#228: A 12-Month Financial Action Plan Anyone Can Follow

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there.

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 228. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources we mention during the show. We don't talk enough about money in the US I think it's also the case in many Western countries and we especially don't like to talk about our personal finances. But as self employed professionals, there are few things more important to understand and to master than money money management. Because when you have good control over your personal finances, that has a very positive impact on your business. You see, I found that much of the stress we experience as freelancers has to do with the personal financial needs we have from our business, what we require from the business from a money standpoint. And that often puts undue pressure on the business which leads to poor decisions in the business, bad clients, projects we hate, and burnout. So when you think about it, fixing the problem needs to start by fixing our personal money situation. Now this is obviously a very big topic with many important facets. We're not going to cover everything today. Instead what we're going to do is focus on one specific element of this. We're going to talk about one way to start tackling the problem, which is by incorporating a simple 12 month financial action plan. And I say it simple because all it requires of you is that you review just one item of your personal finance situation every month. My guest is Tony Stewer who's an award winning author and host of the Get Ready podcast. Tony regularly consults with insurance tech firms, financial planners, insurance agencies, attorneys, insurance companies and other financial service firms on the topic of insurance marketing and product best practices. I think you're going to enjoy the simple, no nonsense approach to getting your financial house in order, mainly because it's so simple and it doesn't involve a lot of pain and it's just spread out over a 12 month period. In fact, I've already started implementing this plan in our own personal finances after talking with Tony and I'm loving the sense of greater visibility and control that it's given me over our financial situation. So hope you enjoy this talk with Tony Stewart Tony, welcome to the show. Great to have you here.

Hi Ed, glad to be here with you. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

I always ask every guest to give us a little bit of background, you know, kind of the origin story, if you will, what you do today, who you work with, and then in a bit of a background or on how you got to this place. I always find that interesting.

Well, I'm an author and as I call it, a financial preparedness advocate. I've been in the insurance business for 30 plus years. Started off as a insurance agent and quickly found that I had more of a niche as a fee based insurance consultant. That I found that that was a lot more interesting is working with people from a non biased basis rather than just selling insurance, which is what led me to start writing. And I wrote my first book, Questions and Answers on Life Insurance, which was essentially a reference book on life insurance exactly as it sounds. And I found that people liked it. And the feedback that I got was that I took a complex subject and I made it easy to understand, which encouraged me to keep writing. And you know, I'd also always been interested in best practices and ethics and integrity and financial services. And those words don't always go together. So I wanted to incorporate that message for a greater audience once I found that people actually want to listen to what I had to say. And so I've started to incorporate and advocate for financial service professionals to show best practices, but also for consumers to expect that their financial advisors and financial services company act in their best interest and that they are empowered to be able to ask those questions and have those expectations in their financial lives.

I think that's solid. I mean, unfortunately, the financial services industry is really shot itself in the foot, I feel, in so many ways. And it's created a lot of distrust and a lot of confusion. And when there's confusion, people are not really sure what to do, so then they do nothing. Or they choose a default choice, which is usually one of the worst ones you could choose.

Yeah, they choose the path of least resistance. And we see that so often in the financial services industry is that a lot of these choices are made is because people are uncomfortable talking about money and they're turned off by pretty much the entire financial services community.

I couldn't agree more. One of the things that I really like about what you write about is this idea of coming up with things that you should do to shore up your finances, but rather than think of it as a huge plan that you have to tackle all at once is Treating it more as a step by step system and process. And not only that, but in a way that anyone can do by expanding that system over the course of a 12 month period. And I've never seen that before. Such a simple concept. What I was hoping we could do is maybe you could walk us through what this is about. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you came up with this and then you can maybe walk us through month by month what your system entails. And I know there's more to it than that, but I thought it'd be really helpful for folks to kind of see how you break this down in a 12 month period and then maybe through each one you could tell us a little bit about why it's important.

Well, when I first wrote Get Ready, I didn't have the intention of having this month by month action plan. However, when I start talking with people about the process and you know, working with them on moving through it and seeing the feedback from early reviews of the planner is I found that people really wanted something that was ongoing. Is that this type of planner as well as other planners out there that are similar to it, are static and they're more of a snapshot rather than representing how life continues to go on and there's changes. And so that I needed to come up with a way to engage people with a concept to reflect that. You need to keep this up. It's just like a diet. It's easy to take that weight off initially. However, it's a challenge to continue to keep the weight off to maintain weight loss. So this is the same thing. It's about changing your financial habits and coming up with a way to continue to maintain your financial life.

I think that makes perfect sense. You brought up diet and exercise. I think most of us do better with a plan that we can follow than with a set of protocols and then trying to make it work that way. That seems like it could work, but it rarely does. Okay, great. So why don't you walk us through with that planner might look like. And I know that we're kind of, you know, in the middle of the year, but you know, maybe we could start with January and then work away through that 12 month period.

Definitely. Glad to. So, you know, January is a good time to review where you're at is I suggest that people check their financial dashboard, which is really knowing where you are so you can know where you go. That's why when you see a map, it indicates that you are here. If you don't know Your starting point. It's really hard to find out how you should get to the next step. And that consists of two different parts is one is your cash flow, understanding your income and expenses. Some people go a little bit further in creating a budget. However, budgets work for some people, and for other people, budgets don't work that great. So it's more just understanding and inventorying your income and expenses. And the other component of that is knowing your net worth, which is knowing what your resources are, you know, what your assets are, what your liabilities are. So you can start to make choices because you know where you are and where you stand.

That makes sense. Right. So take stock first month of the year. I mean, we're usually doing that in many different aspects of our lives. So, yeah, I like that as a great start.

Yeah. And then we move into February, which is, you know, unfortunately, taxes are coming up in April, so we need to get organized for filing taxes. So, you know, it's a good time to start going through all your receipts and your financial documents and organizing them so you can be ready to file for taxes. However, you know, getting that started and getting your financial documents organized, you know, allows you to plan for different things. For example, like if you've ever applied for a mortgage or a business loan, you know that there's a lot of financial documents that you have to gather. And if, you know, I know that when I've had to do that, that it can take a while to figure out, okay, where do I have this statement? What account do I have? Did I remember to include everything? So if you have it organized, then it's really easy to do that. And the same thing, you know, if you're forced to leave your house for an evacuation, if you're meeting with an estate planning attorney, it's so good to have your documents organized for so many purposes.

So we shouldn't start that the first week of April then, is what you're saying?

No, unless you like pulling all nighters. For some people, that's how they work best. So the whole thing that I'd like people to understand about finances is that you have to pick what works for you. It's just like actually getting back to the diet is, you know, some things work for some people and other things work for other people. And it's your finances, your financial life. Make the choices that work best for you.

I like the idea of starting in February because if that's. If I'm making a commitment to improve my financial picture and, you know, come February, I look to See what my to do is and I got a whole 30 days to do it. I mean, this seems doable. Organize tax documents and receipts. That's totally doable. Now if you add two or three other things, maybe not. And then I'm starting to see that, you know what, I'm doing myself a favor because come April, then I'm going to be sitting pretty in my case, for the first time in a long time. This year I did start in February and I didn't have that stress. So this is before I found out about you, but it made a world of difference. I think my accountant appreciated the fact that I got him everything early as opposed to everybody else is going to wait till the last minute.

Definitely. Well, and that's actually a big part of the system is it's designed to take some of the stress of finances off, which I think will help people become more comfortable with their financial lives, is that they're not as stressed out in working with their money is because they start to take control over their financial lives rather than, as you put it, is being controlled by their financial lives. As you know, the accountant calling you and saying, hey, I don't have all your receipts yet, or you're missing this or you're missing that. Instead, you've taken the power and you're in control.

Let's talk about March. So what do you suggest we do in March?

Well, March is a great time to review your investments and allocations to make sure you're on major on track for your major goals, such as retirement savings. You need to review your investments to see if you need to reallocate your investment portfolio. You know, have your stocks outperformed your bonds. Do you need to change around that allocation? This helps you keep stay diversified so you don't have all of your eggs in one basket. It's also a great time because if you're coming up short on your retirement savings, you can still make a tax contribution which is deductible for the prior year. Now, please note, that's not tax advice. It doesn't count for everybody. So check with your tax advisor before taking that advice. But it's good general advice for people.

Yeah. So might find an opportunity there that depending on your financial situation, you can take advantage of. I love that. In fact, I think most people don't look at their allocations enough, if they even look at them. So I like that prompt.

Exactly. I'm encouraging people, and I'll be releasing this soon, is to come up with their own personal investment policy statement and it's essentially what a 401k plan and professional financial planners have. And it's just listing out what your investment philosophy is, what type of investments you want to hold, what your allocation is, what your goals are, and then just going back and reviewing it. It's a way of just summarizing all the steps that you have to take to get there. If it's good enough for professionals. It's what we should be adopting in our own financial lives.

I like that a lot because it gives you a set of rules that you can follow when you are emotionally involved in a decision. So it's easy to put that down on paper when you're calm, but then things happen in the market, it's so easy to react emotionally. If you go back to that, then you can remind yourself why you made the decisions that you made and what you're all about, as opposed to acting rationally and then increasing the chances that you'll make the wrong moves.

Exactly. Now is a perfect example of that with the Coronavirus COVID 19 is people are thinking about, boy, do I need to take all my money out of the market. What changes do I need to make? And it's a better opportunity. Just take a deep breath and maybe you need to rethink your long term strategy. But that's just. It is to take a look at the long term. Do you need to make long term changes or do you just need to make some short term tweaks to meet certain needs?

So tell us about April. What's in store for April? What's the to do?

Well, we all know what happens on April 15th. That one's not a secret. You need to make sure you file your tax return on time so you avoid any interest or penalties. I mean, that's a pretty simple thing to say. However, it's harder in practice to do. But being organized throughout the year will help you. As you point out, if you can be early. I mean, there's a saying I think in the military, you know, that if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late. And you know, as you found out, if you've got everything ready in February, it was easy to do your taxes and then it's a good time to review your tax return to make sure you're maximizing all your deductions. You have a time to take a look through that. You want to check out your estimated taxes to see if you're under withholding or, you know, if you don't need to withhold as much. The IRS has a withholding calculator on their website, so you can just quickly check that out. Of course, when you get your tax return back from your cpa, they'll usually tell you if you're under withholding or over withholding. But it's a good time to think about those tax planning strategies that you have.

I think it's smart. So, finally got taxes out of the way, what do you recommend people do in May?

Well, May is a good time to monitor your identity. Is unfortunately, with the onset of the Internet, I mean, probably same as it ever was is we're all at risk of identity theft. So it's a good time to order your credit reports from the credit reporting agencies. You know, they track everything. You know, they track your loans, they track everything to do with your credit history. And then there's consumer reporting agencies that track everything. They track your medical history, your insurance claims, so the whole gamut. So it's good to know one, what other people know about you. But it's also really good to know so that you can go through it and check out errors and to spot potential fraud. You know, has somebody opened up a credit card in your name and charged up a whole bunch of charges? You know, if you can spot that early, you can cut that off. So it's a good idea for a number of reasons, to see where you stand and to fix any errors or report identity theft.

Yeah, I know I don't have that prompt. And the last thing I would want is to go into a refinancing situation or, you know, I'm trying to buy a car or a home and, you know, fixing something that's wrong. There's been fraud under my credit report, man, that could take a long time. And suddenly everything is delayed because of that. So I think that's a really smart prompt to have some more in the year. As we head into summer, then, what are your recommendations for June and July?

Well, I recommend in June just to take a deeper dive into your retirement plan tracking. It's a good time. You've already reviewed your investments, but you want to take a deep look at your anticipated retirement age, the anticipated resources you're going to have. Does the investment performance change your projections? So take a deeper dive into that. Maybe take a deeper dive into college savings, other big goals that you're saving for, and see if any changes need to be made. Maybe review your debt portfolio. Can you restructure your credit cards so you have lower credit card payments or other debts? And then in July, this is a big one. Communication Hold a family financial meeting. Talk to your family about your finances. Money in this country, maybe in the rest of the world. I've only lived in this country, so I don't know for sure. We don't talk about money. However, each household is like a really small business. There's income coming in. You have expenses flowing out. You have people with different goals and plans, and you all need to get on the same page. So I urge people to include their kids. One, it's a good thing to introduce them to finances so they'll have some degree of financial literacy, but that way they'll buy into the goals. Like, okay, well, if we go on a trip to Disneyland this summer, then we may not be able to get you a new Xbox. You know, those are the goals that the kids may be involved with. And, you know, but even with your spouse, significant other, you know, you can set up those things, you know, okay, well, you know, if you want to buy, you know, go shopping and run up the credit card every month, you know, buying your latest new toy, that new iPad, well, you know, then maybe we don't get the summer vacation we planned. Any other key component of that is what I've really seen that's really bad is that parents don't talk to their kids about their financial wishes and where they keep their financial documents. So somebody passes away, and the kids have to come in and sort through file boxes and figure out what their parents want, you know, and where everything is and how do they access the account. So it comes down to communicating with your family members. You don't. You may not have to communicate on a deep level if that's not who you are or what you're comfortable about. But it's just, you know, at least talking about and saying, okay, well, this is where everything is, you know, with all members of your family.

Well, that takes us into August, which is, you know, kind of gets into some of those things. So tell us about August and what we should do there.

Well, ICE is, you know, it does fall naturally after the financial meeting. It's about, you know, you've made these plans. Now you have to boil them down to writing, and then make sure that your estate planning documents are in line with your wishes. Different things may have come up. You may need to change an advance directive. You may have the birth of a child, which require you to update your will or trust. Want to check the beneficiaries on your insurance policies and on your retirement plans. Is there a need to make a different. Go in a different direction with Your planning.

So this is something that I see way too many people avoid in this country, at least. We don't like to talk about money. We also don't like to talk about dying. And I'm not really sure why, but I always felt comfortable talking about this, and my wife feels the same way. And, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes, but I think this is one where I've. We have done a pretty good job. And as soon as our first child was born, we went to an attorney and had this stuff drafted. Where we did slip is we had Our second child 8 1/2 years later, and then we forgot to update things. Now, fortunately, we took care of that a few years ago. But, guys, I can't emphasize the importance of taking the time to make sure that your estate planning documents are up to date, that you do have some of those legal documents. Wills, trusts, advanced directives, you know, for medical stuff. Avoiding it is not going to solve the problem, number one. Second thing is, I want you to kind of flip the story you're telling yourself rather than. That's depressing. I don't want to talk about it. You know what? It should keep you up at night that you don't have this information somewhere. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have it done and go through the discomfort of talking about it in dealing with this than every night going to bed thinking, what if something happens to me or to us? What then? And that is. I've seen it firsthand, the impact this has on families, especially families with kids, and it is devastating. Devastating. I think it's worth some discomfort. So this is my editorial to go through it and just find an attorney, ask friends, hey, have you done this? Who did you use? Did you like them? And just make the appointment and get it done. It's a lot less painful than you think. So anyway, Tony just wanted to interject that.

Well, I think you hit on. What's really at the core of this is that you're not really doing this for yourself. You're doing this for your family so they don't have to go through the pain. If you're a parent and you're doing this planning, you're doing it so you know your loved ones will know how to access your resources, that they'll know what you want is, you know, you're removing that potential stress for them. So you're doing them a favor. So it's an act of love to do it because it's a gift that you're Giving that you're not going to see the results of. And I think that sometimes the reason why people put it off is because, you know, it's not something that has an immediate impact that they can see the result of. It's something that's out there and you're never going to know how the story turns out for somebody. But you don't ever want to feel like, boy, if something happens to me, you know, I'm going to leave my spouse with a mess or my kids with a mess.

Yeah. And by the way, make sure, I think you alluded to this earlier. Make sure that your executor for your will knows where the paperwork is. Like in my case. And I got to remind my brother who's our executor of exactly where everything is if something were to happen to the two of us, because that sets everything in motion and if he doesn't know where to find that paperwork, then, you know, that's more stress and problems.

Well, exactly. And then things don't happen as you wish them to happen. Is, you know, let's say with a funeral service, if you want to be cremated and nobody knows that you might end up with a fancy funeral and that's exactly counter to your wishes or they may not know what your advanced healthcare wishes are that you don't want heroic life saving measures.

Yeah, exactly. It doesn't have to be just death. Worst case scenario, if you are in the hospital unconscious, your spouse needs to know where to get the medical directives because they have to be able to prove, hey, this is what he wants or she wants. So anyway, good, I'm glad you have that in there. I just feel that that's really, really important and I see a surprising number of people either ignore it or they just don't know what's in store for September.

Well, September is everybody's fun time as you get to review your insurance policies. People love reviewing insurance. However, insurance is the core of a sound financial plan. It's your backup, it's your safety net. And you have to insure everything. Even the various aspects of our financial lives that we've talked about are forms of insurance. When you have retirement planning, you're ensuring that you'll be able to have a solid financial life in your retirement, that you're not going to be struggling and living on Social Security, on just Social Security when you retire. So all these things that you're doing is they're a form of insurance. Your estate plan is your insurance that your wishes are going to be carried out. So, you know, here we're reviewing our actual insurance policies, our auto insurance, our homeowner's insurance. You want to make sure that you haven't had any changes. But the biggest thing that I see is that people have changes in their life and it's not reflected in their insurance, you know, that they've maybe added onto their home and so their home is worth more, but they haven't adjusted their homeowners insurance policy to reflect those changes. So that if there's an event, you know, they're not completely covered, you know, or they're missing out on some of the discounts that they may be eligible for, you know, they've taken a safe driver course or they've installed an alarm at their home, you know, so that's. It's really important to go through that and make sure that your insurance policies. And then the best part is sometimes you find out that you don't need an insurance policy any longer and you can save yourself those premiums. Yeah.

So recently I called my homeowner's insurance company and found out that I had been overpaying because of some error or some assumptions that they had been making. And I want to say that it dropped by $700 a year just making that call. So now I'm going to make this part of my annual review. It's not just that, but all my policies. So that's a very, very important thing that for. And it's just, you know, I never really quite think about it.

Right.

So.

Well, and it's really fascinating because people don't realize that insurance, your total insurance premiums, if you count in, you know, if you're paying for your own health insurance is probably your largest cost, is that if you add up your insurance premium, sometimes it's more than you're paying for your home. And all the costs affiliated with running your home, your utilities and everything else. However, we don't look at it that way. Yeah.

So tell us about October. What's on the list for October?

Well, October is reviewing your financial first aid kit, and that's really reviewing the system of documents that you've put in together, making sure that you have a system that you've put your information into writing, that you have a backup plan for your documents. So let's say you've gathered everything into a nice, you know, file folder in your desk or in a box or whatever your house burns down, you know, you've got an issue. So, you know, have you backed it up? Did you scan everything into the cloud have you placed copies in a fireproof safe or safety deposit box? You know, so what is your financial emergency plan? And that's why I call it a financial first aid kit, is that it's really your backup plan, you know, do you have a critical emergency action list, a list of steps to take in the event of an emergency? You know, and that could be different for everybody, but you know, do you have a list of prescriptions for medications if you get displaced from your home? Can you find that information? Or as you point out, you know, somebody's in a hospital and they're not able to pay their bills, you know, can they? Do they have a list of all your bills and when they're due to do all those things? That's really the idea in October is to summarize all of your financial documents and write out what you want to happen in the event of an emergency.

I like that, I like the term you're using, first aid kit, right. And have it centralized and somewhere where loved ones can find it easily and get a hold of it. Good stuff. One more thing that I'd never thought about November. So you talk about open enrollment for benefits. So I know with a lot of freelancers that's not going to quite apply. You know, maybe we have individual plans and so forth. So how would that help us?

Well, you know, for self employed people, it's the time where you can make changes to your health insurance. So it's a really important time because it's the only time of year where you can switch your health insurance plan, where you can move to a lower deductible, higher deductible to go into a different form of plan if you want. If you're older and you're on Medicare, this is also the time you can make changes to your plans. And if you're self employed, a lot of self employed people like myself, I am insured under my wife's group insurance plan. So it's a good time to work with your spouse to make sure that the coverage still fits that they have through their employer because it's also the only time of the year where they can make changes to their employer benefits.

So where does that leave us in December?

Well, December is a great time to wrap up loose ends through the year. So let's say you missed an action step, no big deal. You know, you can take care of it in December. You know, of course in December. The biggest thing I'd recommend for people is to keep an eye on your holiday budget so you don't Create problems going to the next year. Think about your greater picture, you know, like, okay, well it's great if I want to give everybody $500, but how's that going to impact us going into the next year? And as you go through this, you'll have a better handle year after year of what your income and expenses are, your goals and priorities, everything else. So you're picking up those loose ends. And of course you want to make your last minute charitable deductions and all those things. And then one thing I add in as a bonus is look for some unclaimed money. There's a lot of missing money out there that's gone to the states because people don't know where to find financial documents. And there's bank accounts that may be in your name that are in claim. So, you know, the holidays are a good time to get a little bit of extra cash flowing. So check with your state's unclaimed property office to see if you have some money out there.

I was just going to ask you what would be a good search term on Google to find the right agency or office in your state?

Well, you can actually go to my website and I have a downloadable PDF that has every single resource out there that I compiled where you can find lost pensions, bank accounts, because not all of it is centralized. You can go to unclaimed.org and that's run by the states. It'll just take you directly to each state and they have some resources and I have a complete checklist for people that they can download off my site to guide them through the process.

Where would that, what page on your site should I send people to for that?

You know, I don't remember the exact URL, but if you go to my website, at the bottom there's in the site index there's a link that says unclaimed property. Okay, pretty easy to find. Perfect.

What's the URL for that?

It's tonystewart.com that's T O N Y S T E U E R dot com.

Perfect. I was going to ask you at the end for that, but might as well since, you know, while we're listening, get people to go check it out. So as we wrap up here, one of the questions that comes to mind as I listen to these wonderful ideas, Tony, is this sounds great on paper. How do we make sure that it happens? Any tips or ideas for prompts, for alerts so that suddenly it's not May and you haven't done anything and now you're trying to Cram five months of task into one because you feel you're behind.

Well, a couple things. There is one. It doesn't matter when you start. Today's always the best day to start. Who cares if you miss the first three months? Just dive in. That's why I created this system because you can really dive in and start anytime. And you know, next January, take care of January's action steps.

So start with the August, you know, you starting in August, just start with the August prompt. The August task.

Exactly. Jump in whenever, you know, it is on the financial calendar and what I've created on my website. And you know, I'm slowly phasing over my newsletter so that people will get prompts. You know, with my newsletter it's like, okay, it's August, it's time to do your estate planning checkup. And this is what you're going to do. I'm going to have, they're not quite ready yet, but I'm going to have checklists of how to do that. Okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to check the beneficiary and your life insurance policy. You're going to check the beneficiary in your retirement plan. So I'm creating that system for people so that they won't have to worry about it. They'll get a reminder from me that month to go ahead and check out that part of their financial life.

I think that's great. I know I need prompts and whether it's an alert in my calendar system at the first day of every month or if you can remind me, I hate to say it, but I do need those. And I love the fact that you can start at any point. My advice, and it sounds like you're saying the same thing, don't wait till January, you know, like start with this month. And then just the best day to start is really today. So tell us about your book, get ready a step by step planner for maintaining your financial first aid kit. So what do you cover there? And who would you say is it would be designed for who could get the most benefit from that?

Well, I actually designed it so it's good for everybody because everybody has financial documents. Now, our financial lives, we may be in very different stages. We may be starting out after college. You know, as you mentioned, your audience are freelancers, you know, so their financial needs are different and where they are in their financial phase or, you know, you may be in retirement. However, you know, we all have bank account statements, we all have retirement account Statements. We all have mortgages or utilities. So it takes you step by step through gathering all that information. And, you know, if you don't have a certain thing like you don't have stock options, and you just blow by the stock options worksheet and don't bother with that. But the idea is that it takes you through so you don't miss anything, that you work through it. You can download all the worksheets for free from my website. So, you know, if you want to just check out portions of it, you know, if you don't feel like you need the whole thing, you can do that. But in the planner, I also provide some tips and notes. So if you're taking a look at, at your savings account, you know where you can find out more about savings account. When you're gathering your tax resources, there's a link to the IRS tax withholding calculator. So I don't just say, okay, well, gather your income tax information. I try to provide people with context that they can actually accomplish that task. And I try to do it in a way that, you know, makes sense to them without using a lot of jargon and financial, I guess, talking by them or talking at them. I want to talk to them so that they can actually say, oh, you know, I know what to do here. When it's time to take a look at my retirement plan, I know what to look for. And that's what I've tried to do with Get Ready is to provide people with a way to organize and inventory their financial lives as well as to do some of the things that we've talked about, create a financial dashboard and some of those things.

I feel like I'm pretty good with some of this stuff, but I don't know some of the details. So it's good to know that your book gets into. We talked about the prompts, we talked about the monthly themes, but that you can give me more because sometimes I get away superficially. I can understand maybe what we need to do that month, but it's all in the details. I want to make sure we cover it because I'm not going to look at that for another year. I want to make sure that if I, you know, I'm looking at the retirement plan contributions and projections that I'm looking at every item that's going to count. So good stuff. We'll include a link to the book in the show notes. Now, is there a page on your site that I can link to for the book or do you have a separate website for the book, you can.

Just link to the homepage and people can find information. They can go to the books tab and learn more about it. It's a longer URL for directly to the planner.

I want to make sure I send them to the best place. So, Tony, thank you again for sharing these ideas with us. A lot of people don't like to really talk about the financial aspect of their business and their personal life, but honestly I found that as a self employed professional, if my personal finances are on track or if I'm managing them relatively well or as best as I can, then that seeps right into my business. I mean, that impacts what I can do there, the stress, the decisions I make. So very, very important that we do the best we can with our personal finances so that our business can thrive as well. And of course, vice versa.

Exactly. It's one less thing to worry about and it will keep you calm if you just manage your finances and just, you know, don't worry about it. It's money, you know, just as with everything else, the more you know about it, the more you become educated, the more comfortable you'll feel with it. So it's all about, you know, going out and learn something, get educated.

Thanks again, Tony. Great to have you on today.

Yeah, Ed, a real pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business line launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.