um, because in so many cases, it's the sales force that's doing the talking. Um, and you know, that could include someone like me. So um, what have you, why did behavioral finance kind of make you tick as you were learning about how consumers, you know, kind of purchased or owned insurance policies?

Behavioral Finance Behind Bad Policies

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Well, because I started to think about okay, there's all these insurance policies that people are buying that they don't need. And so the question is, like, why were they buying them? Well, one of the things is so I would be called in by financial planners, and usually a financial planner would say, Yeah, I have this client, they have five insurance policies. Tell me if they're any good, tell me what we should do, uh, what changes we should make. So I spent a lot of my career actually undoing insurance policies and figuring out how to best do that with the least harm.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Problem solving with existing policies that may need to be either modified, some given up, some kept, kind of solved for, basically. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Exactly, because the majority of people have no need for cash value life insurance. They have no need for permanent life insurance. And that's basically the challenge is that we got away as an insurance industry from the purpose of protecting against the risk of somebody passing away and the need that somebody has to protect against this risk, and to creating these crazy products that are sold as an asset class and it can start. Oh, it's your retirement plan.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

You shouldn't trust a 401k, you need to buy a big high-ticket insurance policy instead, because you can borrow from it for free and et cetera, et cetera, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Exactly. So, you know, I started thinking about like, okay, well, is this a financial literacy uh issue? Is it because people don't understand their money? Well, yeah, that's that's part of it, but there was something deeper going on because when we'd come up with an analysis and I'd do it in conjunction with a financial planner, I didn't really meet that often directly with a client. I was usually working with a financial planner on the back end. It's like, okay, why is the client not getting rid of this insurance policy? Why are they so emotionally vested in it? Uh, you know, in many of these cases, the clients could self-insure, or they were at a point where their kids had moved out, so they didn't need to provide protection for their kids. They had enough assets in their retirement plan, you know, all the usual things where you would buy an insurance policy from. And so you get into these conversations and it's like, well, you know, or they'd be looking at an insurance policy and it'd be like, well, it's got a 15-year surrender charge. You know, is that really something you want to get into? Or, you know, you could do much, you know, something much different with your money, like invest it. You could buy a disability insurance policy. There, there were so many other things that give you a long-term care insurance policy. Um, so that was really it, is like, okay, what's going on psychologically? Why do people not want to do that? But then the other question is, why do they buy these policies in the first place? And I think that's one of the questions a lot of us ask in the financial services field anyway, is like, why are people buying these products? Not just life insurance, but all of these products that make no sense. And part of it, a little bit of his greed, a little bit of it is thinking that they know something that somebody else doesn't. When you watch some of these videos on YouTube, they're about these schemes called be your own banker, the missing money concept. You know, there's lots of different names, the infinite banking system, but they're all on the premise that you can do these things with life insurance policies that nobody else knows about, that you're unlocking the secrets of the universe. And that's always a bad sign when it comes to anything in life, is when somebody goes, You're the only one who knows this. You're gonna get a secret. Well, you know, here's the thing: life insurance companies are not stupid. They're some of the oldest companies. And you know, the insurance is one of the oldest industries.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Yeah, hundreds of years old.

Term Vs Permanent Life Needs

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Exactly. They have, and they have a lot of experience. They know how to price your products, they're profitable. You know, when you look at companies that are profitable, insurance companies are rocks. When you look at Warren Buffett, his core holdings are insurance companies. Everybody talks about all the other investments he makes, but the core of Berkshire Hathaway is insurance companies. So when you go back to these products and you start hearing things like, well, you know, you can put all this money in and you're gonna get these tax advantages, or you can borrow money out because you're your own bank and you're borrowing money from yourself. Well, that's not true. You're borrowing money from an insurance company, and when you borrow money from the insurance company, they're gonna charge you interest on that loan. Now, normally when you borrow money from yourself, you're not gonna charge yourself interest. But people tend to think that that's the way it is, and they tend to believe these videos instead of doing research.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Mm-hmm. I so a couple um concepts that you described as uh you were discussing this. One of them is self-insure. So that would mean, you know, maybe you had life insurance, assuming you're, you know, if I pass away before my career is over, my spouse would need um money to um my portion of retirement, kids would need to go to college. We have a mortgage, we might need to pay off the house. And some of those needs tend to fall away for some people, um, or many, if not most, people that work with personal financial advisors as you get closer to retirement. And so your insurance needs may change over your life. Um, but some of these permanent policies do there's no person asking, you know, at ticks along the road if you're still insured for the right amount of money. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

That's exactly it. And as you point out, is the needs are usually finite. Is you may be insuring a 30-year mortgage. You may be insuring your kids till they get out of the house, which hopefully now may be a lot longer than it used to be. Your kids maybe stick around a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

But I'm saying some prayers for that one. We'll see. Yeah, I've got a high schooler and a middle schooler.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

So you know, but that's that's just the way it is. But at some point, even if your kids are still at home, they're gonna be earning an income. But let's say you're you buy a million-dollar life insurance policy to protect your spouse, you know, in case something happens to you. Well, if you're putting money aside in your 401k and you have a million dollars, well, then do you need that million dollars for your spouse? You may not. Your mortgage may only be a quarter of what it was before. And that's the thing is that when people are thinking about these things, is they're not matching the duration of their need for the duration of the insurance policy that they're buying. And that's the big thing is we have to flip that conversation on its head and start thinking about like, okay, what's your goal is with so many financial services and products, but especially life insurance. And you said it at the very beginning, is it sold rather than people going, oh, I have this need and I need to find the right product to take care of that need.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

It's so interesting. And I agree with you. Another thing that you mentioned is a surrender charge. And this is associated often with these insurance policies that have an investment component. That's cash value is the value of the policy that you could cash out or take with you or apply to a different insurance premium. Um, annuities also often have surrender charges. And often those are associated, you know, an insurance company doesn't want to assume managing a risk and then turn around and undo all the work they do. But also surrender charges tend to rhyme with commissions paid to the people that originally place the policies. And that's how an insurance agent is compensated. Is that right?

Surrender Charges And Commissions

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, there's there is a correlation between surrender charges and commissions. It's it's it's a little bit complex, but yeah, for the majority, is it does translate. That's one of the reasons the insurance companies have a surrender charge. The other reason is because it takes the insurance company a while to break even on writing an insurance policy, which is definitely partially because of the high commissions, but it's expensive for the insurance company to underwrite the risk. It's expensive for them to issue the policy. So they have a lot of costs going in. However, the insurance companies on a lot of these policies have surrender charges for up to 16 years, which is a lot longer than they have those high costs. So the insurance companies have this all calculated. But one of the reasons why they have the long surrender charges is that so many people lapse their permanent life insurance policies in the first five to 10 years. At least 5% of policies lap of whole life, let's take whole life insurance policies lapse in year one. So already the insurance companies are out, 5% of the policies they write are going to lapse because most people by the second or third year go, holy cow, I'm paying this much for my life insurance. What am I doing? And so a majority of the whole life policies are terminated by year five, but yet the insurance companies are on the hook. And what tends to happen, and this happens with health insurance, is that the people who are less healthy and less, you know, that are more risky to the insurance company. And by risky, I mean are more likely to have a claim, are the ones who tend to stay on. So that it becomes more expensive to the insurance companies to have those people on. And that's what the insurance companies are looking at is like, how likely are they going to have to pay a claim? And the one thing that we can all agree on is that insurance companies don't like paying claims. They are in the business of paying claims, but they don't want to pay a claim if they don't have to. And when we look at this, is it is good for insurance companies to make a profit. They need to make a profit to stay in business. So it gets pretty complicated. But the bottom line is surrender charges are for a very long period of time. And in the first couple of years, they are 100% or like 98%. So they're very high for the first years. And if I can touch on annuities for a second, is that okay? Sure. Annuities are even worse, is they have these annuities called multi-year guaranteed annuities that people should really be aware of is what they do is they provide you a guaranteed interest rate for a certain period of years. That's fantastic. They're great interest rates, they guarantee it for five years. You're like, this is great. And then it renews at the end of that period with another guaranteed interest rate. What they don't tell you is that the only opportunity for you to take out all your money from that annuity is during a 30-year, I mean a 30-year, a 30-day window when that period renews. So surrender charges are something that people really need to think about and be aware, like, I can't get my money out of these contracts, even if I wanted to. And that's that's very important.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Yes. And so the whole episode is not about insurance and annuities, but what I want people to know and understand, because we have this expert here, you, Tony, is if you're in a sales process, let's say, at the point of sale of, hey, you really need to buy this insurance or this annuity. Um, and it doesn't maybe it doesn't feel fully aligned, or you're like, hey, this is a little sounds complicated. Why are all these forms here? It's okay to ask for a second opinion. Um, it's also, you know, something that it's okay to ask how an agent is being compensated, asking about the commission, um, because that is not something that would typically be easy to identify in any of the paperwork or disclosures. And then understanding a surrender, understanding what if I change my mind, um, what is the purpose, what are we insuring, and then also avoiding those, you know, kind of seems too good to be true, kind of um, you know, like you're saying, um, be your own banker type um situations, um, because insurance is really typically for risk management, not investment returns in most, if not all cases. And there still are some circumstances, at least in my opinion, and I I guess I would ask you open-ended, what are some good uses of insurance? Um, when when do you see more complicated policies making sense as you are analyzing different circumstances and situations?

When Permanent Insurance Makes Sense

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Well, for the majority of people, term life insurance is all they need. When you need permanent life insurance is when you have a permanent need, like uh you use it in an estate planning situation where there's a need for liquidity for the estate, like uh I've worked on some estates for real estate developers, where if they pass away, the only way to pay the estate taxes would be to liquidate real estate. And if it's a bad market for real estate, that would be a huge hit. So, in that type of situation, is you would need a permanent life insurance policy to always be in force for whenever was needed. Um, another case is for special need children. So if somebody has a special need child who will always be financially dependent upon them, you can set up a special special needs trust and put a life insurance policy into that to take care of that child's needs. Um, other situations where I've seen permanent life insurance use is in certain business planning situations, is sometimes it can be used as a way to hold on to a key employees sort of to provide a golden handcuffs, uh, where the employee gets some of the cash value later on if they stay so many years with a company. So you do get into some situations where a cash value policy makes sense. But as you've seen from these three examples, they're all percent, you know, most people don't need those, and most people are never gonna encounter those types of situations. And when you do have one of those situations, you're probably gonna uh have an advisor who's working with you who's gonna walk you through what you need and why you need it.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Yeah, and I would mention in our own practice, not everyone walks out with an insurance policy, but we do do some hybrid long-term care, which is in a life insurance chassis, but is really solving for um uh perhaps an unfunded need for nursing home. Um and it's all based on going back to um what you're really working on nowadays, which is your approach, your behavioral approach to how you perceive risk. So it's not just a you know, um black and white scenario. It really depends on the client's perspective on what they want to insure, but that can um be a fit in some cases. And I I'm happy to debate it as well, but um, is one um kind of non-term life insurance that um some clients of ours use.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Actually, and that's a great example, and that's a great use of a cash value policy that you don't want to get rid of, is to use a Section 1035 tax-free exchange to a combination hybrid life long-term care insurance policy for exactly that reason, is there is a long-term care insurance need for pretty much everybody. Everybody has some long-term care exposure, and then you get a little bit of life insurance with it. Um, so that that's a great product.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Yeah. And if you're sitting with one of those complex products, then there are people out there, for example, um, our company works with insurance analysts, just like the role that you have filled over your career, Tony, to assess the circumstances. And um, the right answer isn't always to dump the product. It's first of all to be informed about the circumstances of what you're what's covered and how that fits with your life, and then assess it might be the 1035 exchange that you mentioned, Tony, or it might be a reduction in a policy that's already kind of paid up if you make adjustments. But um, you, you know, kind of sometimes insurance gets dropped, the discussion gets dropped after you sign on the dotted line and just send in your premium checks. And there there can be more. Consulting and analysis to make sure that whatever you have integrates with what your needs are at this point in your life. So just know that you can ask for that if you find yourself saying, Oh, I just like locked that in the closet and hate writing the premium check, but I feel stuck. Um having a conversation with a professional can be helpful. So let's pivot though. All right. I want to hear how this work, which is, you know, I think like um very powerful, very complex, kind of messy, and just like my work, you're getting into the, you know, kind of people, how they work, what they need, what fits their psychology. Um, how did that create the your podcast and your um really amazing free personal literacy tools?

Fixing Legacy Policies And 1035 Exchanges

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Well, thanks. Um, so what it did was it, and it this gets to something you mentioned earlier, that the challenge is people don't know the right questions to ask. So it took me a little while with my podcast to really find my footing. I don't know if you went through that. Uh, but oh yeah, still going through it. So, you know, I I figured the best thing I could do was to help people be empowered, you know, without saying, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. So I got to the conclusion that I had to help people figure out what questions to ask. But because that's the thing is when we're going to look at a financial service or product, you know, there's some financial literacy courses now in school, but they they they really don't, for the most part, teach people everything they need to know. And the majority of us never had any personal finance courses in school. So we, you know, we we can't expect consumers or our clients to know what questions to ask or what we're even talking about. I for any advisor you're listening to this, I'm sure you've all had that experience where you're talking to a client about something that you think is the most basic concept, and your client just has that glazed look like they have no idea what you're talking about. And that's it. Is and then the client has no idea what you're talking about, and then they feel ashamed to ask the obvious question like, can you explain to me how an insurance premium works? And again, you know, I'm defaulting to insurance a little bit, but it works with the same thing. A client, you know, you'll talk to a client like, yeah, you need to get some stocks and bonds, and you know, we'll allocate this here, we'll allocate there. And the client's all like, what is a stock? What does that mean? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? And you know, we've already leapt further on in the conversation where the client's still like, okay, what is investing? How does that work? You know, how am I going to participate? How is the stock any good for me? And so that's it, is that it's really we have to help one client feel comfortable saying, I don't know. And if we think back to school and we're all in that classroom and we're all there, and a teacher's talking about something and we have no idea, but we don't want to raise our hand and say, I have no idea what you're talking about. That's how clients often feel is they have no idea, but they don't want to stop you and say, uh, I don't really know what you're talking about. So with my podcast and my work, is I want to help people one, feel confident that they can say, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

But two, which you should work with someone who it still may be intimidating to ask that question. And in fact, early in um working with clients, I try to remind them or tell them, like, whoever you hire, I would love to work with you. But if if you hire me, I want you to be comfortable to say you don't know on things that you think I think you should know. Um, because really that that is our job. And we've all been there. And it's so important to have a trusting relationship where you can say, you said a lot of things that sounded smart, but I have no idea what you mean. We need to like either redo it, say it a different way, like it we can't go on until I get these basics right.

Teaching Questions, Not Products

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Exactly. And so it's uh helping people understand what questions to ask, but also that's a sign when you're working with somebody, if they're not asking you any questions, then you know they're not really following. And what I always try to do was to get people to repeat back to me what their understanding was of something. What did you hear? What do you think I said? You know, you don't say it exactly like that, but but you want them to restate in their own words how they're comprehending something that you presented to them. And that's the important thing is to help them find the words to use, to encourage the communication, to encourage the curiosity. And I think that's the biggest thing is that what we can do as members of the financial service community is encourage people to be curious about the different areas of their money, to gain confidence to say, these are my goals and I want to meet my goals. I don't want to be talked to about products that just because they're great products that you recommend. I want to know is this product gonna help me solve this problem?

SPEAKER_02 27:33

I I agree with you. I love that you said different areas of personal finance because I think there are certain like if you go to the gym and you only exercise on your arms, I think there are certain areas where the kind of self-implementing community does really fantastic. You know, there's there's definitely software in fintech you can use to budget. And investing has been really a broad and expansive, you know, kind of um and growing community of here's how things work, here's how you do it. And so if you decided to roll up your sleeves and really integrate understanding of those areas, um, there's a lot of confidence there. Areas where I see more gaps are um how does retirement actually work? What are the different tax implications of withdrawing from one account or another when it comes to retirement? What you you can figure out, I think I have enough money, but like what happens if something goes wrong? How do I insure things? Or estate planning is something that is often neglected. And um, there's a lot of less sophisticated kind of tax approaches. And so I think, you know, at this stage in the kind of evolution of personal finance, um, the investment work might be more commoditized, well, certainly is than it was 15 or 20 years ago. The there are areas that are darker that are like, you know, just don't get as much sunlight. And there's not as it's not as easy to kind of integrate into um self, you know, kind of self um directed decision making. And then when you add variables of like, hey, get your cash flow right, get your investments right, then add in your retirement game plan and this and that, it becomes more complex because you need to integrate and prioritize over a variety of things. And so I think that having podcasts like you have and like we have that talk about all of these topics and don't just kind of stop at investing basics or the power of compounding are really necessary and valuable nowadays, especially at this moment in time.

Beyond Investing: Planning Blind Spots

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Yeah, without a doubt, you know, a couple other things I'm concentrating on my podcast, talking a lot about is scams and best practices. As I mentioned, I've done some litigation consulting. I served on a California Department of Insurance curriculum board for almost a decade. And so there are definitely bad actors out there. And I think one of the ways people can protect themselves is to learn red flags and to help their family and loved ones or clients learn to spot red flags because these things exist. And so, you know, you play offense with some of these things, like investing and other things, and then you're playing defense with your insurance and scam awareness, identity protection, and all these other things. And I think the other thing that we're gonna see a huge shift with, um, I've taken the impact philanthropic advisor course, is that with the great wealth transfer to women, women are much more charitably inclined than men. And women are gonna be controlling the majority of money over the next 10 to 20 years. Is that that's an important thing for your financial planner to be able to help you with, I think, is helping you figure out how to support the organizations that you want to support in line with your values.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

That is so true. And aligning your values can really increase your comfort with money or wealth. And just since you mentioned it, and I this is, you know, kind of a general personal finance episode. I can't finish the conversation without hearing a few of your top red flags when it comes to frauds and bad bad actors. What do you tell people to listen for? And I find so much with our listeners, because we're kind of all in the messy money middle of life, um, that you know, you're not only thinking to protect yourself, you're thinking to protect your parents' generation, as well as the kids who, you know, can might fall for something. So what are what are you listening for? What are you telling people to watch out for?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Well, first thing is as silly as it sounds, listen to your gut. If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Um, as I mentioned earlier, one of the things like with the being your own banker is when they tell you that you're the only person who knows something, that this is a secret, a lot of scammers will do that. They'll say, Hey, Melissa, I've got this great deal, but you're the only person who knows about this. So don't tell anybody. And that's part of it. That leads to the next thing where they isolate you. They'll say, Melissa, don't talk to your husband about this, don't talk to your kids about this. Sorry if I made an assumption that you have a husband, but don't no, it's okay. You don't talk to your partner about this, don't talk to your neighbor about this. This is something that's for you. So they start to isolate you. So when somebody's saying, Don't talk to somebody else about this, that's a huge red flag. The other thing is they'll start to time pressure you. They'll say, you know, you have to do this by tomorrow. If you don't do it by tomorrow, you're gonna lose this opportunity. So those are some of the big red flags, is when when you they start to pressure you, tell you you're the only one, and it starts to sound too good to be true, is there is no magic out there. If there were other people know, especially in today's world, somebody would be talking about it on Instagram or YouTube if it were really that easy and it really worked that well.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Well, thank you for pointing those out. I couldn't agree more. And there are so many different, you know, um there are so many actors out there, especially with the kind of the digitization of the way we communicate and the way information is disseminated that are, you know, kind of trying to on scale, you know, fish for um they're, for lack of a better word, their next victim. So it is so important to be vigilant and to trust that inner gut that says, I may need to pause or ask for something. If you're ever pressured, um, there's just very rare moments in, you know, kind of um dealing with money where you need any sort of pressure. You should always have space and time to make decisions. Tony, can you tell us where we can find more about the work that you're doing and your tools and resources?

Scam Red Flags And Playing Defense

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah, you can go to my website at tonysteward.com and you can also find me on LinkedIn. And my podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. Uh it's now, I retitled it to Get Ready Before Life Happens.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Perfect. That's a great title, and so glad to have you on and keep doing the great work in increasing people's financial fluency.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Thanks, Melissa. Thanks for having me on today.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Thank you for listening to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. If you found value in this episode, the best way that you can support the podcast is to forward an episode to a friend or leave a review. Go to ProPlan.com and the podcast link to get all the resources and links mentioned. This presentation by Pro Planning is intended for general information purposes only. No portion of this presentation serves as a receipt of or a substitute for personal investment advice from Pro Planning or any other investment professional of your choosing. Copies of Pro Planning's current rent and disclosure brochure and form CRS discussing our advisory services and fees are available upon request or on our website platform at PerlPlan.com. The information that we share is meant to educate and inspire, not serve as personalized financial advice. Everyone's situation is unique, so be sure to consult with your own financial professional for guidance that fits your life. And just so you know, the opinions shared in this podcast are Melissa's own and those of our guests. They don't necessarily represent any organizations with which Melissa is affiliated. For more important disclosures, please go to our webpage at proplan.com.