Secure Your Financial Future After Divorce: Financial Planning

Manage Your Finance After Divorce

Manage Your Finance After Divorce

For all the women out there who feel that their life post-divorce would be full of worries; worries of how to secure their children’s future, how to manage finances and how to take care that their own investments in their marriage are not threatened by their husbands; the following lines will definitely be of help and a sure sigh of relief.

First things first!

There are various “Should know’s” which can make life easier, like:
Being aware of state laws. There are several state laws which look after the equitable distribution of the martial property after divorce and can always be looked out for help.

Keep yourself updated with the current and the future value of the assets in which you made investments like your home, business etc. Taking into consideration the long-term value of the assets while making a choice of the assets while making a choice of walking away with an asset, for e.g. Pension, which can be very valuable down the road. Last and the most important, be aware of the financial situation of your family to be well prepared at the time of the divorce settlement.

Current studies reveal a decrease of 45% in a woman’s standard of living after divorce where as an exceptional increase in man’s standard of living by 15%. Such discrepancies can be eliminated and some ‘smart moves’ which can really help.

Get yourself out of all joint accounts you were in, with your better half.  Mrs.Linda had to bear the brunt of a loan payment on her joint account with her ex-spouse when her husband defaulted on a loan payment.

All this could have been avoided with a simple move on time. Second step, budget your new standard of living before you start. Include all the major expenses coming in your way, like, household expenses, automobile, children, insurance expenses etc. Use the cash received from divorce only in emergencies like they say, storing the food for rainy days. Try to invest the money, rather left-over money after establishing an emergency fund which can fetch you returns in future. Own a life-insurance policy on your ex-spouse so that even if he dies or divorces tomorrow, the alimony and child-support continues. Protect yourself by getting a fraud-shield on your social security number, a service that alerts you if someone is using a credit on your name.

 

All such little things if done, will surely reap huge benefits, help in elevating the standards of living and bury the worries of past. Nothing is really difficult or easy, it’s our way of looking at it.

Image Credit: divorcemoneymatters

Categories: Finance for Women

3 Comments

  • Dustin Etherington says:
    5 February, 2013 at 4:39 pm

    Hello there,
    I appreciate your insights about money management after divorce especially for women. I Just wanted to ask you if have any substance to share for men getting screwed over by divorce and victimized?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Priyanka Dullo says:
      9 February, 2013 at 4:00 pm

      Hi Dustin,
      The damage that a divorce brings to a man is as severe as it is to a woman. What men can take care of is looking through the divorce and surveying the damage. The ideal thing would be to evaluate the assets like car, house etc. in terms of cost, long-term value etc. With divorce coming your way there can be many additional hits which need to be absorbed in your lifestyle as the same money would now be needed to run two households.

      Handling money is the trickiest part, as most of the men rely on their spouse to do the needful but after the divorce they need to be prepared to take charge of their expenditures on clothing, food, entertainment etc, and keep the savings also in place. Also, keep a tab on whether all your financial information is correct or not. Credit cards, bank accounts, loans, pension accounts, insurance policies, your will, trustees,email accounts and more will need to be changed.

      And, last but not the least, the idea of ‘planning for future’ should go side by side with your planning in the present.

      Hope that’s of some help Dustin.

      Regards,
      Priyanka

      Reply
  • Julie Kantor says:
    16 February, 2013 at 3:17 pm

    Hi,

    I am Julie Kantor from California. I am a Certified Financial Planner(CFP) and CFA final level candidate. I write guest columns for many financial blogs and I want to contribute a guest post for your blog as well. It will be only published on your blog. I will send my article as an attachment in the .txt or word format. Hope you would like my proposal and give me an opportunity. Let me know how and when should I send my article?

    Best Regards,
    Julie Kantor

    Reply

Leave a Reply