Sustainable Decisions

by | Nov 21, 2023 | Divorce and Separation, Money

Sustainable Decisions

Recently, I spoke with a friend going through major life transitions. Like many of us, she and her family are stressed.

My friend is in her late 40s with two children under 11. Her husband, also in his late 40s, recently quit his job. He realized it was not the right fit, and he knew that soon his employers would start looking for someone who was a better fit. He wanted to take control of his life.

While he quit his job to maintain positive mental health, his search for a new job is ongoing and he is having a hard time not getting discouraged. Their youngest child just started at a new school and needs more support. Their oldest daughter is gifted and is going to an expensive private school.

My friend has spent the last year training herself for a new profession only to discover that the expected professional job market isn’t there.

With all this happening, they have used up their emergency funds. It’s time to decide whether to take on more debt or start taking money out of their retirement fund.

My friend started our conversation by stating her husband is sleeping a lot.

Oversleeping is a classic sign of depression.

It all sounds stressful

Getting rejected day after day by potential employers for jobs he has convinced himself would be exciting, he’s now applying for jobs in other provinces. Adding a cross-country move into the mix will add even more stress to their lives. And what if the job didn’t work out?

Meanwhile, the family has been focused on getting through their days with little thought to planning and aligning goals with values, as that is hard to do, in the middle of the extreme pressure this family is currently under.

My friend asked what I thought.

I acknowledged that yes, they did indeed seem to have an unfair share of stress in their lives right now.

I asked her what she thought about making such life changing decisions when they are suffering from stress.

She got quiet and said, “I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

I sat with my friend and we pondered her rather bleak comment.

Was it only by hitting the proverbial wall that she and her husband would find the fortitude to push through to a way forward? What if crashing into that wall meant they couldn’t move forward at all?

I asked my friend if there was a way for them to get some breathing room into their lives so they could slow down their decision making to find a more sustainable path forward.

She just looked at me and said,

“Well, we may be able to dip into retirement savings. That might buy us some time.”

I think she expected me to argue with her. Dip into retirement savings! What kind of financial planner would support that strategy?

Instead, I said, let’s look at your big picture financial situation. Maybe there is a way, after all.

Divorce is a Stoplight

Divorce is a Stoplight

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Divorce and Separation, Money

Divorce Is a Stoplight

A few months ago, I was at a presentation about money. It wasn’t about tax rules or investing. It was about how hard it is to talk about money.

I know that; I thought to myself, an A-plus for me.

That night, we were all asked what money meant to each of us. Answers varied, but I knew mine right away.

For me, money is strongly linked to my sense of self-worth. That undercurrent drives a lot of our society, whether we admit it or not.

When I was negotiating my divorce, I felt like I had no voice and no value, because I wasn’t earning any income as a stay-at-home mom. Every meeting with divorce coaches and lawyers was torturous, because I didn’t feel heard. I was lost. I didn’t know why I did the things I did, or what value I brought to the family. I believed everyone was listening to my co-parent. He held the power. After all, he earned the income; therefore, he had more value since he made more money. I believed this for most of my life. Honestly, some part of it still lurks under the surface in me, the same way I think it lurks under the surface of our society.

I felt like I couldn’t live according to my own values. I’d walked away from a well-paying job as a financial analyst to be a stay-at-home parent, and during our legal meetings, the only thing I kept hearing was some version of: when is Renée going to get her high-paying job back?

When, indeed.

Instead of figuring out what I actually needed to move forward, I proposed a plan to do exactly that: get back to that job. It was written into our separation agreement, my plan for getting my career back, laid out clearly on page five. I wanted that agreement. I thought once I had it, I’d be able to move on. The divorce coaches and lawyers, all collaborative, tried to help me figure out what I actually wanted, but I didn’t know myself. Being the type-A person I am, and wanting to save money, I kept driving the process forward while burying the emotions that kept trying to surface. I did the budgets. I figured out how to divide the money. I thought that part was the easy part.

My life since then hasn’t followed the clear path I thought it would. It was never just a matter of making logical choices to reach an end goal.

Underneath it all, I was fighting a battle against my own assumptions about what was expected of me, and it wasn’t until I got a handle on that that decisions started to feel easier.

Since then, working with people navigating their own divorces, I’ve noticed we’re mostly on the same path. I’ve yet to meet someone who can easily choose between financial options when they’re in the middle of separating. I’ve yet to meet someone who can clearly articulate what they’re actually feeling about their financial situation as it happens.

Financial professionals are often the first people newly separated couples contact. Society has driven home the message that divorce is about dividing the money, so it makes sense that people go looking for someone who knows the rules for splitting it. But that’s not actually where to start.

Divorce is a stoplight. Life is telling you that you’re not living according to what actually drives you, and you’ve reached a point where you can’t keep going down the road you were on. You can sit at that intersection a long time before you figure out how to make it turn green.

The truth is, no single professional gets you through that intersection alone. You need a team: a financial professional to help you understand where you stand and what your options actually look like, a mental health professional or coach to help you figure out what you actually want, separate from what everyone around you expects, and a lawyer to handle the legal side and document whatever you decide.

I didn’t have that team working together the way I needed. My separation agreement ended up outlining a life I didn’t actually want, because nobody had helped me figure out what I wanted before we wrote it down.

If there’s one thing worth taking from my own experience, it’s that: don’t let your separation agreement quietly become a document that maps out someone else’s expectations of you.

Renaming the Divorcemobile

Renaming the Divorcemobile

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Money

Renaming the Divorcemobile

A client once asked me what kind of car to buy. I didn’t have a standard answer, because it depends entirely on the person, their situation, and what actually matters to them, which is different for everyone. Making decisions more easily comes down to knowing yourself.

When I first bought a car after my divorce, an eleven-year-old Toyota Corolla with low miles and low street appeal, I called it my “divorcemobile.” I recently renamed it. It’s my trusty steed now: good gas mileage, hasn’t cost me much to fix, gets me where I need to go.

When I first named that car, I was looking at it through what I thought other people saw. What other people think isn’t really my business. My business is knowing myself and living by my own values. Keeping what goes out below what comes in is part of how I run my life, and my trusty steed is one small, steady piece of that.

Understanding where you actually stand financially is the other half of making good decisions. I was forced into that reckoning when I separated. I’d never needed to budget before my divorce; I’d always kept a surplus and put it toward savings, but divorce wiped that out. When I finally sat down and did the math, it confirmed what I feared: I was in a deficit. Child support and a small amount of savings were what I had coming in. Newly divorced and job hunting, I’d look at that number and cry. How would I ever climb out?

I slashed my spending, dipped further into my RRSP than I wanted to, and got some coaching help. Slowly, my situation turned around. My inflows caught up to my outflows again. Now my kids are heading into their post-secondary years, and I can feel that old fear bubbling up again.

After the divorce, I didn’t believe I’d ever have money for a nicer car. I was right. I’ve put my earnings toward things I decided mattered more.

When you’re in the middle of a stressful life transition, you’ll face some genuinely significant decisions. Don’t base them on what other people tell you matters. Base them on what actually works for you. It’s tempting to decide quickly to escape the discomfort of being stuck, but don’t trade long-term clarity for short-term relief. Take the time actually to know yourself first. Every decision gets easier once you do.

My Worst Client

by | Dec 20, 2017 | Money

My Worst Client

It’s December 19th. I’d planned to go Christmas shopping; it was getting close to the wire, but it started to slush, and after a short walk, I was left soaked and cold, so I decided to leave it until tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be sunny.

I can shop mid-week because I’m self-employed, one of the perks.

When I sat back down at my desk after skipping the slushy shopping, I thought: I can do anything I want right now. I’d already booked the time off in my head.

What had I been putting off because of more pressing deadlines?

My own bookkeeping.

I am one of my own worst clients. I throw receipts in the drawer next to my desk or leave them buried in my inbox, where most of them live these days. If I’m honest, I didn’t want to. But it needed doing.

When I started my business, it was a slow start, and I made barely any money that first year. As a sole proprietor, I hadn’t paid any tax through the year, no employer withholding it for me, so when I filed, I reported my pitiful non-earnings, and that was it. No tax owing, no refund. Slightly anticlimactic.

By my second year, I’d turned a profit. I still hadn’t been making tax instalments, since I hadn’t owed enough the year before to require them. I scraped some savings into an RRSP to lower my taxable income, and had just enough left over to cover my tax bill. Phew.

A couple of years in now, the business has become a real, full-time job. Not nine to five, but at least forty hours a week. I’d been keeping half an eye on my billings, enough to know that the “savings” sitting in my account weren’t really savings. They were this year’s tax bill. But I kept looking at that balance and getting a little happy feeling anyway.

That’s the danger. Once you start imagining everything you could spend a balance like that on, you know exactly where that leads. Spending.

So today, close to year-end, I finally sat down to see how much of it was actually mine to spend, and how much was tax.

It was tax. All of it. It turns out I’m a pretty good accountant. I’d saved the exact right amount, to the dollar.

Sigh.

All the little happy feelings drained out of me at once, replaced by one loud thought: what’s the point of working harder if I end up exactly nowhere?

That spiralled into everything I’d sacrificed that year, all the hours, for what felt like nothing.

I let myself wallow for about ten minutes. Then I turned it around.

I’d spent the year doing exactly what I wanted. My business had grown enough to support my family. I’d had the freedom to do things when I wanted to do them. That’s not nothing. That’s proof I can keep building a life on my own terms, one that’ll need to keep growing as my kids head into their teens, then university.

Today’s little exercise in self-pity taught me something else too: the thoughts you let take up space in your head shape your life just as much as your actual finances do.

So yes, pay attention to your money. Clarity matters. But pay just as much attention to what’s running through your head while you look at the numbers. And don’t leave your bookkeeping until December.

The Checklist doesn’t solve it

by | Sep 14, 2017 | Divorce and Separation, Money, Parenting & Co-Parenting

The Checklist Doesn’t Solve It

My blog post ideas usually hit me on the head when I’m struggling. Today’s struggle was getting my kids out the door to school.

This seems straightforward in theory. I even made a checklist, taped to the fridge:

Wake up, 7:30 am. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Dishes in the dishwasher. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Lunch in your bag. Water bottle in your bag. Coat on. Shoes on, 8:30 am.

Twenty minutes, easy. I got up at 6 am today. By 8:30, we were nowhere close to ready, and I found myself wondering if my neighbours were about to call the police over what sounded like a domestic disturbance in my kitchen.

Nothing was wrong with the list. My kids are good at following lists. Something else was missing.

It reminded me of my work with clients, which starts the same way: a template. A spending plan, property, debts, all filled in over what should be a couple of hours. Both the checklist and the template look concrete and achievable on paper. Both take longer than they should, and both come with more angst than the task itself would suggest.

Because the real work was never the checklist or the template. The real work with my kids was figuring out what was actually going on underneath, the reason two siblings kept finding new and creative ways to torment each other. That meant talking to their dad, coordinating with grandparents whose old discipline methods weren’t landing the same way with these kids, and doing the relational work instead of hoping a fridge list would fix it. That work is slow and uncomfortable, and it’s the part I tend to avoid.

The spending plan template works the same way. Filling it in takes two or three hours, tops. That part really is easy. But the ease is only on the surface, the same way the checklist looked easy until it didn’t hold.

When I did this work with clients, I’d ask what was actually going on underneath, whatever was likely to stretch a simple two-hour process into something much longer, and I’d encourage them to deal with that first. Not because the spreadsheet mattered less, but because reviewing a spending plan is quick. It’s only worth doing once the angst underneath it has somewhere to go.

I used to tell clients: this will take three hours if I’m working in a total vacuum the moment I get your information. But nobody works in a vacuum. It could take three hours, or a while longer. We’d figure it out as we went, and I’d keep them posted as best I could.

Not Enough

by | Nov 24, 2016 | Divorce and Separation, Money

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Not Enough

What’s your relationship with money? I ask because I’ve assumed for a while now that yours looks something like mine. Lately I’ve noticed my assumptions tend to get me into trouble.

Here’s my money history, in case it helps you check.

I’ve always operated from one core fear: there isn’t enough, and it might run out. That thought shows up everywhere. I check my finances compulsively to confirm there’s still enough today. I’m frugal to a fault, hand-me-down queen, proudly. And spending money hurts, whether it’s on something fun or a plumbing bill. All of it stings equally.

Funny enough, I know people with the same fear, not enough money, who respond by spending as fast as they can before it disappears: same fear, opposite behaviour.

My fear came true when I separated from my husband. He’d been the one with the paycheque, and suddenly the money I’d been afraid would stop flowing actually stopped. I believed my savings were gone too, most of it eaten by the lawyer and the split. Nothing is more terrifying than watching your worst fear materialize. It took over my life for a while.

Eventually I had to find a way to let go of “there’s not enough,” because that thought was the thing actually causing the pain, more than the situation itself.

I started permitting myself to spend on things like clothes or eating out, without the usual sting attached. I also started increasing what came in, while still making sure I never spent more than that. Not more spending for its own sake, just less fear attached to the spending I was already doing.

Looking back, my money history wasn’t all bad. My obsessive tracking gave me an unusually precise understanding of exactly what I need to live on. My obsession with an emergency cushion meant I actually had options when the divorce hit. Both of those habits, born from fear, ended up serving me well.

Now my relationship with money is different. My baseline thought is: there’s enough. I still pay attention. Some months I still have to cut back or find new ways to bring money in. I still keep an emergency cushion because the unexpected still happens, two plumbing emergencies in one week recently, and for once I wasn’t even bummed, because the cushion was there.

My relationship with money isn’t a painful one anymore.

So, what’s yours?