Wise moves to make before things are finalized.
Before your divorce goes through, it would be wise to check up on financial matters.
It would be better to assess the state of your financial life before the split rather than after.
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A Decision Not Made may have Financial Consequences
Not making a move may not be the best move to make!
There is an old belief that women are more cautious about money than men, and whether you believe that or not, both women and men may fall prey to a kind of money paralysis as they age – in which financial indecision is regarded as a form of “safety.”
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Setting a strategy down may help you define just what you need to do.
Many people save and invest vaguely for the future.
They know they need to accumulate money for retirement, but when it comes to how much they will need or how they will do it, they are not quite sure. They will “wing it,” hope for the best, and see how it goes. How do they know they are really contributing enough to their retirement accounts? Would they feel less anxious about the future if they had a written plan?
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In an ideal world, it would be simple to prepare for a solo retirement.
You would just save half as much as a couple saves, buy half as much insurance coverage, and expect to live on half the income. Reality dictates otherwise.
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Do bad money habits constrain your financial progress?
Many people fall into the same financial behavior patterns year after year. If you sometimes succumb to these financial tendencies, the New Year is as good an occasion as any to alter your behavior.
Behaviors Worth Changing for the New Year:
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Why you should periodically review beneficiary designations.
Your beneficiary choices may need to change with the times.
When did you open your first IRA? When did you buy your life insurance policy? Are you still living in the same home and working at the same job as you did back then? Have your priorities changed a bit – perhaps more than a bit?
While your beneficiary choices may seem obvious and rock solid when you initially make them, time has a way of altering things. In a stretch of five or ten years, some major changes can occur in your life – and they may warrant changes in your beneficiary decisions. In fact, you might want to review them annually.
Financially Secure Women Need to be Especially Careful
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
If you are in or near retirement, it is a safe bet that you would like more yield from your investments rather than less. That truth sometimes leads liars, scammers, and fraudsters to pitch any number of too-good-to-be-true “investment opportunities” to retirees. Given all that and the classic money scams perpetrated on elders, you have good reason to be financially skeptical as you get older. Read More...
A Practical Financial Checklist for the Future
When our parents retired, living to 75 amounted to a nice long life, and Social Security was often supplemented by a pension. The Social Security Administration estimates that today’s average 65-year-old female will live to age 86.6. Given these projections, it appears that a retirement of 20 years or longer might be in your future.1,2
Why a middle-class woman may end up less ready to retire than a middle-class man.
What is the retirement outlook for the average fifty-something working woman? As a generalization, less sunny than that of a man in her age group.
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You must avoid it. Think about tomorrow, not just today.
No woman wants to end up a “bag lady” – impoverished, out of options, left to fend for herself on the streets. Only a tiny percentage of women from affluent households will experience this retirement nightmare, but that does not mean the risk should be dismissed.
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