It doesn’t matter what age you are when your marriage ends, you need to work out a plan for your financial independence after divorce. That could be quite straight-forward if you’re working full-time already earning a salary that will support yourself and your children. It’s more complicated if you’re working part-time or you’re a stay-at-home and it gets even more complicated the longer you’ve been out of the workforce.
Nancy B was in her fifties when she divorced after twenty-one years of marriage. Although she’d had a career when she got married, she’d become a stay-at-home mom and had been working in her husband’s business. She did not get lifetime spousal support so I asked her to talk about how she’s managing for money and if she has a plan for financial independence. Here’s Nancy B:
Well, it is a challenge, yeah. I need to be earning more money. Right now it’s great because I have my stuff in storage, so I have to pay my living expenses, but I don’t have to pay any rent, and it is cheaper to live here, for sure.
I got spousal support which will run out at the end of this year and he bought me out of the house . We had some investments, so I have some money, I just don’t want to go through it all because I don’t have a big retirement so I need to be smart.
I looked for a job when I was in California and I was never able to find an actual job job, so I’ve been freelancing, I have my own work for communications and my website, and I do work a lot through other PR firms, but I think I might have a better chance here, or in another state, of actually finding a job where they pay my health insurance and all that, which I would love.
Out in Los Angeles, there’s so many PR people that we’re just tripping over each other. Most of the jobs are in LA proper or in Orange County. Out where I lived, they’d be a very long drive to anything of any quality job. Even though I was applying, I’m fifty-six, so I’m kind of aged out, but hopefully that won’t make as much of a difference here. If I could go back and do things over, I would have really worked harder, harder, harder to get a job to have that stability and to have my health insurance paid.
Now one of my closest friends really wants to separate, but she has that old belief “I have to wait until my last one’s done with high school,” so he’s a sophomore now, and I keep telling her, “You need to make more friends and you need to be putting money aside.” I also told her to see a couple of attorneys now. Most attorneys will see you for a small fee or not for any fee, for the first time. Find out where your rights are in.
Planning ahead is really important if you can. It’s a crazy time. It’s just a crazy, crazy time. It’s like the ground under you let’s go and even though I desperately wanted it, it was so very hard and very upsetting. I think it’s the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.
The Divorce Coach Says
When you’re trying to figure out your financial plan, there’s two sides to the equation – income and expenses. What Nancy B’s done is to trim her expenses to just her daily living expenses and she’s saving a significant amount by not having any housing expenses. That means that the income she gets and her savings may last longer and that gives her some more time to figure out her next phase. If you’ve been a SAHM or working in a family business, deciding what to do to balance the budget isn’t always easy or obvious and buying yourself time to think it through is smart. But don’t procrastinate … the penalty for putting it off could be having to take a job you don’t really love.
My divorce happened at a time when I’d taken severance from my corporate job and had gone back to college. I had health insurance through the university but one slip on the ice around graduation time, thankfully with no injuries, quickly reinforced that I needed a job with health insurance benefits. I ended up working at the university in an administrative position. It’s not the job I imagined doing but it’s worked out very well and allows me time to do what I really want to do … which is this. Even so, the job has it’s perks …getting to see President Obama when he visited campus recently will be a hard one to beat but for sure, the health insurance (and the hormones it covers!) is what let’s me sleep.
Have you figured out your plan for financial independence? How are you increasing your income? What helped you reduce your expenses?
Thank You Nancy B!
This is the last post in Nancy B’s series so a huge thank you to her for sharing her story. I met Nancy B when I attended the BlogHer Writer’s conference in last September. We immediately connected and I’ve really appreciated the moral support she’s given me. She does write a blog but asked me not to share that for privacy reasons … I completely understand her concerns and will honor her wishes but at the same time I wish I could tell you her blog because I enjoy reading it. The good news for me though is that I’ll get to catch up with Nancy B in person again when I go to BlogHer ’12 in August.
Coming Next
Nancy B’s story raised the age-old question of when is the best time for divorce and I thought it would be interesting to explore that question some more. So coming soon I have Sarah’s story – her parents divorced when she was twelve and she is now in her thirties. She’ll be talking about how their divorce felt at the time and how it feels now. However, regular readers know that I like to mix things up a little between stories so before you hear from Sarah …
- I also turned to the research and found an academic study on how delaying divorce affects children, and I’ll be posting about that;
- I’m a member of Blogher’s Life Well Lived panel and as part of that I have a post about how blogging, journaling, writing and connecting online help to increase my happiness;
- I have a post on what I learned about dating from the movie, We Bought a Zoo with Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson – I thought I’d already posted it here but apparently not so I’ll publishing that;
- And … since it’s a new month, I have a guest post from financial blogger, Suzanne Cramer. This month’s topic is related to Nancy B’s story and specifically this post as Suzanne talks about setting your goals for financial independence after divorce.
Photo credit: 401K