by Renee leNobel | Feb 3, 2016 | Divorce
I think our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves drive our lives. It is what your head is telling you that determines if you will have a good day or bad day. Yes, I believe we manifest our destiny by our beliefs.
I came to this realization after a lot of self-reflection. What is it that makes one person happier than another? It is basically that the happier person believes that they are happy.
I know this from my own experience.
When I first separated from my husband, I sank into a depression. The only thing that got me out of bed everyday was just my mom strength. I couldn’t crater completely because what would happen to my kids? So I managed to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I remember wondering how I had ever gotten to that place. I had always considered myself to be a happy person. In fact, that was my persona. I used to love reading depressing books because I wanted to experience that emotion because I did not have it in my life!
Every morning I woke up and felt terrible. The stories started playing in my head and the big one at that time was “what is the point?” I imagined just putting in time until my kids were old enough to look after themselves. This story played in my head for about a year. It sucked in all sorts of evidence to confirm that life sucks and it got bigger and bigger until one day I realized I did not want to go on.
That was not a good thought. What would happen to my kids then? I am so grateful that at that point I had a wonderful coach in my life who came to me through the Minerva Foundation. She understood what was going on and asked me the right questions to get me to the point where I could start shifting the story that I was telling myself.
The amazing thing was after a short time of telling myself a different story I started to feel better. This incremental difference in feeling felt so amazing that it was like a revelation. I started reading again (no, not depressing books). I started reading all those self-help books that I had mocked in the past. You know the ones and if you don’t, here is a list of my favourites:
Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life – Srikumar Rao
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom – Don Miguel Ruiz
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are – Brene Brown
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life – Byron Katie
Some of my friends noticed the change in me and asked me how I had done it. I said I just decided I was going to make myself better. When I said it that way, it didn’t seem possible and I think a few people raised more than one eyebrow and thought – yeah, right.
It wasn’t easy and it has taken some time; two years in fact, and I still tell myself some stories that are not helpful. That is what is so incredible. I have first hand evidence that the main thing that determines how my day goes is what thought I buy into when I wake up in the morning. Is it going to be a good day or a bad day? It’s as simple as that. What is not simple is letting go of those stories that make us feel terrible. They can get a hold of you and it can sometimes take a while to shake them. I rely on certain things to help me shake those stories, but that is a different blog post.
Why am I writing this post today? I was recently reminded of this by someone who wakes up everyday and says “Life is awesome!”
I had noticed that some of the stories I was starting to tell myself these days were starting to impact my day-to-day living again. I decided to adopt the “life is awesome, I’m going to crush it today” thought and for the last couple of days it has helped me get through the overwhelming thought of “HOW AM I GOING TO GET THROUGH TAX SEASON” that has been playing in my head for the last month. Life is awesome – I just will. That is my story today.
I want this blog to be the start of a series on stories we tell ourselves.
Next week’s topic? Stories we tell ourselves about money and how that affects our spending.
In that vein I would love love to have some feedback on a story that you tell yourself about money. I know mine. Mine is I’m broke, I cannot spend. What’s yours?
by Renee leNobel | Jan 27, 2016 | Finances
Do you have your own business? Are you contemplating starting your own business? I recommend you think about putting structures into place to maintain work-life balance.
Or not.
Yeah, I’m conflicted about this. I love my job. I love it so much that other things have basically flown out the window. Today someone asked me what my hobbies are. Hobbies? Uh…I guess work does not count? I was too embarrassed to admit that Netflix is a hobby. I felt bad all afternoon as I have no hobbies anymore!
When I couldn’t come up with hobbies, I started to beat myself up more. How did this happen? How did I become a workaholic when in my prior life I had the tag phrase: “Renee, the only thing she is passionate about is her leisure time?”
One of the main things that happened is that I started to practice gratitude. When I look at my life now, I look at everything that I am grateful for. When you spend your day thinking about how grateful you are to have the work that you are doing, it suddenly takes on a different hue. You want to be doing it.
I also feel like I have chosen all my work. No one is making me do it.
But there is something else. A sole proprietor who works from home has no clear divides between when the working day starts and when it ends. As soon as you get up and are awake, you are potentially at work.
A friend put it to me this way:
The difference between someone that works a nine to five job and a sole proprietor is that the person who works nine to five has clearly defined non working hours that they do not get paid for but the sole proprietor can work anytime and anywhere. As there are no clear “personal life hours” it is easy to slide into a pattern where you simply work if you have nothing else going on. Especially if you love it!
I have discovered that I do everything that I need to get done in my life (feed the kids, do laundry, shop) and the time that is not spent taking care of kids and household, I spend on work. If nothing is scheduled, I start working.
So as much as I like my work, I recognize that not having some other interests could potentially lead to burnout and general unhealthiness as I sit in front of my computer all day.
I’ve come to the conclusion that as a sole proprietor or entrepreneur, one has to schedule leisure time. Simply having free time does not work. It is like a vacuum into which work rushes in.
Time to book that weekly exercise class. To ensure I go, I’ll pay up front. Accountants hate wasting money!
I have decided. I need to start scheduling my time off. Just like you have to be sitting at your desk as an employee for certain hours, I will have to create a non-work schedule and punch the old in and out timecard to make sure I adhere to it.
by Renee leNobel | Jan 19, 2016 | Parenting
When I think back on my life when my first born was in his first year, I recall thinking that I was soooo glad that I wasn’t a single parent. I was in awe of people that were living as single parents.
Fast forward a number of years and I find myself living as a single parent of two spirited boys for half of my life. The other half I am footloose and fancy free (well, not really, for the other half I’m catching up on work that I didn’t get done when the kids were with me).
So I don’t think of myself as a true single parent…except on the days that I am. Fortunately, I don’t have much time to self-reflect on those days but occasionally some thoughts creep in such as “single parenting really sucks.”
On those days I wake up at my usual 5:30am (as my body just won’t stay asleep – darn morning person genes) and I sneak to my work nook and start working to maximize my time. That is, if I manage to sneak quietly enough so my morning child doesn’t hear me get up. He has instant mommy sense and knows when I’m awake. He will follow me down and start pestering me with “can I watch TV?” So if I do manage it, then I work. If I don’t manage to dodge the kid then I get sucked into entertaining him until his late-sleeping brother wakes up. I make their breakfast and lunch and hustle them out the door for school. I come back, work, work, work and then get them from school, make dinner, clean up mounds of detritus that they haul home from school with them, get them to bed and then try to work some more only to pass out and wake up to do it all over again. Was that a run-on-sentence? I think it mirrors well what my days are like when I have the kids.
Occasionally my kids’ dad goes away on work trips and I have the kids for two week or more stretches. It is during those stretches that I realize how well and truly being a single parent sucks and I thank my lucky stars that I will get a break in the near future to recover when my co-parent comes back.
Of course, having a co-parent isn’t all rosy. After all, my co-parent and I could not live together for many reasons and so it is still quite challenging to parent together. Some days when we are having significant differences of opinion I start to think to myself that I would love to be a single parent and be in control of the situation and not have to deal with my unreasonable co-parent.
Then I get the kids back and try to figure out a way to deal with my co-parent again.
My experience is leading me to some pretty set ideas about how to make my life run more smoothly.
The first idea is that single parents need a lot of support. A lot. I have been working at building myself that support.
What kind of support do I need? I need breaks to recharge. These breaks don’t have to be everyday but I need to know that they are coming so I can continue to get myself up everyday to power through when I do have the kids. I also need people who are in a similar situation that I can talk to. It also helps to know that if I do crater, I have a backup plan (i.e. my co-parent).
I have been working at implementing this system for the past few years and it is getting there. Society is beginning to recognize that being a single parent is hard and there is support out there if you look for it. I also build my own and I started to do this because my friends, family and society understand that single parenting is hard and so pester me to find support.
The other idea that has been flitting around in my head is that society tends to talk about single moms but not so much about single dads. They are out there too and they also need support. My brain has been wondering if dads have had this idea planted into their brains enough. We all hear about single moms, but what about single dads? Is there support for them?
The reason I’m wondering about this is because I’m relying on my co-parent to be there when I need that break. I’m also wondering if dads have been hearing the message that they need support. If they are not hearing this message, then they are not going out to get it. I’ve done a brief survey on the internet of support for single dads and the closest support group I could find was in Toronto on the other side of the country. Perhaps this is why dads often seem to jump into new relationships more frequently than women. They need to get another “mom” involved to help because there aren’t societal structures in place for dads.
My last thought on this subject is that for me to rely on my co-parent, I have to get along with him and him with me. I’m not going to ask him for help if I’m not speaking to him.
I have gone through stages where I’ve been fairly angry with my co-parent. I was at my angriest when we first separated. I held myself back from going in for the kill during our divorce process and chose the Collaborative approach to divorce where both parties agree to stay out of the court system. I chose this based on my understanding that it is conflict between parents that affects kids most. I chose the path of least conflict and convinced my co-parent to do the same. It is only now that I realize that this path has benefited me and my lifestyle as a parent going forward. I can talk with my co-parent and through this process we have developed systems and strategies for getting along. What would we have done if we had both gone for the jugular and dragged the other through the court process? One major support system would be gone for both of us. Who suffers? Kids who have burnt out parents and of course parents.
If you are embarking on a life as a single parent, understand it is hard. Try to build in systems that will support and sustain you to live as a single parent.
by Renee leNobel | Jan 10, 2016 | Divorce
I have a good friend who is very insightful and she has done it again. She has inspired this week’s post.
We hadn’t talked in awhile and we started talking about how we are each doing in life. She has Lupus – a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body’s immune system attacks your own tissues and organs and I have an ex. Now it wasn’t me that made this connection, she did. She said “Renee, your ex is like a chronic disease you have no control over. Just like a disease that flares up unexpectedly in life, so does your ex.”
He has recently “flared up” as she so succinctly put it.
Another friend noted that ex flare ups tend to happen around stressful times of the year, birthdays, Christmas… yup, right again.
I especially liked the part where she said I have no control over it, just like she has no control over when her Lupus hits.
Now, some people might object to this comparison because after all I made the choice of marrying my ex and it really is only my perception that he is flaring up. It’s simply a matter of opinion that something he has said or done is stressful to me. That is the difference here. It is mostly my reaction to my ex that causes me stress and pain whereas with my friend, her lupus is a concrete disease that she has to deal with.
That said, she has noticed that if she modifies her diet and tries to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it helps decrease the severity of her Lupus flare ups. I too have implemented strategies that prevent severe reactions to ex flare ups.
I have cut back on coffee (sigh), I exercise (well, not lately, but that’s my goal) and I have built my ex flare up response system.
My ex flare ups come on suddenly. Out of nowhere. They are infrequent but severe. I don’t see them coming. They just hit.
Now I don’t know what my friend does when a severe Lupus flare up occurs, but I have learned what to do when an extreme ex flare up hits as even though I don’t know when it is coming, I have lived through enough that I have had to develop a strategy.
The first thing I do is dump my first knee jerk emotional response into an email (making sure I remove his address first). I put in everything that is upsetting me at that very moment. I go for it. Then I hit SEND and send it to my dummy email account. I’m not sure how it works, but it calms me down.
Then I give myself time. I don’t run off to my support network to scream about the latest outrage being perpetrated by the ex (well, not for a few days anyway as I guess this blog post did come out of talking, ahem, ranting, to my network).
I take deep breaths, I meditate and I practice gratitude and remind myself that the future never turns out the way I imagine and certainly not the worst case scenario that I tend to gravitate towards in my thoughts.
Now, all these strategies don’t make the flare up go away but they do alleviate some of the symptoms such as lack of sleep and extreme grumpiness.
These strategies also get me to the best mood for dealing with my ex. Before managing myself, I would tend to fight or avoid my ex, but after time I get back to understanding I need to collaborate with my ex.
Because fighting it just exacerbates the flare up and avoiding it, well, that just puts me in into a waiting and apprehensive state.
So I sent my ex and email and proposed we talk in person with some collaborative ground rules set in place.
After a series of meetings and conversations, the flare up has subsided. We have settled back into a good routine and I will continue to work on strategies to decrease the frequency of ex flare ups in the future.
by Renee leNobel | Dec 21, 2015 | Finances
I’ve been getting some very strong reminders lately about the importance of planning. Very strong.
The main reminder I have been getting is that if you don’t plan adequately for certain stuff in life, things can go very wrong, On the flip side, by doing just a little work upfront, life can go so much more smoothly.
One area where I don’t think enough planning is being done is when people decide to get married. Oh there is wedding planning happening, but it seems to me that there is not enough marriage planning happening.
What is the indication of this? Well, I think most people who have been through a divorce would agree with me. It is a walk in the park getting married compared to getting divorced. In fact divorce is so hard that some people simply stay in an unhappy marriage. These couples had no escape plan and so simply stay married.
A good analogy is comparing marriage and divorce to credit cards and credit card debt.
Credit cards are easy to get and can be very fun for people that haven’t thought about what happens when their credit card statement arrives in the mail. They get a card and they go shopping. Shopping is fun and exciting and it’s great for the first couple of months. Then reality sets in.
“What? I have to pay this money back? Plus 20%? And if I don’t pay it back, I’m going to owe for 35 years?”
At this point the person in debt is having to do a lot of work to get out of the credit card debt predicament they find themselves in. It sure was easy getting that credit card and getting into debt. It’s not so easy to get out of it.
I find it’s the same with marriage. It sure is easy to get married. It costs $100 for a marriage license. Then all you have to do is find someone to act as a marriage commissioner (I think we paid ours $300) and say the magic words: you are now husband and wife, wife and wife, husband and husband (or whatever the magic words are in your situation).
And you are married.
I hope you did some planning together to figure out what your marriage would look like and even more planning to get back out of it if things start to go wrong.
Because it’s not so simple getting divorced.
Unfortunately you can’t just rip up that $100 marriage certificate.
You need a separation agreement and those can be hard to get. By the time you and your spouse have reached the stage where you have decided to get a divorce, there is a high probability that you are not getting along. It’s hard to come to agreement with someone you are not getting along with. So what to do? Well, you usually have to hire someone to help you such as a lawyer, mediator, counselor, financial planner, accountant, etc. These service providers generally charge considerably more than the marriage commissioner. They are more in the $300 – $500 an hour range and it can take considerable time for them to help you and your spouse come to an agreement.
You could also rely on the courts and simply file for divorce and let the cards fall where they may. You could represent yourself and leave it up to some judge that doesn’t know you decide your future. A risky proposition. Most people won’t chance it and again hire the lawyer to get them out of this predicament. A court divorce generally costs thousands more than a mediated divorce or collaborative divorce.
How do you avoid all this? You plan. You create a marriage agreement between you and your future spouse with the help of a qualified professional before you get married.
Yes, it will cost money and it is not very romantic planning what to do in case of a future divorce.
Look at this way. It will not take nearly as many billable hours to come to a marriage agreement because at this point you and your spouse will be on the same page. After all you are about to be married!
Not on the same page? Having a hard time making that agreement? Then I have to ask, why are you getting married?
by Renee leNobel | Dec 10, 2015 | Finances
Last’s week’s post is missing. Where did it go?
It got decimated by the negative internal chatter and negative future focus that was going on in my brain for the last two weeks. When I finally got out from it, this week’s blog post presented itself:
Your victimhood perspective is making you stuck.
You know the victimhood perspective right? It’s those thoughts that life is harder for you , your circumstances are too challenging, you can’t do it, life is unfair, etc. , etc., etc.
Those are the thoughts that lead you to make less than ideal choices or simply not make choices at all and avoid, avoid, avoid.
Instead of addressing the things you need to do with hope and optimism, you get dragged into doing things because things have gotten so bad, you are forced to do them kicking and screaming all the way.
I can think of one thing that I see people avoiding time and time again – taxes anyone?
Not doing taxes is not my issue; I like doing those. I have other things I avoid when I thinking these thoughts:
I’m too busy
My life is harder than everyone else’s
There’s a big conspiracy to stop me from doing “this” (“this” being whatever you are stuck on).
I can’t do it, I’m not capable.
This was me last week when I was feeling like I was being forced to do something I didn’t want to do.
I started off by trying not to let it affect me. My last post was all about waiting to see what would be revealed.
That didn’t work for me at all and it turns out I’m not very patient when there is uncertainty in my life. It felt like there was a ticking time bomb about to go off in my life which I had no control over.
Then I started talking to people about it despite my other self-imposed rule not to do this. I did this anyway because I was feeling sorry for myself and wanted sympathy.
I got sympathy. Did that make me feel better? Nope. I just thought “my life is so unfair.” even more.
Other people advised me that I needed to be an adult and deal with it.
I listened to the people telling me this and I chose to add it to the “more proof that my life is unfair” file I had set up in my brain.
“Why do I have to be the adult? That’s not fair. I’m always the adult.”
So then I sat around some more for a couple of days and felt worse and worse.
I hadn’t felt this low for a while.
So I hauled out my self-help tools and I started to trick my brain into feeling better.
I started writing. I wrote a lot of angry emails that I sent to myself. I started many (blamey and angry) blog posts.
I started practicing gratitude by writing down three things I was grateful for when I woke up every morning. I even got my kids to practice gratitude and that morning there was no yelling…coincidence? I journaled and generally pretended I was Pollyanna. Remember her? The irony that I have to try to be Pollyanna these days is kinda funny to me because when I was in my twenties, I was accused of being too much like Pollyanna by a friend of mine . It was considered a bad thing with certain people and frankly it got buried in me because I used to hang out with a bunch Eeyores.
I then started repeating this to myself:
“I’m choosing not to be a victim. After all I can deal with whatever is thrown my way. I always have, I always will. That is life. Everyone deals with whatever comes their way. We all do. Yes, some of it is really terrible and yes, it could possibly be very unfair but we all deal with it. I get to choose how to deal with it.”
Then I sat down and became the adult.
I addressed the issue that was making me feel like a victim.
I addressed it the way I know best.
And you know what? I got to get on with my life again and I got to head in the direction that I wanted. Suddenly I became productive and unstuck again. I contacted people I had been avoiding, I got on with my work backlog and I felt good.
So if you are feeling stuck and unhappy, check in with your perspective. Are you feeling like life is unfair?
If yes, you need to do some work.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 26, 2015 | Divorce
I have a friend and she has two sets of what look like playing cards, called Life Cards and Angel Cards. Every once in awhile, she drags them out of the cupboard and we pick one of each (without looking). It’s something that takes about 10 minutes but it is an exercise that drags us back into the present moment and gives us the chance to shift our (usually) future-focused perspectives.
In fact, we have turned this into a semi-weekly fun thing to do so we remember to make time for reflection and pausing in our lives.
Anyhow. This week I pulled the revelation card and the patience card. Every week I seem to pull a card that applies to my life in that particular moment and this week’s choices were scarily relevant. It is also a theme that seems to keep playing over and over in my life. Wait, slow down, let things resolve themselves. I think this theme keeps playing over and over because I haven’t gotten it yet.
The revelation card told me that I should wait for life to reveal itself to me and the patience card just said patience. Patience while I wait for life to reveal itself I guess. Isn’t that weird how these two cards go together ? Completely separate decks. Eerie.
I am not patient and I hate waiting. I like to control the outcome.
What about you?
Are you the type of person that likes to sort life into neat piles and bend it the way you want it to go? Do you look at a problem and immediately start thinking of how you are going to fix that problem? Do you create mental deadlines about when that has to happen by?
I am that type of person and that is what I do.
I am also a bit of a stress case.
I noticed that my tendency to sort life into neat little boxes would just lead me to feeling frustrated when nothing fit.
I noticed that life never matched what my future focus had envisioned.
I would kill myself over work deadlines, stressing out myself and my kids, only to have the work deadline move or not matter anymore. Or the project I was working on would change so dramatically, that the work I had done was no longer relevant.
Logically, I now know this: life never plays out how you expect it will and even if I throw all my energy at something, it is not going to go the way I planned. What I have also learned is that I can handle everything that does come my way. So I can relax, I can take my time and try to live a life according to my own values and beliefs. I can gather information and gain new insight into things but in the end it is the interplay between the circumstances and the people in my life that determines what will be revealed. I know this, yet I don’t live as if I do.
I was just reminded of this when I looked in my oldest son’s bedroom. It is a disaster zone. As usual. Added to the piles of detritus on the floor are all the candy wrappers from this most recently ended Halloween. He likes to save them to remind himself of the good times gone by I guess.
I immediately started grumbling and complaining, saying things like ‘these have got to go.” and “this room is a disaster – you have to clean up.” and he mumbled “I will.”
Yeah – he won’t. He won’t because I never let him get to that point. I start freaking out and yelling until he grudgingly tidies his room.
I’m going to try something different (and all because of those cards). I’m going to be patient and let life reveal itself to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I still want to control the outcome. What I’m hoping will happen is what happened to some friends of mine. In their early twenties they started living together as a couple. One of them was not what you would consider to be a tidy person.
This couple had been living together for about two years. They were living the pattern where their home would get more and more slovenly until the tidier person would freak out and clean up. This kept happening. The tidier person could not wait, she’d reached her limit.
But after two years, I guess she reached her limit on the number of times she could freak out and be upset with the slob she was living with. She was tired of all the arguing. So she stopped. She waited to see what would reveal itself. I love this story.
Well, their place got really bad. Really really bad. Dogs would come over to visit and find a good meal in itself on the floor.
It got so bad, one day, unbelievably, the person who seemed to have no limit to his tolerance for mess, stood in the middle of the room, lifted his arms to the sky and went “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
He’d noticed the mess.
He started to clean the mess. All without any yelling or cajoling from his partner.
Since that time, he’s never let things go so far again.
So, I’m hoping I can last as long as my friend (which could be a very long time) but I am also curious to see what will be revealed. How will this play out? Will there be a different outcome? Will it make for as good a story?
I’m hopeful that training myself to wait on minor life situations will help me develop a waiting muscle that I can use on the seemingly more serious situations in life.
This is going to be my challenge to myself for the next little while. Will you join me in this challenge? Will you wait to see what is revealed?
by Renee leNobel | Nov 18, 2015 | Divorce
Not sure if many of you watched Seinfeld back in the day it originally aired. I did and there is one episode that really resonates with me right now. What I remember about the episode is the fact that George was in conflict with his two personas: Independent George and Relationship George. Relationship George was killing fun-loving Independent George.
I admit I have the same problem. Relationship Renée (“RR”) is causing all sorts of problems for Independent Renée (“IR”) and IR does not get off so lightly in the blame department either.
IR seems to forget what RR’s life is like the minute the kids walk out the door to spend time with their dad.
IR, in a bid to stave off loneliness, takes on work commitments, volunteer commitments and social commitments. All IR can think is that she must fill the hours that the children are absent. IR must be productive and not wallow in self-pity.
Then the children seem to suddenly descend and IR becomes RR. Suddenly, RR finds herself having to make breakfast, lunch and dinner, ferry kids around to various activities all while trying to finish the work that IR started and did not finish in her free time. In addition, these children are constantly disrupting the peace and quiet of the work space. How is RR supposed to get anything done! The children are no longer with RR, they are with GR – can you guess? Yup. Grumpy Renée.
GR longs for the peaceful solitude that IR had. Seriously, what was IR thinking, lonely? I’ll give you lonely, GR thinks. GR would kill for some lonely time when she is in the thick of getting everything done. GR looks ahead at IR’s calendar and cuts a swath through everything. “That ignorant IR!” thinks GR. “I’ll teach her to overschedule and overcommit. She is not doing anything this weekend when the kids are with their dad. She is going to recharge and lay low and prepare herself for the week ahead when the kids are back.”
Then quicker than you can blink IR is back and staring at the weekend ahead that GR just planned. IR recharges in a day and then peaceful solitude turns to debilitating loneliness. IR adds as many things as she can to stave off loneliness and starts to create rules for RR. RR must go to yoga during the week. RR must do better at getting work done when the kids are in bed. “NO MORE NETFLIX RR!” shouts IR.
Then RR is back and trying to negotiate these rules that IR setup. “IR has not been using that brain of hers again.” She doesn’t know how exhausting it is to work all day, fight with the kids over bedtime routines and now she wants me write blog posts and better myself in the hours of 9 to 11 pm?” I cannot do it, thinks RR. RR gets depressed and wonders what the point is off all this work anyway. Seriously RR says to herself. There must be a better way.
As with everything, communication is key. Much like the movie Mememto, RR and IR have started to leave notes for each other on their shared desk.
These are the notes from RR to IR
- Before taking anything on, ask yourself if it fits your values and beliefs.
- What are you taking this new project on for?
- Would you do this if you were short of time? or are you just doing it to keep busy?
(yes, all the notes are a variation on a theme)
These are the notes from IR to RR
- I am sacrificing some of my weekend fun time to catch up on grunt work. Please make sure you try to let go when you are with the kids and have some fun time with them.
- I am recharging and using this time so you can not turn into GR. Please remember that your time with the kids is brief and the most important thing is to be present with them and take care of yourself.
- Please remember to look for time when you can complete work when you are RR. Schedule a reasonable amount of time for me to complete that work if you don’t and don’t forget to schedule something fun for me to look forward to.
Then IR adds more as she has more time to reflect than RR: “I know it’s tough RR, but remember, you eventually get to have some solitude, think of all the single parents out there that do not have a co-parent. Remember to be grateful.”
Slowly, these messages between IR and RR are starting to get through.
The one common message that they tell the other? “It’s going to take time to get this right, be kind to yourself in the meantime and I will forgive your errors in judgement. Afterall, we learn best from our mistakes!”
by Renee leNobel | Nov 12, 2015 | Divorce, Finances
I recently did a set of spending plans for a separated couple. They are trying to sort out how they will share parenting arrangements in the future. Their individual financial situations depend on what they decide. Are they going to share parenting, or will one parent be designated the Primary Caregiver?
In an ideal world, this couple would decide what is best for the children without thinking about how it will affect them financially, but often, people let their financial situation drive their decisions rather than vice versa.
How do different parenting arrangements affect the individual parent’s financial situation?
These are the basic rules:
Primary Caregiver Situation
The primary caregiver, the person who parents the children more than 60% of the time, receives child support from the other parent. The primary caregiver also gets all the tax credits and benefits related to the children.
Example 1:
Parent A is the primary caregiver of a two- and four-year-old child and earns $40,000 per year, while Parent B earns $60,000 annually. Parent B pays Parent A $900 a month in child support.
How does this look after taxes are considered?
Parent A pays about $6,000 in taxes (including EI and CPP).
Parent A is therefore left with $40,000 less $6,000 in taxes plus $10,800 (child support – non-taxable to Parent A) plus $4,000 (Canada Child Benefit) for a grand total of $48,800 (after tax) per year.
Parent B pays about $14,000 in taxes (including EI and CPP – Parent B does not get any credits related to the children).
Parent B is therefore left with $60,000 less $14,000 less $10,800 (child support) for a grand total of $35,200 after tax. That differs from Parent A, who started out with less.
As stated, Parent A is the primary caregiver of the children and so will, therefore, have much greater costs. That said, in the above situation, Parent B will also be on the hook for a greater percentage of child-related expenses, such as work-related child care. In this case, if Parent A earns $40,000 yearly with a two and four-year-old, there will likely be child care. Parent B will pay 60% of the childcare costs, and Parent A will pay 40%. Parent A gets to claim the childcare expense and Parent B does not.
Will Parent B understand that and give up almost $20,000 per year, or will Parent B decide equal parenting would be better?
Shared Parenting Situation
If the parents share parenting, they each must pay child support to the other parent. Essentially, it works like this:
Example 2:
Parent A earns $50,000, and Parent B earns $50,000.
Parent A has to pay $760 to Parent B for child support, and Parent B has to pay $760 to Parent A for child support. These two amounts offset each other.
Example 3:
Parent A earns $40,000, and Parent B earns $60,000 (as above in example 1)
This time, Parent A pays a monthly amount of child support to Parent B, $600, and Parent B pays $900 to Parent A. These amounts are calculated based on the Federal Child Support Guidelines. Here is a handy calculator.
The child support guidelines are meant to equalize the children’s standard of living in the two different households (where they spend equal time). The calculation considers taxes as the recipient of the $300 receives the money tax-free, and the payer does not get a deduction. Now, their respective incomes look like this:
Parent A – $40,000 less taxes of $6,000 or 14.7% plus $3,600 in child support plus $2,000 (Canada Child Benefit; it is shared) for a grand total of $38,000 (after tax) per year.
Parent B – $60,000 less taxes of $11,500 or 19.15% (this is lower than in example 1 as this time parent B gets to claim one child as a dependent) less $3,600 in child support plus $2,000 Canada Child Benefit for a grand total of $46,900 (after tax) per year.
Parent A and B’s incomes are not completely equalized, but Parent B will end up paying more for things like medical and dental for the children as well as for extracurricular activities and other special expenses for the children. Parent B pays 60% of these expenses, and Parent A pays 40%.
If I were Parent B and were only concerned with money, I would choose example 3.
Do you see what the child support guidelines did?
The guidelines encouraged both parents to step up and be equal caregivers to their children—money talks.
In an ideal world, both parents would also step up and share parenting responsibilities, not just the money.
Parents starting out on the shared parenting path will struggle at first. One parent was likely the primary caregiver when the couple was married. That is usually the way it works. They will have to learn strategies for sharing parenting duties in the future.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 5, 2015 | Divorce
When I was freshly separated I was under terrible stress and in extreme emotional pain. My days were consumed with anger and sadness and I remember wondering if anything could be worse than going through a divorce. According to the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, death of a spouse tops out as the most stressful known event and this is followed by divorce. However reading further, one can develop a stress score by adding up all the events that have happened to a person within the year. If you are getting divorced or have recently divorced then you can add up the following scores:
Divorce – 73
Separation – 65
Change in financial state – 38
Change to different line of work (often comes with divorce) – 36
Trouble with in-laws – 29
Change in living conditions – 25
Change in social activities – 18
Change in sleeping habits – 16
And I could go on as many other stressors seem to come with divorce. By now, your total stress score is up to 300. You are at risk of illness. Wow – I’ve never added it up before, but that score speaks volumes.
As everyone told me, eventually I would get through it and life would get better and they were right. I did get through it and life is way better but it took considerable time for things to get better. I spent a good two to three years living with above average stress. Being a mom, I passed this stress along to my kids and I know that their dad also was in stress and did the same thing. This is not a good situation for anyone.
How could it be better?
This is something I’ve been trying to figure out.
One of my first ideas was that it should be a lot harder to get married and perhaps marriage should just be banned. Yeah – that’s not going to happen. I decided I didn’t want to go around being the dream killer. Now when people tell me that they are getting married, I just smile and say “congratulations.”
So instead I decided to be part of the movement to help people divorce better. Maybe if more and more people start divorcing better, the stressors associated with divorce will start to go down.
How can you divorce better?
Do what it takes to learn how to do conflict the right way. Doing conflict the wrong way is likely what got you to divorce and continuing to do conflict the wrong way is what makes divorce so stressful.
This is not a quick fix. After all, we have spent our entire lives learning how to do conflict our own way and we aren’t suddenly going to change just by deciding to change. It takes work and practice.
You will likely have to find a support system that is going to help you do conflict the right way. Don’t hire pitbull lawyers that love the court system and war. Hire people that will support both you and your ex as you figure out your more positive future now that you have decided to part ways. Hire people that are going to support you as you implement new tools in your life that allow you to thrive.
Spend your divorce dollars and energy wisely. Don’t spend your dollars on the type of support that is not going to help you move to a more positive life. Spend your time and energy on figuring out ways to live your life with hope.
I think our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves drive our lives. It is what your head is telling you that determines if you will have a good day or bad day. Yes, I believe we manifest our destiny by our beliefs.
