One of the biggest things my team and I hope to help widows understand is that balancing their money can greatly impact their emotional healing. When you understand your financial situation, you are ultimately creating more choice for yourself and your next steps. This allows you to feel more in control and confident during a time that is so turbulent with grief, sadness, and overwhelm. And this choice can create curiosity. And … [Read more...]
Why Balancing Your Money Helps Your Healing Journey
Balancing your money may not be on your mind after your husband dies. Those first few weeks (months and even the first year) can be filled with waves of emotion - ranging from sadness, anger, and loneliness. And so, you might wonder how balancing your finances can help your journey. When you take the time to balance your money, it can provide direction when you are feeling adrift after loss. It can also help you make smart choices as you … [Read more...]
Your Guide to Self-Care While Managing Key Financial Items
For the past few months, we’ve been focusing on making an informed decision for your financial future. But as you follow through on key financial items, it’s important to understand the healing power of creating a routine for yourself. Routine restores order. Order cultivates calm and stillness which is essential to healing. Because my team and I create a financial advisory process that is designed around the unique needs of widows, we … [Read more...]
3 Steps to Emotional Healing Through Financial Organization
Organization can be a lifeline when you are being tossed around and feel like you are drowning in a sea of grief. One of the positive effects of organizing your finances is the added confidence you may gain in your decision-making capacity. I am often asked, “Now that I’m a widow, am I going to run out of money?” Although I know it is a scary question and can feel devastating, it is answerable. Most widows will undergo some decreased income … [Read more...]
How Stabilizing Your Cash Flow Cultivates Healing
When your husband dies, you may constantly ask yourself, “Do I have enough?” That lack of “enough” comes from experiencing a loss so deep - your partner, best friend, co-parent, etc. - that it begins to creep into other areas of your life making you feel confused and even more alone. This is one of the reasons I started working with widows because there is a strong connection between understanding your finances and your emotional recovery. … [Read more...]
Only Essential Tasks for the First 40 Days
“Am I going crazy?” I get asked this a lot from recent widows. And, of course, the answer is no - you’re not crazy - but you are in a crazy situation. It’s important to, not only, understand it but to have helpful and encouraging action steps to move forward. After losing your husband, everything has changed. Those first weeks after his death, you probably found yourself forgetting things: keys, appointments, what you just said. Because … [Read more...]
Becoming A Financially Confident Widow Through Coaching Conversations
Alice left with a huge stack of papers from her husband’s financial advisor. She knew they were important and she was supposed to be completing the forms, but they didn’t connect with everything else going on in her life. Instead, they sat on the corner of her desk, collecting dust. After all, she was trying desperately everyday just to keep her head above water to survive her grief. Widows often see themselves as blocked off from re-entering … [Read more...]
3 Strategies to Help Widows Eliminate Destructive Debt
Wherever you are in the cycle of destructive debt, you can take steps now that will make it stop, today. You can work out a debt elimination plan that will help you feel confident and spend smarter. As a widow, to re-build your future...pay off your past. You cannot fix old debt with new debt. Let me repeat that. You cannot pay off debt with debt. So cross off ideas for using any of the following: credit counseling (including not-for-profits), … [Read more...]
Widows Are More Vulnerable to Destructive Debt
Debt is pervasive in our society. Your mortgage, your car loan, and your student loans are things of lasting value. Once that debt is paid, you will still have an asset, something valuable that you will own outright. Destructive debts don’t build toward a brighter future, rather, they are the paper cuts of debt that culminate in considerable pain, such as multiple credit card balances, equity lines, or family IOUs. As a widow, you are more … [Read more...]
A Potentially Costly Mistake for a Widow Under Age 59-½
Among the myriad of decisions a widow has to make, one that often comes up is what to do about her husband's IRA. If you are younger than 59 ½, here is advice that may help keep you from making a potentially costly mistake. “Did you hear what happened to Monica?” Susan said. Beth leaned in closer to hear Susan over the general buzz of conversation at their favorite coffee house. “No. What?” “She had to pull money out of her IRA,” said … [Read more...]
