In an article entitled Suze Orman’s Post-Divorce Guide to Personal Finance, Suze Orman wrote, “When you have the strength and determination to face the facts, you can achieve anything. It’s when we run and hide that we dig ourselves holes that can be excruciating to climb out of.” Unfortunately, many divorcees (including me) run and hide from the financial problems that have led to or resulted from their divorces.
For ten years before I separated from my first wife, I worked to develop a solo practice law firm specializing in property and land use litigation. My practice grew over time, and we built a custom home overlooking Puget Sound.
When my first wife and I were engaged, she opened and read to me a series of letters she had written to her future husband when she was a teenager. Instead of ending her letters with “Sincerely” she closed them with “Under Construction,” before signing her name. In these letters she wrote about how she envisioned our future together, even before I met her. I re-read some of these letters as our marriage was winding down. In one of them, she even described a house with warm wood floors and a cedar deck, looking out over the ocean. I felt a little nostalgic reading that letter while sitting in the home she had described as a young girl. That was the home we had dreamed of together for many years—until it became a reality.
I am sometimes amazed at how people react when their biggest dream comes true. So often it does not live up to expectations. A few months after getting the sports car a person thought would change his life, it is just transportation. The dream home can become just a place to eat and sleep. When I got my “dream job” a few years ago, pretty soon it was just another workplace where I felt a lot of stress and pressure and I wasn’t saving the world as much as I might have hoped. Often the things we spend money on don’t satisfy us for very long.
For me, the dream home didn’t matter very much when the woman I built it for didn’t want to live there with me anymore. I became deeply depressed and stayed that way for several years. I kept going to work but my heart wasn’t in it and I was distracted and almost paralyzed sometimes. If “No other success can compensate for failure in the home,” as President McKay said in 1966, what did the business and the dream home matter? Why should I care about the house when the family it was built for was falling apart.? I stewed endlessly about things I could not control, like the decisions of my former wife. I hurt inside and it seemed like hurting was the only thing I had energy for. So, I just went on grieving, running, and hiding from the realities of my mounting financial problems as Suze Orman described. Our dream home was foreclosed. I shuttered my law firm and moved to Utah and my former wife moved to Iowa. The life we had shared together was officially over.
Although our life together was over, the financial disaster that resulted from that dissolution, and even more from my thoughts about it, was still going strong. My situation started to turn around three years after I moved to Utah. But the last of the debts incurred during that transition period was not paid until about a decade after that. At the outset of my divorce process, people told me that financial recovery from a divorce would take approximately ten years; and I refused to believe it. But there I was ten years later writing out a $5000 check for a divorce-related debt.
I recently made a post in the Love in Later Years (LILY) Facebook group asking who had lost all their retirement in the process of dissolving their marriages and was starting over at mid-life. Several people said they were and expressed fear for the future. Losing everything and being forced to start again at middle age is a common story for divorcees. One person I know who suffered serious financial setbacks expressed that “I had to start over saving for retirement at the age other people are retiring. I will be working into my 80s and maybe my 90s!” Ouch!
If you are in the position of being wiped out financially by an unforeseen divorce or death of your spouse, these are a few suggestions that will help you recover and get to a place of thriving more quickly.
- Face the facts. Suze Orman’s quote is worth repeating here: “When you have the strength and determination to face the facts, you can achieve anything. It’s when we run and hide that we dig ourselves holes that can be excruciating to climb out of.” So don’t hide from it. Don’t try to wish it away. Believe me, I know how hard this is. I’ve been there. I’ve made the mistake of endlessly thinking “I’ll deal with this tomorrow when I feel better.” The truth is, you’ll begin to feel better when you start dealing with it.You may not have the money to deal with everything today or even make a significant dent in the problem. I know it can feel overwhelming. But do what you can. Start by going through all that unopened mail and making a spreadsheet showing all the debts you owe. List (1): the creditor including contact and payment information, (2) the minimum monthly payment, (3) the balance on the account, and (4) the interest rate. Make a separate spreadsheet that lists all of your living expenses.
Once you have collected this information, you will start to feel a little more in control of the problem and you will begin to feel better. You will know how much you need to make each month to stay ahead of these debts. Even if your monthly obligations are literally more than you can pay, it will feel better to at least know where you are.
- Make a plan. Draw up a realistic monthly budget that includes your living expenses and a payment of some kind on all your debts. If you are living beyond your means, recognize that this cannot continue very long. You may need to talk to a relative or friend about moving in with them for awhile, selling a home you can’t afford and using the equity to pay debt, giving up some discretionary subscriptions or entertainment expenses, and cancelling the piano lessons for your child. I know these budget cuts can be painful. I know they sometimes make us feel guilty because our children should not have to suffer for our divorces. But our children can learn valuable life lessons about the power of sacrifice and determination to overcome obstacles by watching us do hard things to get to a better place—even if they don’t understand at first.
- Deal with creditors. Even if you cannot make full payment, send something to every creditor every month. They ratchet up collection efforts when they do not hear from you. If you are in financial trouble, talk to your credit card companies and tell them your situation. Some will offer a settlement agreement to close your account and write off your balance for a one-time payment of a lesser amount. This will hurt your credit rating a little—but not as much as to continue having delinquencies reported to the credit bureaus. The last thing you need, at this time, is to borrow more money—so your credit rating is not your chief concern. Close as many credit accounts you can to get debt forgiveness if you have a substantial amount of consumer debt. Whatever you do, don’t open more credit accounts or incur more consumer debt.
- Keep working and paying your bills. I know many of you who normally have a good work ethic don’t feel like working and can’t see the point anymore. Keep working and paying your bills anyway. You are going to hurt inside whether or not you work. That pain is part of the grieving process. But going to work and paying your bills will give you a needed break from dwelling on your divorce. And avoiding the realities of supporting yourself will only complicate your life and multiply your problems.
- You won’t feel like exercising. But exercise is the best anxiety release and natural mood lift there is. When my son died, I vowed to exercise every day—and did so for over a year. Exercise saved my mood many times and helped me to stay mentally healthy and productive in the middle of the deepest grief of my life. Exercise will help you have the energy and mental clarity to keep up in your job despite the troubles in your finances or personal life.
- Get a bigger shovel. Dave Ramsey says, “You need a bigger shovel to dig your way out of that debt.” He also says, “You can have the best debt-busting plan in the world but it won’t do any good unless your income can back it up.” One of the biggest advantages I had when I found myself in a deep financial hole was a law degree and a license to practice. I could at least ask for $300 an hour for my time. That didn’t make it automatic or entitle me to whistle up money any time I wanted. It took time to build a practice and, in the meantime, I did cheap $25 an hour contract work for a firm in another state just to keep myself going. I felt lucky to have it. As my bigger shovel grew, the lower-paying work no longer made sense. What will your bigger shovel be?If you are in your 40s or 50s, pursuing law school or medical school probably doesn’t make sense because your productive years that follow may not be sufficient to pay the student loan debt you would incur. But there are a lot of great opportunities that you can more easily and quickly qualify for. Are you a “people person”? If so, selling insurance (average $73,452 per year) or real estate (average $100,303 per year) might be your bag. Are you good at working with your hands? Perhaps your calling is to become an electrician (median $61,590 per year), a plumber (median $61,550 per year), or a welder (average $56,843 per year). There is demand for these careers and they pay well. I could go on with more ideas. But use your imagination and make some phone calls. If your spouse left you and you have never been in the workforce, this is your time! Get some training. Work two jobs if you have to. But if you are in financial trouble and don’t have a good income, find a bigger shovel. The good news is that this is within your control. There are opportunities out there for you to seize if you are willing to do the hard work of arranging child care (or working with your former to schedule your parent time outside of work and training), getting training, and facing the problem head-on.
Dealing with starting over financially at mid-life is difficult. Many of us are tempted to not think about it because the thought is so terrifying. But take heart. The Lord has not forgotten you. In fact, He has promised that he will “will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). If you are starting over financially at mid-life, you are in good company. Many of us have done it. Follow sound financial principles and keep your faith alive and burning brightly, and the Lord has promised you miracles to restore all that has been taken from you and more.
Resource:
Intentional Courtship can help in this journey.
About the Author
Jeff Teichert, and his wife Cathy Butler Teichert, are the founders of “Love in Later Years,” which ministers to Latter-day Saint single adults seeking peace, healing, and more joyful relationships. They are co-authors of the Amazon bestseller Intentional Courtship: A Mid-Singles Guide to Peace, Progress and Pairing Up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeff and Cathy each spent nearly a decade in the mid-singles community and they use that experience to provide counsel and hope to mid-singles and later married couples through written articles, podcasts, and videos. Jeff and Cathy are both Advanced Certified Life Coaches and have university degrees in Family & Human Development. They are the parents of a blended family that includes four handsome sons, one lovely daughter-in-law, and two sweet little granddaughters.
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