September – Decision Making Time

September – Decision Making Time

by | Sep 3, 2018 | Divorce

September – Decision Making Time

September. Labour Day.

A day of transition (understatement).

If you are a parent to school-aged children, September can be a bit much (I’m polite here).

If you are separated and divorced and share parenting with a co-parent, September can be too much.

It can be too many decisions, and it can be too many decision implementations, especially when you have to navigate those decisions with a co-parent.

It really can be too much, but does it have to be?

It depends on how you approach it.

Let me tell you a story. It is a story of two parents with a 5-year-old and eight-year-old child heading back to school.

Both parents have recently signed their separation agreement. Both parents believed the separation agreement was the clear document they needed to help them make decisions. The parents had spent a lot of money and done a ton of work to finalize this agreement. The parents were pinning their hopes on this agreement.

I’m sorry to say that both parents were a bit deluded.

These parents had a separation agreement, but that was all they had.

They didn’t have a shared understanding of how to interpret that agreement, and they didn’t have a process to get to a shared understanding.

What did they have?

They had a lot of anger, grief, and blame directed at the other parent.
And they also had to make a joint decision.

What was the decision?

Which parent was going to buy the back-to-school shoes? Seriously? Was buying shoes the big decision?

Yes.

Parent A (ahem, type A, so you can remember) always did the back-to-school shopping.

Parent B (yes, that would make this parent type B) had worked outside the home and, in the past, had provided the money for the shopping.

Under the agreement, Parent A and Parent B were now to share parenting and the costs associated with parenting, but they both had different ideas of how this looked.

Had I mentioned Parent A was feeling devastated and depressed? Parent A went from being a full-time parent to a part-time parent trying to find work to cover all the costs of running a part-time single-parent household. Parent A managed to cover the bills, but there was nothing for extras.

Parent B was also feeling devastated and depressed. Parent B went from being a full-time employee to a full-time employee with a new part-time parenting job (which seemed like full-time!). Parent B also felt financially strapped. How was it possible to run two households on one income (which is what was happening as Parent A still had yet to find work!)?

Parent B was also providing child support to Parent A.

Queue the back-to-school shopping.

Parent A had bought the summer pair of shoes for the kids and decided it was Parent B’s turn. Parent A was tired of being taken for granted. All anyone cared about was money, and no one had given Parent A any credit for the years of work as a stay-at-home parent. Well, no longer! That was going to change. Parent B could buy the shoes.

Parent B had just transferred money to Parent A for child support. Child support is supposed to cover the basics. Back-to-school shoes are basics. Parent A needed to understand how hard it was to cover the funding for two households. Parent A could buy the shoes.

The first day of school approached, and Parent A noticed the kids were still running around in their Crocs. “Has Parent B taken you shopping for new shoes?” asked Parent A. “Nope.” said the kids.

To keep the kids out of the middle (though, it is reasonably sure that the kids noticed Parent A’s eye-rolling when they answered “nope.”), Parent A contacted Parent B to talk about back-to-school shopping. “It’s your turn to buy the shoes,” said Parent A to Parent B, “but I know you’re busy, so I can buy them if you agree to pay for them.”

Parent B disagreed.

“Well,” thought Parent A, “the kids can go to school without new shoes. Then maybe Parent B will finally start to understand the work I did all those years and stop taking me for granted.”

So the kids didn’t get new shoes.

The teachers sent notes home that the kids needed running shoes. The kids said they needed running shoes. Parent A and Parent B dug in their heels.
Parent B to Parent A: “I just gave you child support; you can buy the shoes.”
Parent A to Parent B: “I’ll buy them if you pay me to go out and do that. I charge $50 per hour for parenting services. I bought the shoes last time; it is your turn based on our 50-50 sharing of parenting. I will kindly do this on your behalf if you pay me to do it.”

Did I mention that this argument occurred at the five-year-old’s first soccer game and in front of both kids?

What was the outcome of all of this? Parent A and Parent B eventually resolved this decision, and the kids got new shoes.

The kids also got put in the middle and witnessed their parents having an embarrassing fight at a soccer game for five-year-olds.

Parent A and Parent B had not figured out how to address these decisions either; they were still using old methods of communication where there was a winner and a loser, and the next time they had to make a joint resolution, the same thing happened again.

And it continued.

Every simple decision took days, weeks and months to resolve, and Parent A’s and B’s approach was hurting their kids.

Sometimes, Parent A felt like the winner, and sometimes, Parent B did, but I can tell you everyone lost in this situation.

“This is exhausting,” thought Parents A and B. “Life is hard enough – running a single-parent household without trying to work with my difficult co-parent.

Do simple decisions seriously have to take this long?”

Both Parent A’s and Parent B’s depression deepened.

Back-to-school, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthdays, Spring Break, Summer. It is already stressful enough without the added stress of the battles associated with decision-making.

Both Parent A and Parent B knew it couldn’t continue the way it was. They tried various methods to make things easier.

Parent A and Parent B sought help. They both went for counselling and coaching, separately at first and then together after they learned ways to be around each other.

Parents A and B have been separated for five and a half years and divorced for four. Their kids are 12 and 9. They are not the parents they used to be, and it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Parent A and Parent B became true co-parents, but I do know it wasn’t when they signed their separation agreement.

September.

Labour Day.

A day of gratitude for Co-Parents A and B.

A day to remind them how much easier it is to make decisions now, which is a massive relief as the decisions never stop and only seem to increase with each passing September.

Money and Divorce

Money and Divorce

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Divorce

A few months ago, I was at a presentation about money. It was not a presentation about new tax rules or how to invest, it was about how hard it is to talk about money.

“I know that!” I thought to myself — A+ for me.

Why is talking about money so hard?

Well, that night of the presentation, we were all asked what money meant to each of us. Answers varied, but I knew what mine was.

For me, there is a strong link between money and my feelings of self-worth.

I think this undercurrent drives our society.

When I was negotiating my divorce, I felt like I had no voice and no value because I was not earning any income as a stay-at-home mom. Every meeting with divorce coaches and lawyers was torturous because I did not feel heard. At the time I was lost, I did not know why I did the things I did, what value I brought to the family. I believed that everyone was listening to my co-parent as he held all the power because he earned all the income. They were listening to him because he had more value because he made more money. I truly believed this and had for my entire life. In fact, it is a belief that still lurks beneath the surface in me and as stated above, I think it lurks beneath the surface of our society.

In fact, I felt like I could not live my life according to my values. I had walked away from my highly paid job as a financial analyst to be a stay-at-home parent and, during our legal meetings, the only thing I kept hearing was: “when is Renée going to go back and get her high paying job back?”

When indeed?

Instead of figuring out what I needed to continue to move forward with my life, I proposed all the plans I would take to do just that; get back to that high paying job. In fact, it was even written into our separation agreement – Renée’s plan for getting her career back – clearly laid out on page 5. Because I wanted that separation agreement. That is what I felt I needed. Once I had that agreement, I would be able to move on with my life. The divorce coaches and lawyers (all collaborative) tried to help me elucidate what I wanted but I didn’t know myself. Being the type-A person that I am was and wanting to save money, I kept driving the separation process forward while burying the emotions that kept trying to pop to the surface. I also did my budgets and figured out how to divide the money. I thought that part was easy.

Since that time, my life has not taken that clear path that I thought it was going to take. It was not simply a matter of making clear, logical choices to get to the end goal.

Getting Clearer

Under the surface, I had a battle against my thoughts about expectations of me and figure out what was going on. It was only once I got a handle on that, that decisions and choices become easier

As I grow my business and work with people and their finances as they negotiate their divorce, I realize that we are all on a similar path. I have yet to meet a client that can easily decide when faced with different financial options. I have yet to meet a client that can clearly articulate their feelings and thoughts around their financial situation.

I am often the first professional newly separated couples contact for help. After all, society has driven home the message that divorce is about dividing the money. So, they contact the financial professional because there are clear rules and ways to divide the money, right? No.

Divorce is a stoplight

When life says, “you are not living your life according to what drives you and, you’ve reached that point where you can go no further on the path that you are currently on.” You can sit at that intersection for quite some time before you figure out how to make that stop-light turn green.

I’m going to help you. Who is the first professional you should see?

Well, this is not going to be the answer that society tells you it should be.

The answer is you need to see a team

You need a financial professional to help you figure out where you stand financially at this moment in life and to also give you information about what your future financial situation could look like depending on which option you choose and decision you make.

You need a mental health professional or coach to help you develop options that are in line with the values that drive you forward in life.

And you need a lawyer to advise you of the legal rules around separation and divorce and who can also document the separation agreement that you are going to use to navigate your new life post-divorce.

Don’t be like the old uninformed me. Don’t use your professional advisors to create a separation agreement that clearly outlines the steps to the life you don’t want post-divorce.

Instead, take it from the new me, a financial and divorce expert. Use the team to help you create the life you want.

Making Decisions

Making Decisions

by | Feb 6, 2018 | Finances

Recently, a client asked me what kind of car to buy.

I don’t have a standard “newly separated person buying a car” response because it depends significantly on a person’s entire life and financial situation, which is unique from everyone else’s life situation. Making easier decisions comes down to knowing yourself. 

How do you get to know yourself?

Here is a link to a values worksheet – one small step you can take to start getting to know yourself. 

Once you know what motivates and drives (pardon the pun) you, it helps you to make a decision. A hedonist will look for a different car than someone who likes conformity. Or someone who likes stimulation? Yes– they would likely not want my 2003 Toyota Corolla or, as I used to call it, “my divorcemobile.” I recently renamed my vehicle – “my trusty steed” – a car that gets good gas mileage and hasn’t cost me much to repair. You see when I first named my car, I was viewing it through the eyes of what I thought others would see, and what others think is none of my business. My business is knowing myself and living my life aligning with my values. Keeping my cash outflows less than my inflows is part of my standard operating system, and my trusty steed is one important spoke of keeping a balanced life. 

Understanding your current financial situation is the other important step necessary when making decisions. You need to know how much money you have to spend and how much you will earn and spend in the future. I have noticed that many people get stuck at this point – it’s usually when I mention the word “budget” that eyes glaze over, or the other common expression I see is “deer caught in headlights.” 

Budgets, aka spending plans or cash flow statements, are very easy to prepare from a logistical perspective.  Money coming in goes at the top, and money going out goes underneath – they look something like this: 

After-tax Salary:  $5,000

Housing: $3.500

Food: $600

Gas: $200

Clothes: $100

Fun: $1,000

Net Monthly Cash Surplus (Deficit): ($400)

The challenge in preparing budgets is that pesky human tendency to let fear rule one’s life, which carries into the budgeting process. I have noticed that most of us (me included!) only prepare budgets when we have to – often in the middle of a life transition. We also “think” we will discover that our financial situation will inhibit us from living the lives we want. “No budget is going to tell me how I live my life!” I have heard people say. Hence, they avoid doing the budget – because they will not follow it anyway.

The other reason people don’t like budgets is because they worry that the budget will confirm what they believe to be true – there is not enough money to live the life they want. Avoidance is one way to live- but talk to any counsellor, coach or mental health professional, and they will tell you that eventually, avoidance will catch up with you, and it usually leads to being more stuck than before.

I was forced to do a budget when I separated (shocking, perhaps –  I hadn’t needed to budget before my divorce because I have always kept my cash outflows less than my inflows and always had a surplus that I directed to savings – divorce wiped out that situation!). I prepared my budget, and it did confirm that I was in a deficit position. I did not have much in the way of cash inflows – child support and a small amount of savings. Newly divorced and on the job hunt, I would look at my budget and cry – how would I ever get out of a deficit position?

My budget helped me get unstuck. I slashed my spending, and I dipped a little more into my RRSP and got coaching help. My budget and understanding of my values, needs and hopes allowed me to grow into a situation where my cash inflows are again more than my outflows.  However, I think it’s time to budget again – my kids are entering their post-secondary education years – yes, the fear of the future is beginning to bubble up in me!

When I divorced, I bought an 11-year-old Toyota Corolla for $6,000. It had low miles and low street appeal. Post-divorce, I didn’t believe I would ever have any money to pay for a more expensive car. And I was right – I have spent my new earnings on things I deemed more important than a newer and fancier car. 

When you’re in the midst of a stressful life transition, you will make some very significant life decisions – do not base those decisions on what other people tell you. Base them on what works for you. You will likely want to make a quick decision to get out of the pain of being stuck in life transition limbo but don’t succumb to short-term pain by making quick, unthought-out decisions. Instead, take the time to get to know yourself and understand the decisions that will work for you.

Here is a link to a decision-helping spreadsheet.  To make a copy that can be edited, navigate to and click “make a copy” under “File” in the top menu bar. You can use this spreadsheet once you have done the values exercise and prepared a budget. 

Once you know yourself more, every decision you make will become easier.

The Perks of Being Self-Employed

The Perks of Being Self-Employed

by | Dec 20, 2017 | Finances

It’s December 19th

Today, I had planned to go Christmas shopping – it’s getting close to the wire! But it started to slush (you know what this is if you live in Vancouver), and after going for a short walk and getting soaked and cold, I decided to leave Christmas shopping until tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be sunny.

I can go shopping during the workday because I’m self-employed: one of the perks of being self-employed.

When I sat back down at my desk after deciding to skip the slushy shopping, I thought, “I can do anything I want right now,” as I had already booked the time off in my head.

What have I wanted to do but put off because of more pressing work deadlines?

My own bookkeeping

Yes, I am one of my worst clients. I throw all my receipts in the drawer next to my desk or leave them in my inbox (where most are these days). Ok – I didn’t want to do my bookkeeping if truth be told, but I needed to do this.

I started my business a few years ago, and as that tends to go, it was a slow start, and I only made a little money. I had a business loss during the first year, technically only four months of work as I had started in September.

As a sole proprietor, I hadn’t paid any taxes during the year (no employer to withhold and remit taxes on my behalf), so when it came to filing my taxes, I had to report my pitiful non-earnings, and that was it. I didn’t owe any tax because I hadn’t made any money, and I didn’t get any back because I hadn’t remitted any money. It was slightly anti-climatic.

In my second year of business, I made a profit! Again – I hadn’t remitted any taxes throughout the year as the Canada Revenue Agency only requires self-employed individuals to make tax instalments if they had a balance owing in the previous year of more than $3,000, and I hadn’t.

For the second year, I scraped together some savings to throw into an RRSP, reducing my taxable income, and in the end, I had enough in my savings to pay my tax bill. Phew!

Not quite 9-to-5

I’m in my third full year of business, which has become a full-time job. My hours aren’t nine-to-five, but at least 40 hours weekly.

I’ve been paying enough attention to my billings to know that the “savings” I have accumulated are not savings. It’s my tax bill for 2017. But I still look at the balance in my savings account and get this little happy feeling inside.

Danger…

Sometimes, I start thinking of everything I can spend my savings on, and then you know what that leads to? Yup, spending.

So today, as it is close to the end of the tax year, I decided to see how much of those savings are savings and how much are just taxes I still need to pay.

And what did I discover? Yes, it is tax (I think I’m an excellent accountant – I know intuitively what the tax rates are as I saved the perfect amount).
I saved the perfect amount for my tax bill.

Sigh.

All the little happy feelings I’d been having about my savings drifted away, and all these negative thoughts came crashing in. The main one being:

what’s the point of working harder? I’m no further ahead.”

This led to further negative thoughts about everything I had to sacrifice this year and all the hard work I had done to get me to exactly nowhere.

Yikes!

I really am my own worst client. After wallowing in self-pity for about ten minutes I turned it around.

Grateful

I spent the year precisely doing what I wanted to do.

I had a fantastic year where I saw my business grow to a point where it can support my family and me as we need it this year.

I had a fantastic year where I had time to do what I wanted when I wanted to do it.

I had a fantastic year that gave me more “proof” that I can keep living my life as I want. 

Based on experience, my business will continue to grow to support my increasing needs (two sons entering their teen years, then university years!).

Today’s exercise also gave me further evidence that the thoughts you choose to pay attention to profoundly impact your life.

So yes, pay attention to your finances, as it is essential to have clarity about your situation to help you make choices and decisions, but also to what thoughts are going on in your head.

 Are your thoughts giving you hope to help you move forward? If not, what can you do about that to change things up to get to that point? Is it time for a year-end check-in? 

And perhaps, don’t leave your bookkeeping to December. 

Communication – Rules for Life

Communication – Rules for Life

by | Nov 3, 2017 | Divorce

I’m an accountant. Accountants are notoriously bad at communication. There is usually a reason someone chooses to become an accountant and that reason is usually because numbers are so straight-forward. They are clear and concise, easy to line up, sort and deal with. They are usually associated with projects and with decisions that have very clear outcomes. I have stated it before and I will state it again  – I love doing taxes! You get to put numbers in their place, finalize the return and then send it off to the Canada Revenue Agency and you’re done.  And people pay me for that fun!

Oh wait, at least you think you are done, until the Canada Revenue Agency decides it wants to question some of those numbers. Then you start to see how things are not so clear after all. The CRA has a different idea about that dinner meeting you had with a client, those moving costs you claimed, that eligible dependent credit claimed, etc, etc.

It is at the point when you have to start communicating about some of those numbers that you realize that numbers actually are not so straight-forward. In fact, numbers can be very convoluted, confusing and hard to wrangle into place.

I see this everyday – in all aspects of my work with numbers and it’s not surprising I see it the most in my work as a financial neutral in the Collaborative Divorce Process.  I have found since starting this business of mine four years ago, that I work more with communication than with numbers. In fact, it is that part of my work that is the exciting part and where I see the real work is done. But it is hard. Especially for accountants. These numbers are so clear! “Why oh why client of mine do you still have questions and are unable to make a decision?” “And for goodness sake why are you making that decision? It’s illogical!”

And being an accountant and wanting to find a concrete solution I have come to see that they way we communicate with each other impacts everything (overstatement? No, I don’t think so).

And being an accountant and wanting to find a concrete solution I have developed my rules of communication (or let’s just call it rules for life shall we?).

Rule 1 – Know Thyself and Know Thy Financial Situation

So – when starting out all over again after a brutal separation and divorce, I took myself off to Minerva’s Career Kick Start program (now no longer funded – sob). I clearly needed to learn how to write a resume because I had been out of the workforce (stay-at-home-undervalued mom) for five years. There must be a trick to writing a resume and preparing for job interviews that was going to land me a job. Six weeks later, after learning all about the current job situation in Vancouver I went home and wrote my resume. I sent it out with accompanying cover letter here, there and everywhere and heard zip, zero, nada.

What was the problem? Why wasn’t I getting at least a bite, a nibble, anything?

The problem was, I didn’t want any of those jobs. Every time I put a resume in the mail or faxed or emailed one off, I felt sick. I can’t even look at the cover letters I wrote back then they are so painful to read – how could I have written that formulaic drivel? Those letters were so hard to write because I did not want the job and my language conveyed that. It took me hours and I was following a template because I didn’t know myself or know what I wanted to do. I was writing letters the way someone else told me too. It didn’t work. I wasn’t doing it for myself – I was doing it to satisfy the outside pressure I was feeling to get a job because I needed to earn money.

I spent six months waking up in the morning, freaking out about how I had no money coming in (I laid in bed for 30 minutes at least, not wanting to get up) and writing useless cover letters. Every two weeks I got a respite in the form of a coaching call with my life coach.  I was also finding ways to make ends meet financially. I found money to pay my coach after all and I wasn’t destitute yet.  As those six months passed I got to know myself and what was important to me and it was during that time that I realized I needed to start my own business. What? When I was 15 I had worked at a video store. When I was 15, I made a vow to myself that I would never ever have my own business. I had been living my life according to a vow I made to myself when I 15! As I learned about the values that drive me forward, self-employed accountant became an obvious solution to my problems. In fact, as soon as I said that is what I’m going to do, people started calling me to ask for help. I have not looked back.  Of course, I had to know that I could swing it financially and so I had to take a clear look at my financial situation.  I had been looking at my finances with panic filters on but another financial person helped me see that I could dip into my RRSP for a short term, and I would fine. She understood my financial type, she knew I would revert to my saving self again. She helped me see the financial type of person I am. Yes, I would be fine. I could make that decision to start my own business.

Rule 2 – Know the Person You are Communicating With

So the flip side of knowing yourself is knowing the person you are communicating with. This is where it gets tricky (and emotional). Oh those nasty emotions – us accountants don’t like them.  So we need to get to know that person with as little emotional pain as possible. I will continue on with my story so you can get a clear picture.

I had to communicate my decision to start my own business to my co-parent. Now, as much as I wanted to have nothing to do with my co-parent at that point in my life, I  still had to talk to him and tell him what I was doing because he was paying me child support and the amount of his child support payments were dependent on how much I was making. Sigh. So I told him in an email. I think I got an almost instant email back (usually he wouldn’t respond for days). I immediately got defensive and blurted my email back and so it goes until we were in deadlock which lasted for about six months at which point in time he launched his parrying shot and we landed up in court. So I have to skip to rule three now – it would have been good if I had done rule 2 but I didn’t and I inadvertently broke rule 3 (which did eventually got us back to rule 2).

Rule 3 – Set up a Neutral Time and Space to Communicate

So we went to court. It was horrifying. Court is not private. There are all these other people that are having communication problems sitting there in the audience watching and judging you on your communication problems. And then a judge looks at you like you’re both idiots and tells you to go and try and communicate again before he will set a hearing.  It was very stressful and mortifying and not neutral. Here I was standing up to fight my co-parent. All I could think of was the great arguments I was going to make.  I was geared to fight.

The good thing about that is that the judge did give us help in this regard. He didn’t listen to either of us (he just rolled his eyes). He assigned us another judge to act as a mediator as a last ditch effort for us to clear up our communication before going back for a court hearing. So that is what we did – we met this mediator judge in a neutral area (no audience) at a time that we had set up well in advance together so we could both be calm (as possible in this situation).  She was truly neutral and she listened to both of us and forced us to listen to each other and then she sent us for counselling.  So back to Rule 2.

Rule 2 – Know the Person You are Communicating With

We ended up back at counselling. I was desperate to solve this communication problem we were having as it was wreaking havoc with my life.  We had hired a divorce coach recommended by one of my colleagues. We sat there for three hours and we each took turns listening to each other.  That is all we did. The counselor drilled down on everything I said and then asked my co-parent to repeat back what I had said.  Then it was my co-parents turn to speak and I had to repeat back what he said. I kept wanting to interrupt and I was getting so mad and defensive listening to some of the things my co-parent said. I was rolling my eyes, squirming in my chair and almost having a breakdown. This leads me to Rule 4.

Rule 4 – Shut Up and Listen

If you truly want to reach resolution on a conflict that you are having, you have to understand what the conflict is about. I could have shouted all my arguments back at my co-parent but I didn’t even know what he was upset about or what was driving him forward in the path he had chosen to take. So that counselor made me shut up and sit still and then he made me paraphrase what my co-parent was saying. In fact, this counselor just told me what to say because I couldn’t seem to do it. He just said: “Renee, say this back to your co-parent.” So I did.

The thing was, I had gone first and I was sitting there repeating back what my co-parent said, I was also processing the fact that I was feeling better. Just hearing my co-parent repeat back how I was feeling made me feel like he got it.  If he had argued against some of my statements, I would have dug down and looked for more support for my arguments. Instead, I recognized that I felt better. Some of the fight had gone out of me. I felt heard and understood.

As this was all whirling in my head, I was also paraphrasing how my co-parent was feeling. I finished and the counselor said “Renee, how can you help your co-parent with how he is feeling.” and I said “I don’t know what to do, I can’t fix it.” “And you don’t need to.” is all the counselor said.

That one statement took away all the defenses and arguments that I had been building up to fight against my co-parent. I couldn’t change the way he was feeling, and he couldn’t change the way I was feeling, but just having had it acknowledged did something amazing to our communication.  I understood why he was doing what he was doing. It had nothing to do with me.

To be clear – at this step, you need to each take a turn explaining what is important to you or where you are having difficulties. If you find yourself interrupting the other or suddenly saying BUT in your head, realize you have just been triggered. Then realize that you do not have argue against how the other person feels, you just need to acknowledge it. There is nothing you can do to change how a person feels – they need to just feel heard and work through it on their own. Arguing with them, only entrenches their feelings  – they look at ways to justify to the person on the other side and that keeps them trapped in those feelings. Instead, if you can simply repeat back what they are trying to tell you, they will feel heard and perhaps some day will work through those feelings and find ways to let them go.

It’s at this point that you can get to rule 5

Rule 5 – You’re Never Done

So being an accountant, I had hoped that would be the end of it. We’d found a solution – we were done! That day, we resolved the issue that had gotten us to court.  We also had new rules for communication – smooth sailing ahead!

Yah no.

That is the other thing my business and life has taught me.  There are always new issues and numbers to wrangle into place. I’m getting lots of practice though and the flip side is I can support myself and help others do the same.