HOST (Michelle Dempsey-Multack):
Welcome back to Money and Moving On, where we talk about what it really takes to rebuild your financial confidence after divorce. I’m here again with Sylvia Guinan, certified divorce financial analyst (CDFA) at Wells Fargo Advisors, and today, we’re diving deep into how to thrive financially as a single parent.
MICHELLE:
Sylvia, you’re back! So many women in my community are asking, how do we actually set ourselves up to survive and thrive financially after divorce?
SYLVIA GUINAN:
It’s great to be here again, Michelle. The biggest misconception is that financial clarity happens overnight. It doesn’t. It takes time, sometimes months or even a year, to understand your new normal. But once you do, that clarity creates confidence.
Where Do You Start After Divorce?
HOST:
So let’s say the divorce is final. You’re in your new single-parent life. What’s step one?
SYLVIA:
The first step is to create a budget, not as a punishment, but as a boundary.
A budget helps you see where your money goes.
It empowers you to make decisions from a place of control, not fear.
It shows you how your current lifestyle compares to your new reality.
At our firm, we help clients build two budgets:
Your current lifestyle
Your post-divorce or “retired from marriage” lifestyle
Seeing both side-by-side helps clients understand their spending patterns and make confident choices about adjustments.
QUOTE:
“A budget isn’t a restriction, it’s your new boundary for peace.” — Sylvia Guinan
Financial Priorities After Divorce
HOST:
Let’s break it down. What comes first in the new financial hierarchy?
SYLVIA:
Absolutely, your essentials come first.
Shelter and food — those are your non-negotiables.
Self-care — therapy, medical needs, or activities that maintain your mental health.
Children’s needs — their well-being and activities come next.
MICHELLE:
That’s such an important reminder. So many moms forget to take care of themselves first.
SYLVIA:
Exactly. It’s the oxygen mask rule, you can’t take care of anyone else if you can’t breathe. Taking care of yourself is part of taking care of your family.
Self-Care Is a Financial Priority
HOST:
You just gave everyone permission to include self-care in their budget!
SYLVIA:
Yes, and self-care doesn’t have to mean lavish spending. It’s about prioritizing emotional well-being.
Schedule the therapy session.
Budget for a manicure if it gives you mental clarity.
Say yes to a dinner with friends,connection is healing.
These moments of rest and renewal are what sustain your financial and emotional resilience.
QUOTE:
“Your energy sets the tone of your household,if your cup is empty, it will trickle down to your kids.” — Sylvia Guinan
Budgeting, Cash Flow & the “Fear of the B-Word”
HOST:
So many people think budgeting means being broke. How do you help clients overcome that mindset?
SYLVIA:
That’s one of the biggest emotional hurdles. A budget doesn’t mean restriction, it’s clarity. We help clients identify:
Where they’re overspending or underspending.
How cash flow aligns with their investments.
What “balance” looks like between living now and planning for later.
Once you have that clarity, you stop reacting out of fear and start making empowered choices.
Teaching Financial Awareness to Your Kids
HOST:
How do you explain financial change to children without creating guilt or fear?
SYLVIA:
Great question. You can be honest without being heavy. Tell them:
“We used to have one big pot of money. Now it’s two smaller pots, and we just need to manage our half.”
Make it tangible, but positive. It’s not about scarcity, it’s about responsibility.
Avoid phrases like “We can’t afford it because of the divorce.”
Replace them with: “Let’s plan for that” or “We’ll earn that together.”
These small shifts build a healthy money mindset in your children.
QUOTE:
“Your kids will learn about money not from what you say, but how you live.” — Michelle Dempsey-Multack
Common Financial Red Flags After Divorce
HOST:
Let’s talk about red flags. What mistakes do you see most often post-divorce?
SYLVIA:
So many, but the top three are:
Not budgeting, pretending you’ll “figure it out later.”
Living off alimony without planning for when it ends.
Letting money sit idle instead of making it work for you.
You can’t rely on temporary income forever. Start thinking now about how to replace it, grow it, or invest it wisely.
Investing: Fear vs. Growth
HOST:
Let’s talk about investing, the word alone scares a lot of women post-divorce.
SYLVIA:
And that’s completely normal! But the truth is, it’s riskier not to invest. Inflation erodes your savings over time. Even small, conservative investments help your money grow safely.
Core Principles for Beginners:
Invest in quality, not trends.
Keep a cash reserve for emergencies.
Have a long-term plan for growth and security.
QUOTE:
“It’s scarier to let your money sit than to let it grow.” — Sylvia Guinan
Saving, Emergency Funds & Building Confidence
MICHELLE:
I’ve heard people should save three to six months of expenses. Is that true?
SYLVIA:
Exactly. Six months is ideal. Keep that emergency fund in a high-yield money market account so it still earns interest. It’s your safety net for life’s surprises.
The act of saving itself is empowering, it builds self-trust. Automate transfers so you’re paying yourself first each month.
Final Thoughts: Financial Clarity as Emotional Freedom
MICHELLE:
Sylvia, you always make finance feel less scary and more doable.
SYLVIA:
Thank you! Financial empowerment isn’t about numbers, it’s about clarity, control, and calm. Once you know where you stand, you stop reacting and start thriving.
QUOTE:
“A budget is not a burden, it’s your blueprint for freedom.” — Michelle Dempsey-Multack
Key Takeaways
Divorce is a financial reset, clarity builds confidence.
Budgeting equals boundaries, not restriction.
Invest in yourself, self-care sustains long-term stability.
Teach your children healthy money habits through example.
Don’t wait to replace temporary income, plan now for the future.
Raw Transcript:
Sylvia Guinan – Ep 2 – Audio
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That’s worthy.com slash moms, and I’ve got you covered. The top financial divorce question I hear most, am I going to survive financially? Divorce brings so many unknowns, your home, the kids’ school, travel, clubs, even health insurance. How will it all be covered? You deserve to know the answers and see exactly what your finances allow.
That’s why I’ve teamed up with certified divorce financial analyst Sylvia Guinan for a new segment of our Moving On Method podcast called Money and Moving On. Together, we are going to help you confidently plan your future and maintain the lifestyle you’ve worked so hard to build. As a next step, click the link in show notes to get your free guide, Navigating Divorce, and consider it a first step to clarity and confidence with your finances.
The use of the CDFA designation does not permit Wells Fargo advisors or its financial advisors to provide legal advice, nor is it meant to imply that the firm or its associates are acting as experts in the field. Wells Fargo Advisors is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, member SIPC, a registered broker dealer, and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company. It’s back, money and moving on, because let’s face it, we all need help with money as we’re moving on.
You met Sylvia Guinan last time, our in-house certified divorce financial analyst who is joining us monthly to give you the tips that you need in order to thrive as a single parent, moving on with a new budget, understanding more things about your finances than you ever had to understand before. And so today we’re going to be talking about just that. How do you set yourself up again after divorce to survive and thrive financially? Sylvia, it’s great to have you back again.
It’s always such a pleasure to be here always. I’m learning so much through this. I know our listeners are learning so much through this.
I think this adds value in so many ways. And I’m just honored to be able to come together with you to share all this information. I know last time we spoke about really like what I called financial advice for dummies, me being the dummy because I was the dummy who had no clue what I needed to know financially going through my own divorce, but really breaking down what to ask your attorney, what common financial terms are going to be used that we need to understand, right? The financial affidavit, what to do about the house.
Now let’s assume we’ve done all that. We are now in our single parent world trying to adjust to a new lifestyle, taking care of kids on our own, making little changes here and there to survive on the money we now have or are hoping to have. We need to talk about how to recreate the budget, right? Maybe this person never had a budget before and now they do need to have a budget and this is brand new for them.
And so I know you help women do this all the time in terms of manage their finances and understand what’s coming and how to live best with what they’ve got. But maybe for our listeners today, we can sort of prioritize for them what they need to consider when they are now working within a new budget. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great question.
And I think, of course, everyone’s budget is going to be a little bit different, right? It’s going to depend on your settlement and what you got, but the budget is the key, right? Because it doesn’t matter how much you got or how little you got. Like if you’re overspending, you’re overspending, right? If you’re underspending, then maybe you don’t need to be underspending that much. So with our team, I think it’s so important.
We work with our clients. I think it’s so important to actually have a budget. And especially when you’re recently out of a divorce, it takes a couple of months, quarters, maybe even a year to really understand what the new norm is like.
So it takes a little bit of time. But within our team, we have like a budget that we prepared. You kind of fill it in and it all adds it all up for you.
I love that. So there’s a way that you can kind of stay on top of it. And we actually have two columns.
We have one column that’s kind of lists everything and it’s where you are today. And then the other one, call it almost like your post-divorce, or we call it out retirement because it’s kind of like you retired from that marriage. And you can look side by side and it’s really kind of nice because it adds it up for you dynamically.
So this is what if you spent, I don’t know, a couple of hundred dollars a month on dinners, right? We plug it into the new budget and see what it looks like. And can we still do that? Or should we spend a little bit less on dinner? That’s where all that fear comes in. It’s like, I don’t want my lifestyle to change, but it has to change.
And people either go into like complete freeze and just do nothing. Don’t spend anything and save everything just in case. Or I often find people come to the table with like a lack mindset, right? Like I don’t have enough, but I’m going to keep spending for fear that it’s all going to go away one day.
And that’s where the budget’s really helpful. I am not a not to be scared of the B word. It doesn’t mean you’re on a budget now because you’re poor and have no money.
A budget is your financial boundaries, just like you set boundaries with your ex on how to communicate now that you’re divorced. You need some for yourself to understand what you’re going to have left at the end of each month. Absolutely.
And to see where everything’s going, right? Because sometimes we don’t even realize we just, you know, especially when it’s so easy to put it on a credit card, you’re just putting the credit card, putting the credit card in. How many times do you get that bill and you’re like, oh wait, this cannot be right, right? And you’re looking like, oh yeah, oh yeah, that was great. So, um, you know, but the key is, right, is having a good budget.
But also, you know, I think what I think is like the most important thing is like you can have the best budget, but then you look at against cashflow and what you have coming in and you look at it against your investments and I call it creating a sense of clarity. So we love sitting, you know, with our clients and we can show side by side, like, okay, so you continue to spend on this path, right? You might potentially run out of money, you know, X years down the line, right? But if you just trim it up a little bit, right? Look, it could last you well into your nineties, you know? So there’s ways that we can actually, and I call it creating a sense of control, showing you that you’re in control, right? Like, you know, here’s your choices on how you spend it. You know, we’re not telling you not to spend, but like, it’s going to be what’s most important to you.
Is it most important to you to overspend a little bit now, but maybe run out a little bit later? Or is it more important to kind of have a nice balanced lifestyle now and have it last for you and your children? Yeah, that lasting piece is huge. I think, you know, you get it and you have it and you’re scared it’s going to go away, so you spend it, but then you’re making it go away anyway. So if someone were listening to this and wanted to sit down and really like, okay, let me put myself on a budget.
What is the first thing to consider besides the overall number that you’re working with? It’s just not be afraid, right? You know, there’s an expression, I think Jewel, the singer says, light is the darkness most feared, right? So many times we’re just so afraid to see it. We don’t even want to know what it looks like. So just don’t be afraid of it, right? It’s just where you are today.
You can always change it. And I would say, you know, to prepare yourself to do the budget, like keep a little folder. And as you’re getting your statements, just throw them all in a folder so that you’re not sitting there, you know, fussing and looking around and running from room to room to try to figure out what that expense is.
You know, it’ll give you more peace of mind if you have it kind of most of it already there and you could just plug in some numbers and see what’s happening. So first and foremost, at least I would think the first thing you got to think about is either, you know, your home or wherever you’re living, what that expense is, right? Because you gotta pay that bill. So the mortgage or the rent, am I correct in that being the first priority? Absolutely.
Shelter and food. Okay. Shelter and food, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, those come first.
Now what? You know, then I think it’s self-care, right? Like it’s your medical stuff. And if you need a therapist, you know, to stay healthy during the, you know, post-transition stage of the kids need someone. I think that that’s… Do you know how many women are first going to put everything for the kids, what the kids need and then save themselves for last? I mean, I am that woman.
Like, and I remember my mom being like, you know, when she was divorced, her dad had to help her out financially. And she would just say, I’m going to give it all to you so you can have what you need. And I’d be like, no, like you need to take care of yourself too.
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and I think, you know, and by the way, I think I do the same thing too.
I’m still responsible for doing that, but I’m trying to shift that more. And it’s funny, my boyfriend actually brought up to me, you know, he was like, you know, I don’t know that you’re definitely teaching them the best lesson because the reality is, God forbid that they have to go through a divorce, but you also want to teach them as a parent that it is okay to take care of yourself. Right.
You know, if your child was telling you, I’m not spending anything on myself, I’m doing anything for my kid, you’d be like, oh no, no, no, honey, you’re not doing it the right way. Right. For sure.
And it is that whole oxygen mass theory. Like you have to put it on yourself before you can take care of anybody else. And if that means you’re an hour away from the kids getting a manicure so you can breathe and think clearly, budget for that.
It’s the best thing that you can do. Thank you for giving us this permission guys. Of course.
Of course. Happy nails, happy mom. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I, you know, also when you think of running a corporation or if you ever go into a restaurant or you go into whatever your, if you go to Pilates or whatever, your studio, and there’s a certain vibe, right? Like it’s just feels good. And it’s always run efficiently and everyone’s happy.
The same thing is in your household and it all stems from the top. Right. So if you are sacrificing and you’re living like, you know, in, you know, without taking care of yourself and nothing’s for you and your cup is empty, like eventually that’s going to trickle down to the children.
So don’t feel that you’re being selfish. Right. Like I think take care of yourself.
Just, that’s what I talked about. The lack mindset, the scarcity mindset, like, you know, and this is where it starts to affect the kids. Like, oh, we can’t buy that now because mommy and daddy got divorced.
Daddy didn’t give mommy enough money. Like that is never the vibe that that will not feel like the Pilates studio at all. Right.
And you know, and I used to love to even teach my kids, right. Which I do think is important. Like, right.
Like, you know, we, we live in Connecticut and we live by the water and I always walk them down to the water and we always look or look, look at the sunsets from our view right on the water. And I’d always say like, this is like the biggest gift that we have. Like, right.
Money and things and stuff can come and go, but look at the beauty. Like there’s so much in life that you can do that. You don’t even have to spend money.
Like this is free to everybody. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you have. It’s here for everybody.
Tell that to the kid who wants a new LaBooBoo every week. No, I’m not kidding. Okay.
So food and shelter, number one, self-care to include, I would imagine what you’ve already been doing in the marriage. Right. Not saying now that you’re getting divorced, you need to suddenly start, um, buying memberships to different spas and, uh, sound bath rituals, like maintaining, just maintaining what you’ve got.
Is that what you would advise? That’s what I would advise. And look at it within your budget. Right.
I mean, at the end of the day, you’re going to have to make decisions. Right. And that’s why I like doing the budgets as it is today.
And then the budget at what I call retirement, meaning retirement from that marriage and starting a new life. Right. Like, and you can decide, right.
You could just, if the nails are more important than, you know, whatever, getting the, the new pair of jeans, um, do the nails, right. Do the nails. That’s true.
That’s a good point. So would you consider a dinner with girlfriends in the self-care piece of this? Or there was that, cause I know on the financial affidavit, there’s the entertainment piece. Um, where, like, where would you put in, or where would you budget for that part of like having a social life? Yeah, that’s true.
That’s your dining out. That’s your, your entertainment. Right.
And, and, and it’s also honestly, your self-care. Cause our friends are our best try on for sure. Um, so yeah, so if it’s in the budget and sometimes, you know, you don’t have to go out for, you know, again, depending on everyone’s budget’s different, but if you can’t go out for a full dinner, you know, you can, you can go out for half the hour and have cocktails and have an app, right.
You can, you know, there’s always ways around it. And I think, again, it’s always how we, how we look at it. Right.
Like you said, if you look at it from lack, it’s going to feel like lack. If you find creative ways to make it fun, right. There’s ways that you can kind of keep a lot of what you did.
You just do it a little bit differently. I’m going to go ahead and file the group chat when the dinner makes it out of the group chat as self-care, because it is, I don’t think there’s anything more healing or restorative for a mom going through a divorce than having that moment with her village. Um, and also being really honest with your friends about your financial situation.
That was so hard for me. I was the first in my group to get divorced all of my friends were married to wonderful providers. And here I am like, see you guys after I’ll just stop by when you’re getting the check, because it was, it was hard.
And it was my friends who were like, no, like, let’s do what you can do. So that shame and fear piece. And what you said just now, right.
I mean, I give you so much credit. I can’t believe you had those conversations with your friends. Cause most people don’t.
Right. Yeah. And I talk about it.
I mean, I’ve even done presentations on, and I call it conversations because, you know, we talked to our friends about everything. We talked to our friends about our clothes, what we found, our beauty regimen, our Botox, our, our sex life. I mean everything, but you would never talk about your finances ever.
Yeah. And that’s kind of a loneliest space that we all kind of fit in. Yeah.
And then I did, I made the other mistake of, and we’re going to talk about red flags, but I made the other mistake of having too much pride and probably overextending myself more than I should in the beginning. Cause I wasn’t budgeting and I didn’t, I didn’t have a picture of what I had. I was just kind of winging it and I would get to the end of the month and like not sleep.
Like, oh my God, am I going to be able to pay my landlord? Like, because I said yes to every birthday dinner and because I contributed to every group gift and because, because, because, and it was also not the right thing to do. That honesty really helped me because I was struggling. Yeah.
Well, cause I think it’s a, it’s a subconscious way of prolonging the pain that things have changed. Right. So it’s, that’s a good point.
It’s easier to just kind of keep going about. But the sad part is then you do hit that wall and you’re like, oh, I’m in a lot of pain now because I don’t know how I’m going to pay something. That was this, I still feel it in my body.
That feeling. Yeah. Okay.
So self-care, house, shelter, shelter, food, self-care. Now we got to talk about the kids’ expenses. Kids are expensive.
I thought mine was expensive at two year old, at two years old and now she’s going to be 11 and it’s a whole different ballgame. So what do we do about that? Would that be next on your list for budgeting? That would be next on the list. Yeah.
I think that’s really important. And again, I, you know, you don’t want to say to the kids, we can’t afford it now. Right.
But you do want to kind of show that sometimes lifestyles change because it could happen to them too. Right. Their lifestyle could change.
And you know, and, and that’s hopefully an area that also, like, if you can’t pay for the, the dance lessons or you can’t pay for something, I mean, that, that’s kind of where you hope you’ve had some kind of an amicable relationship where you can go back to your former spouse and say, you know, it’s not for me. Right. Because the reality is it’s not for you.
Yeah. It’s for your child. So hopefully there is a way to do that.
And sometimes you don’t know. I mean, you know, I guess you can probably even call whatever the organization, the studio is and, and share where you are and share what you can participate in terms of payment at that particular time. One of my favorite things to see, and I know sometimes it’s done not by choice, but really more out of need, is when a mom will, if she wasn’t employed before the divorce, will work somewhere the kids are affiliated to help lessen the burden, lessen the cost.
I know divorce moms who have become teacher’s assistants in the school that their kids go to if it’s a private school and they need to lessen that cost or work at the summer camp to get that, that part for free. If that’s an option available to you, I highly recommend it. At the time that I was separating, I, I was collaborating with different brands and just anything I could to like be able to give my daughter certain experiences at, at a lesser cost or no extra costs, because that was really important to me.
So finding a way might feel hard, but it’s going to feel so good when you figure that part out. That’s what I was going to say. It doesn’t even feel better than, than the traditional way.
I mean, when you are able to figure it out, it just feels like you- When I made it to the 30th or 31st every month with some money left in my bank account, I was like, whew, I did it again. Really empowering. And that empowerment builds once you move away from the fear.
It does. It does. And just like, you know, some people say, well, I can’t save, right? Like I’m barely making it.
But the reality is, you know, even if you could save a little bit, you know, just to, to see that just start to build and it doesn’t have to be a lot, over time it really does build. And just to have a safety net is so important. Well, let’s talk about building that because I wanted to get into red flags that you see, mistakes, huge mistakes women make now that the divorce is done and they have X amount of dollars.
Obviously mistake number one is not budgeting, but they may have now some sort of lump sum of money and it may feel like more money to them than they’ve ever had in their lives. And they’re like, I’m good. I’ve got all that in the bank, but money, money flows like water these days, especially with children.
So what are some mistakes you see women make with the money they do receive? You know, I see the biggest mistake I see, and it seems so obvious, but it’s really not, is when somebody is getting alimony, right? So I, you know, five years of alimony, seven years, 10 years of alimony. I always, when I’m working with someone say, we need to start figuring out now how we’re going to replace that income. Right? So I want you to think about what you want to do, what you’re going to do.
Isn’t it? Yes. Because it is kind of that relief. We can’t just sit here and pretend like that day is never going to come because it’s almost like if you have a headache, you take Advil.
It helps for a little bit, right? What’s the root cause of the headache? Right. Right. That’s really, see, this is why you guys need to consider working with somebody like Sylvia.
Like I, there’s a lot of therapy involved here. Like it’s like money and therapy. It’s so helpful to have this kind of information.
And, you know, we were just talking offline about investing. That’s a big, scary word for somebody who’s now has to manage their own money for the first time on their own. Is it worth even just the littlest bit taking, if you got lump sum alimony or you were given, you were awarded a portion of the sale of the house, is it worth taking that money and putting it somewhere else? Oh, absolutely.
You want your money growing, right? Imagine if your money’s not growing, you know, I’m sure we all heard a couple of years ago, inflation was at 9%. Like you’re losing money. Like even if you have it in cash, even if it doesn’t feel like you’re losing money, you’re losing buying power.
Right? So it’s so important to keep that money growing. And now more than ever, right? As women, right? I mean, longevity is real. Yeah.
I mean, and we are living a long time, especially because we’re self-caring now. We’re self-caring and, you know, Sylvia gave us permission. So glad I could do that.
But, you know, we’re living so much longer that, you know, if, if you’re technically retiring, I don’t know, at 60, you know, probabilities are that you’re going to live to at least 80. And then you make it past, I think 82, like there’s a 70% chance you’re going to live to like 90, right? Like that’s 40 years of paying yourself. And if you have all that money in cash or saving, and you’re not growing it, like you’re going to run out of money.
It doesn’t even matter how much you have, like you’re going to run out. So would you say, well, I guess the red flag is sitting on it, not doing anything with it. For someone who is scared of the way the stock market can change or turn, or they don’t have enough information about the Roth IRAs or anything we talked about last time.
Is it scarier to let it sit or to invest it and trust the market? It’s scarier to let it sit. Because you know what, you know, if when we’re working, you know, I can only speak of our practice, but like everybody’s investment’s different, right? Your investment is going to be different than, than, you know, Sally’s and, or than Mary’s, you know, and it all depends on how much risk you’re comfortable taking. It also depends on how much liquidity you need.
You know, it also depends on what your goals are, what your plans are. So it’s all like very customized, right? And if you’re not comfortable taking risk, right? Then we’re going to build a portfolio that is going to get you some growth, but it’s going to let you sleep in, you know, hopefully, right? You’re not going to stay up at night. And then, you know, we also educate clients, right? You know, yes, the markets go up and down and they truly can be very volatile, but the reality is, right, if you’re buying quality, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at it, you see those crazy charts, but yes, it does go down, but it eventually goes up.
So the one thing you need, it’s time, right? You need time, you need quality investments, and you need allocation. If you have those things, right? And you, you know, you keep some cash. I always keep like a reserve, right? Like a safety reserve for my clients.
So if we head into one of those markets, you have time to recover. So let’s say we are dealing with someone who is not down the road of investing in markets and all that, but they are living off of this budget and they have some extra money every month. Would it be better to just sit with it and save it for next month or say, oh, I’ve got a couple extra dollars.
Let me put it here. What would that here be? Do I save it for a rainy day? Do I drop it into a college fund for my kids? Like what would be your best advice there? Well, that’s kind of a great question, a loaded question. It depends on what they have, what they received for assets, what they have, right? So I would say that, you know, definitely the safest way to do it is just to put it in an investment account and kind of invest it because if you need to access it, you can.
If you didn’t get a lot of retirement, it might be a nice way for you to, you know, if you have a little bit of earned income, you have to have some earned income to save in retirement, but to put a little bit for yourself in retirement. But whatever it is, I think that the whole thing is about just like you pay your bills, right? Like, you know, you’re going to pay your lights because you want to keep your lights on. Like just to think of that, that it’s paying yourself, it’s paying yourself and getting yourself used to that.
And a lot of the easiest ways to do it too is to set up, you know, an automatic transfer. So it just goes out automatically if you want it to go out the 15th of every month. I started doing that.
I really had to, because I’ll tell you, I would say to myself, yeah, yeah, this, I’ll keep putting X amount of dollars away for my daughter each month. And then I would, it had to be taken out of my account because I was never going to do it. Or I would find like, I would, I would talk myself out of it.
Like, but I really want to get these shoes. I could do it next month. I’ll do double next month.
Right. And then it never happens. It never happens.
It doesn’t. Or, you know, or you always get that other, you know, you think you always get that little surprise expense that you weren’t expecting anyway, and you keep putting it off. And the problem is that we do, we keep putting it off, but somehow if we have it taken out, we figure it out.
Yeah. Surprise expenses are really scary. I was, I was shout out to the woman who does my nails.
We were talking the other day and she, she left, she had to leave her job. She was let go from her job. And she was like, I literally, I was down to like $19 in my bank account.
You know, she has two kids and she went and bought a scratch off and ended up winning a hundred dollars. And she was like, you know, somebody, somebody had said that was a stupid idea, but I look at it as an investment. I, I trusted in the scratch off and I got a hundred bucks.
That’s not my financial advice, but she was like, my first instinct was to go spend it on whatever I can, what needed spending. But I’m like, something told me I need to hang on to that because clearly we’re in a tough time right now. And that really resonated with me.
Like I always think about, I don’t know, there’s, I’ve seen it on like shows or probably my mom’s sideways financial advice. You need a certain amount of money saved. Like they say like three months or six months of money.
Is that what it is? That’s what it is. So conservatively they say three months. I always say like six months is even better, right? You just have it.
And now, you know, for some reason, you know, a lot of the banks and there’s a lot of things that you can put it in, even if it’s going to be your cash or you could still, if you put it in the money market, you can earn some interesting income on it. So it could be growing, but yeah, you want to have it because if life surprises you, which sometimes it does, you want to be ready. Yes, ma’am.
Okay. So, so many, so many red flags and I think it’s just, we’ll say it just to say it, don’t treat all that money that you’ve now gotten in your divorce as a ticket to ride. Like it’s, it’s just not worth it.
You know, I think we all want to give the appearance after divorce of like, we’re fine. We can, we’re good. Like I’m still shopping.
I’m still doing this and that’s a very short term, stupid choice for lack of a better word. It is. And, you know, and I think it’s also how, how you position it, right? Like, you know, you don’t, the way you set it to close friends, I think is beautiful.
And I think that, you know, it’s again, how you share it and what you say and what you do, but I think it, it is, you do have to get used to adjusting to your, and this, I think the sooner you adjust to the real norm and you admit it, the sooner your healing process really kind of starts, right? Yes. Yeah, for sure. Something I really wanted to bring up too.
I mean, it was years before I untangled all of this, by the way, but like the, the stuff when, you know, I was married to my ex, like the Netflix account, the, I don’t know, like the streaming services, the, the DoorDash app, like Instacart fees, like all of these things that either one of us assumed in the time that we were married, like you have to consider these too. Like we’re living in the day and age of like, you’re paying for all these apps. Some of them might’ve been, or made more sense when you were married and now you’re not.
Do you recommend that people maybe like kind of clean up that invisible monthly spend that they’ve got going on? Yeah. I mean, and I’m, I’m still struggling with it, right? Like I feel like I have to block a day to do it because it takes so long. Another thing I say I’m always going to do.
Right? Me too. No. And, and, and the reality is I, you know, sometimes I think, you know, it’s easier is to just change the credit card number because some of these, like I keep getting this Google bill.
I don’t even know what it is. Right. And it’s expensive and I call and I can’t get to anybody and then I go online and I can’t get an answer and then I get frustrated and I give up.
Yes. And it’s so funny because like now that I’m saying it, I think of all the times I say to myself, I’m going to download whatever that app is to help me clean up all my like subscription. Yes.
And I never do it. I need to do it. Holding us all accountable.
Let’s make it a challenge. Check in with me tomorrow. Yes.
Exactly. Now, lastly, with a new budget comes living within that and your kids seeing that, what are some practical ways to talk to the kids about the changing financial situation or the importance of living within a budget without blaming the divorce on it? Right. I know, I think you kind of explained, right? The reality is, you know, we took this one pot of money and now we’ve divided it in two, right? So as a family, we still have the same amount of money, except, you know, one half is here and the other half is on the other side.
And so we just have to learn now to work with our half, right? I love that. You can make it like a cute, teachable experience. I used to be a teacher.
So I always, visualization, right? For kids, like here is the big pot of money and we’re just splitting it in half. I love that as a tangible learning tool. But I also think it’s so important to be careful because words matter, you know? Sorry, can’t throw a toy and target into the cart at a target anymore because mommy can’t afford it because we’re divorced now.
Your money mindset is ultimately going to burden them if it’s not a positive one. Yeah. You know, and, you know, but I think also doing things just to show them too, right? That maybe they’re not getting like, you know, every single thing that they want.
But like, you know, we always used to adopt a family, you know, child and family services is what we have in Connecticut. And it was like the most meaningful thing. So I have three kids and, you know, we’d go and we’d shop and we all, all of us would want to cry and they were little.
But, you know, some of the things that these kids want are like gloves, right? Or a scarf or socks. One of them asked for mittens for her mom because her mom’s hands are always cold. Like, you know, it was just like heartbreaking.
So I think, you know, you can also like in subtle little ways, you know, expose your kids to the fact that, you know, even though you’re not getting like, you know, the seven Legos that you want sets of Legos, you’re getting two, right? But you don’t have to ask for gloves for Christmas, right? Because that’s all a given. There’s certain things that are just a given. Yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, this could be a whole separate conversation, but kids, when they don’t get what they want, will often stomp their feet and complain because they don’t have the logical reasoning skills that we do. And they’ll say something like, it’s not fair.
And you’re going to feel like absolute garbage that it’s not fair, right? And then you can have a whole conversation. I’ll show you what fair is, but you don’t want to say it like that. But the follow up to that is validation.
I’m just putting this out there. You probably already know this because this does come up a lot in my questions with clients. It’s not, well, it’s really unfair that I had to get divorced.
Yet here we are. Sometimes changes feel unfair, but let’s count our blessings and think about all the things we do have that we can feel grateful for. And a reminder that your kids are just trying to adjust, not trying to make you feel bad because the other parent spends more money or has more money or is the fun parent, you know, that type of thing.
And don’t forget, they’re smart. They’re probing. They want to know too.
Yeah. They’re pushing your buttons. But, you know, the other thing that, you know, I would do since they were little, you know, and when we went through some big changes, you know, as I would say, okay, today we’re going to the Disney store, right? And you can look at whatever you want.
You can hold it. You can touch it. You could pick your favorites, but we’re not leaving with anything today.
Right. But what we’re going to do is figure out a list and we’re going to go back and you’re going to write and tell me how you’re going to earn that toy, right? And teaching them to earn it. Yes.
And great lessons to be taught with a changing financial situation doesn’t all have to be negative. I used to take Bella to the pet store, Petco and tell her it was the zoo because she was like, she was two. And she always had every weekend, can we go to the zoo? I’m like, yeah.
We were just looking at the fishies. So cute. Oh, I love that.
That’s brilliant. Yeah. But you can’t get away with that.
No, not anymore. No, no, no. Yeah, that’s true.
But yeah, no, I think that there’s always ways. And I would always too, I think, you know, teaching the kids too that things don’t make us happy, right? Like, so a lot of times, you know, when they would get upset, they couldn’t get something. I’m like, I’m not saying that you can’t ever have it.
I’m just saying right now, we’re not going to get it. We’re going to earn it. But then I would always say, just remember when you do get it, I promise you’ll play with it for, you know, three days, five days a week.
But then eventually you’re going to get bored, right? Like, so just learn that like things don’t make you happy. You know, they satisfy us short term, but it’s not long term. And then I always try to get them to really appreciate just like the beautiful things, like nature, like look outside.
Like, I can’t tell you now, it’s so funny. Some of them, all three of mine are in college and my youngest just went off two weeks ago. But they’ll call me and be like, oh, I was like, you know, I just had to call you mom.
I just went on the most beautiful walk along the water and saw the most beautiful sunset. And do you see your picture? And I’m like, oh no, I didn’t even see. Click, let me look.
And we look and we talk about it. So, but it’s just teaching them because that is the beauty. That is the beauty.
You know, a new budget doesn’t have to be a burden. It really is just, again, a boundary in your new life that will benefit you in the long term and also teach your kids some really valuable lessons. Another great and emotional episode, just thinking back to my own situation and how hard we really do try to make it all work for our kids.
It’s a beautiful thing. And so is your financial knowledge. If you need more support in your financial endeavors as you divorce, make sure to check the show notes.
We have really helpful links for you, downloadable resources that can probably make this process a little easier. And then if you want to take things one step further, get a little more serious, reach out to someone like Sylvia, if not Sylvia herself, it will do you so much good in the long term. Sylvia, thank you again for another episode together that really brought so much value.
And thank you all for listening. We’ll see you next time on our Moving On Method segment of Money and Moving On.
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