Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity: Real Women, Real Talk for Personal and Professional Development
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Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity: Real Women, Real Talk for Personal and Professional Development
Women's Financial Protection Marriage, Divorce & Beyond w/ Nikki Tucker Part 2
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SHOW DESCRIPTION
How can women protect their financial assets before, during, and after marriage? This episode is a must-listen for any woman, whether you're single, married, or navigating a divorce. Join me and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst Nikki Tucker as we dive into the essential steps you can take to protect your assets. We're talking everything from the power of insurance and prenups to the nitty-gritty of joint versus separate bank accounts. Nikki also shares invaluable advice on navigating the financial rollercoaster of divorce and how to rebuild your financial life with confidence.1 So, grab your favorite drink, settle in, and let's have an empowering chat about securing your financial well-being, no matter what life throws your way!
TL;DR
Learn how to protect your finances before, during, and after marriage. This episode covers key strategies like insurance, prenups, understanding joint vs. separate bank accounts, navigating the financial challenges of divorce, and rebuilding financially afterward. Essential listening for all women, regardless of marital status.
Time Stamps
00:00 Introduction to Financial Security
00:35 Protecting Your Money in Relationships
02:47 The Importance of Insurance
07:00 Personal Experiences with Insurance
10:59 Building Wealth and Financial Habits
16:59 Prenups: Myths and Realities
31:21 Estate Planning Essentials
38:48 Joint and Separate Accounts: Transparency is Key
39:24 Myths About Separate Accounts in Divorce
40:18 The Importance of Financial Communication in Marriage
44:11 Access and Control: Financial Roles in Marriage
48:28 Co-Owning Assets and Retirement Planning
52:41 Financial Implications of Divorce for Women
59:30 Protecting Your Assets During Divorce
01:04:41 Rebuilding Financial Life After Divorce
01:11:59 The Most Common Financial Mistake Women Make
01:15:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Credits
Guest: Nikki Taylor
Coming up next on Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity.
Nikki:Insurance is about security and in the event of.
Shai Boston, CPTD:It covers the expenses for you after you are gone. Rich lasts one lifetime, wealth last multiple lifetimes.
Nikki:There are plenty of marriages that involve prenups, and they still live to be happily ever after. It is going to end because someone is going to die or you're going to get a divorce. Having a prenup has no correlation to your marriage ending in divorce. Just because you're not married doesn't mean you don't need a will.
Shai Boston, CPTD:We're back for part two of our financial management series with Nikki Tucker. We last talked to her about the financial fundamentals that we as women have. In this episode, we're going to get into protecting your money. And so what do we mean by that? So many of us are finding ourselves in situations where we have been in relationships and now those relationships, unfortunately, may be coming to an end, or fortunately depending on how you look at it. But the reality is that there may have been assets, financial assets, that are involved in this relationship or that were grown out of the relationship. There might've been monies or assets that came into the relationship. And now you're facing divorce court. And now you're figuring out who's going to get the house. Not just who's going to get the dog, who gets what car, who's going to take care of the kids. You're figuring out who's going to pay what support to whom. And so, as women, oftentimes we come out on the short end of the stick, normally, because we know that there's not pay equity, we also know too, that women often have to take time off because of the children. And so that impacts our careers even more. When we have children and we are in a career, even a thriving career, we are also impacted. Why? Because we're normally the ones having to take the children to the doctors. We're the ones that have to stay home. We're the caregivers of our parents. The list can go on and on and on. And even if you don't have children and you're not married, your money still needs to be protected.
Hey girl, have you been looking for a safe space for women to have authentic conversations around everything that impacts our life, careers, and relationships? I'm Shai Boston, and on this show, I talk about all things connected to our personal and professional development. So we can live our best and authentic lives. Grab a drink, sit back, and let's have a chat. It's time for some Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity.
Shai Boston, CPTD:In this episode, that's what we're going to dive into talking about with Nikki. Let's get back to this. Let's start off with something that most of us kind of know about and talk about and kind of talk about it from a high level perspective. Let's talk about insurance, health, life, disability, those sorts of things. When we're talking about protecting our money, in general, how does insurance help us with that?
Nikki:A number of different ways, actually. Fundamentally speaking, you should have insurance. Now, that's an oversimplified statement for some. Where you have opportunities to have insurance or to accept insurance, you should have insurance. From an income standpoint, there are insurance. And let me have the caveat. I am not an insurance professional. Okay. So take this with a grain of salt, but there are, policies and financial products available to protect your income, to protect you and your household. You mentioned health insurance. The main reason we want to have health insurance is because it subsidizes the cost. It's a protection mechanism in the sense that you mentioned in the previous episode, you had a really large hospital bill. Imagine if you had to pay for 100% the hospital bill, out of pocket. Be significant. Might be some discounts because you're paying cash, but it'd be significant. And so having things like health insurance is a protection in the sense because your expenses related to your health are subsidized. Now, health insurance is not cheap. Let me level set there. It's not cheap and I understand that not all jobs provide it, or even if your using the Affordable Care Act or whatever, it's an expense, but it's relative when you think about if you don't have it. Those that are not making the choice of food on the table or health insurance, that's a different conversation, but those that have the ability to pay and have the income or have coverage options available to them, I'm always saying take advantage of it. And life insurance policies. A lot of your employers offer basic life insurance coverage. Not everyone offers the coverage, but for those that do, it may cost you a couple dollars out of a paycheck. But relative to what you could be using or how you could be using those proceeds or how your family could be using those proceeds, that's significant. If you get a$100,000 policy, you can't save your way to$100,000, by putting away$2 or$3 per paycheck. Insurance is about security and in the event of. No one wants to have a car accident. But it's good to have car insurance or property insurance, in the event that you need it. Because when you don't have it, then it can ruin your financial life. When you have opportunities to take advantage of insurance, that's my general guidance, I know it's oversimplified for some, but it really can make a huge, a huge difference when we talk about wealth preservation and building wealth and you're trying to figure out how do other people do it? Life insurance. I used to work for a family office. So I'm telling you from personal experience. There is a life insurance policy on everybody, multiple life insurance policies on everybody in that family, because it's a mechanism that's used to build wealth. You as the living person today, when you pass away, will you benefit from the policy? No. It goes to the beneficiaries. However,
Shai Boston, CPTD:your
Nikki:family will benefit, your children, your spouse, your god-children, nieces and nephews. Like you can make anybody a beneficiary,(generally speaking) of a life insurance policy, right? And so if your focus is building wealth or protecting your income and what you've earned, the insurance is absolutely a way to do that.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay. And that's good to know. And I think some people know that, but they may not be fully aware of how it all works or why it's beneficial. I'm not an insurance agent either. I'll just briefly speak to personal experience because yes, my hospital bill was extremely large, and I think that was just for one of the surgeries I had. I was double covered by insurance cause I was employed. I wasn't self employed at the time I was working for an employer plus my husband's insurance. That significantly reduced. I can't even tell you. I think out of a nearly 200,$300,000 bill, I can't remember the exact numbers between the two surgeries, but I think I only paid a couple of thousand dollars between all of those surgeries, and everything else, the testing and all that stuff. So yes, health insurance is important. And I know from personal experience that it costs a lot of money to be sick and it costs a lot of money to be insured, which would you prefer? That's all I say. And then as far as the life insurance policies and things like that go, yes, a lot of people use that to build wealth. Look at it this way. If you can't get to that, it's helping to generate wealth. It covers the expenses for you after you are gone and anything else for your family. Even if you're looking at, well, I'm a single parent or, I'm just a single person. That money, whoever you designate it to can use that to help care for whatever your final expenses are going to be, and then also think of it as a way of giving back to them and saying, thank you for taking care of whatever needed to be done once I'm no longer here. Otherwise it is definitely, look at it as this is building some additional wealth. This is giving your family the cushion that they need to be able to move forward. You all know, I've had a series of deaths in my family over the last several years, and I have been grateful that our family members were able to have life insurance, pensions, and other things that we were able to use to take care of expenses and then also used to help us to continue to do some of the things we needed to do to survive because we are still here, right? So it's something we don't often like to talk about but it's very important, I'm glad we brought that out. Let me go back to one other thing you said:"It's security in the event of" that's how we need to start looking at it. We can't let our car insurance go and say,"Well, I'm going to do the bare minimum just because I have to have the bare minimum. I can't afford it." It's security in the event of. Same thing with the health insurance. Same thing with life insurance. I always take life insurance from the employers. You are definitely reminding me to look at doing life insurance outside of the employers as well, but, at the bare minimum, take it through the employer. I definitely want to circle back on the security in the event of, this is another,
Nikki:Can I jump in there?
Shai Boston, CPTD:Yeah, go ahead.
Nikki:So the life insurance piece with the job and outside of the job is really important and I'm glad you said that. Take the coverage with the job because it's usually going to be the cheapest option, it is vital to have coverage outside of the job. Because very often those policies can be transferred to you as the owner, but your premium is not going to be the same. So if you're paying$2,$5 a month for your life insurance coverage through work, if you leave that job and you are able to transfer the policy, it's not going to be$2 or$5 when you transfer it. It'll probably be significantly more. So if you have an additional policy outside of your employer in the event that you can't even transfer it, like say that's not an option, then you're still covered. The older you are, which most people know this, but for those that don't, the older you are, the more expensive it is to get insurance. The more health issues you have, the more expensive it is to get insurance. So when you hear people talk about take out the most basic policy you can. Term, not necessarily whole, when you're young and you're healthy. That's why they say that. I just wanted to add that.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Thank you for adding that. I agree because like we were talking about, like I said, before we started recording, you were talking about, you know, it's about making your money work for you. And this is one way you make your money work for you. Our previous episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, please definitely go back and listen. There's vital information in there, about your basic financial foundation, if you will, and that's the foundation of how to start making your money work for you. The insurances in general is another continuation of that. And we'll jump into everything else in just a moment. The other thing that we talked about before we started recording is that you had mentioned that sometimes we're the ones that are in our own way, either because we're comparing ourselves to others; we have habits that we need to break; we're not being honest with ourselves; we want to pull the wool over our eyes. Been there, done all of those and fighting through those habits, unfortunately. Let's briefly touch on that before we get into the protecting the money, because if you don't have money to protect to begin with, and if you're not being honest about your money, then there's no point in going any further and trying to talk about the rest. Let's kind of elaborate on that a little bit more. In your experience and the things that you have seen and have advised people. What are some of the things that you encourage others and suggest that they shy away from in order to be able to continue building off of that foundation to the point that they are now able to have monies that they can protect?
Nikki:It's a couple of different things. One thing I would say, pay attention to who you are surrounding yourself with and who you're talking to about money. And this seems a little bit on the softer side, not necessarily the tactical side of things when it comes to money. But as your progressing on a different journey, you're going to have some hiccups. That's a part of it. Let me make that very clear. It's not going to be perfect. You might take a few steps forward and one step back. That's okay. That's normal. But if you're talking to family members It could be parents, it could be cousins, it could be a spouse who is not encouraging you on your journey and telling you all the reasons why what you're doing won't work or,"You know our family has never had money" or,"Never been good with money. You're not going to get good with money now." That messaging matters. While you can't necessarily pick your family, you can pick who you share information with. You can pick who you have conversations with. And if you're noticing that people are saying things to you or doing things that are detrimental or harmful to your journey, then you need to separate yourselves from them, or you need to change the way in which you're communicating with them. Everyone doesn't get to know everything. Everyone doesn't have to be a part of your journey. So when I say get out of your own way, sometimes those are the types of things that we need to do, because we're so used to having friends and family that we trust and we love and we assume that they will be supportive. We assume that they will understand, well, if they've never been where you're trying to go, they're not going to understand it.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Exactly. That reminds me of a quote one of my mentors told me, actually, I think it's from John Maxwell originally. And it was when talking about business and entrepreneurship and all these other things, it was:"Don't ask people who don't think what they think." And so basically the gist of that is don't ask people who are not thinking like you, what they think. Because you're not going to get the type of feedback that you need in order to keep propelling yourself forward. And that's one reason why I have this podcast and we will have on different guests that have the expertise like Nikki and others. That's one reason why I talk about from my experiences is because, we want to be of the same mindset and think a certain way that's going to help us to move forward and not keep us where we are now and not keep us where we were in the past. And so when you're talking about money and I'm going to keep saying the word"money" because we have a problem talking about money. When we talk about what we want to do with it, when we talk about what our hopes and our dreams are going to be and we put that plan in place, like we talked about in the first episode, building that foundation of how to make our money work for us, we need to be talking to others who also get it and who have that same mindset. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're talking to people that are talking about"wealth" per se. It means you're talking to people who are sensible, who have knowledge and understand that they too want to make their money work for them. Now, if you end up wealthy, great. I'm not knocking that at all. And I don't mean rich. Rich lasts one lifetime, wealth last multiple lifetimes. So if your goal is to get rich boom, you can go get rich you can jump on YouTube make a ton of videos and get rich. If you're looking to build wealth, there's foundations that go with that or if you're looking to have what I call a relatively comfortable life, this is how you start building that. Because, granted, no matter what money you achieve, you're going to have to work to maintain it, right? And you're going to have to work to keep achieving it. But you can get to a point where you've worked through some of those habits that have prevented you from being able to have that emergency fund, that has prevented you from being able to have that fun,fund or the cushion or where you can go to the shop and get your nails done and not have to worry about,"Ooh, am I robbing from Peter to pay Paul?" You know, that's sort of a thing. That's the mindset we want to be in. We want to be in the mindset of we want to make our money work for us. We want to be in the mindset of we're moving from where we are today and we're moving to a point where we're making our money work for us. And this is one way, having the insurance, building that foundation. Now that we're talking about, yes, we're going to have money to work with because we're talking in the positive, we're putting it out there. We are going to have money. How do we protect it? So now we're going to get into the heart of this episode, which is protecting your money before, during and then I say after marriage which is just basically divorce and this is Nikki's area of expertise. Before one gets married what would be your advice in ways that one can protect their money? Miss Nikki.
Nikki:Well, the first thing that comes to mind is prenups. I know it's a controversial topic, it's not the only way that you could protect yourself, but that is one of the ways. And I would like to dispel some rumors and misunderstandings about prenups.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay. Please do.
Nikki:We often hear about celebrities and their situations with prenups and how prenups are challenged or thrown out. And that happens. Don't get me wrong, that happens. That is the exception, it's not the rule. There are plenty of marriages that work, that involve prenups, and they still live to be happily ever after. The idea that prenups are generally thrown out is false, it's a myth, they can be, but not all the time. The idea that you have to be wealthy to have a prenup is also false.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Wait, pause. That is not true?
Nikki:That is not true.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay. We got to come back to that one. Okay.
Nikki:And then also, this idea that if you want a prenup, then you're planning for your marriage to end or you're going into your marriage with the end in mind. And that is also not true. Let me start backwards. Okay. And this is not my original thought, but it's a fact. And so you've heard it a lot. And if you've heard other people say it, you'll be like,"Oh, I heard so and so say that." Your marriage is going to end. It is going to end because someone is going to die or you're going to get a divorce. But your marriage is going to end.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Wow. Thank you for putting that out there like that. No, because, you know, honestly, you really don't think that way. Especially if you're in a good marriage, you try not to think about the fact that this person isn't going to be in your life one day. So, yeah. Okay. Thank you for, yeah. All right.
Nikki:Let me, let me give some color because some people are like,"Gosh, that was really harsh." I'm a widow. I'm a widow. My husband died unexpectedly in his fifties, in his early fifties. And my marriage ended.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay. You got to give me a moment on that one. Cause the empath in me is just, I am number one, I'm sorry to hear that. But you also get what I'm saying too, about that's not something that you think about it. I mean, you think about it, but you put it out of your head because, it's too painful. Like I said, my husband's a teacher. I don't think about school shootings. I can't.
Nikki:I understand it. I understand it. I'm also very much a realist and I'm a certified divorce financial analyst. So if your marriage is fortunate enough that it ends, on your terms, let's put it that way. It's on your terms.
Shai Boston, CPTD:We believe in being real here and being honest. So I appreciate, I mean don't get me wrong. That was sobering to hear. And that's something that a lot of us needed to hear. So I appreciate that, but yes, you're right. If the marriage doesn't end the way that you would have chosen.
Nikki:Yep. Exactly. When we think about your marriage ending because of divorce, particularly for my women who have worked really hard and you're at a point in your life where you have things You've accumulated wealth, wealth in the sense that you have money in the bank, you've accumulated assets, you own a home, you have a car, you have retirement funds and whether it's your first marriage or second or your third. If you've accumulated those things, prior to meeting the person that is becoming your spouse, or even while you we're dating this person. Before that person becomes your husband, why wouldn't you want to protect those things in the event of your marriage ending? Why wouldn't you? I am all for the idea of when we get married, we become one. This is true, but we also know that approximately half of marriages end in divorce. So, unfortunately there is a high probability that your marriage could end in divorce. Why wouldn't you do the things to protect yourself? It doesn't make you selfish. It doesn't mean that there's an increased likelihood that your marriage will end. Statistically speaking, while most don't know this, having a prenup has no correlation to your marriage ending in divorce. You're more than likely not to be divorced. It's not a lot of data on it, but theoretically you're more than likely not to be divorced. Why? Because prenups force you to have very transparent conversations about money.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Yeah, that's true.
Nikki:You know everything. If it's done correctly, if it's not done correctly, it's going to be thrown out by the courts.
Shai Boston, CPTD:The other thing to your point though of what I know of prenups. You're talking about money. You're talking about potentially children. You know, depending on what you want to put in there that you want to protect or what you see in the future, that might need to be protected and that sort of thing. It's all included in there. So yes, there are some very important conversations. In general, I tell women there are conversations you should be having prior to marriage anyway. And generally, from my understanding of prenups, those are the conversations you should be having prior to marriage anyway. But most of us don't, to be perfectly honest. We might have some, we may not have all. And then you get married, and then you're like,"Oh, I have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire." So certainly understand that. And that, makes a lot of sense that, if you are one that has some things, because I've known women who did have their own condos. They've had a car. Those different types of things. Maybe they did have a retirement fund beforehand because a lot of us do. You're not thinking that I have to protect that. You're just thinking I'm getting married and 401k is mine. It's like, no, there's certain things that then become community property, so on and so forth, especially depending on the states that you live in and all that kind of stuff. That is very valuable information. Okay, let's keep working backwards. As you started there, let's keep going.
Nikki:So this idea that you have to be wealthy.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Yes, that part.
Nikki:Yeah. The reason that I say that, that's a myth is because, if I have$50,000 in the bank, that doesn't necessarily make me wealthy. I may not be able to carry that on for multiple generations to your point about the difference between being rich or being wealthy. That said, the$50,000 I do have, should my marriage end, and I earned all of it before I met my spouse, I want to keep my$50,000.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Facts.
Nikki:Now, if I have$5M, then the stakes are even higher, which is why you see a lot of wealthy people or celebrities who have wealth using prenups as a tool to protect their money. Because the more you have, the more you want to protect. But just because I don't have millions of dollars doesn't mean it's not worthy of being protected. It's actually more impactful. If I'm a millionaire, I could probably take a loss.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Right.
Nikki:That the average person can't afford to take. If all I have is$50,000 in the bank and I lose it, I'm going to be decimated. If have$5 billion in the bank and I have to give up a million or 2 million, I could probably still survive off of a couple of million dollars.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Jeff Bezos. I mean, but seriously, he was multibillionaire. He gave almost half his fortune to his wife, and she's giving so much away, which I admire her for, but I'm just saying. Very valid points. That's one reason why I was like, hold up. We got to circle back to that because that is the mindset and mentality that many of us have. Because, again, going back to like our previous discussion, when we talked about some of us did not grow up talking about money. We did not grow up talking about how to value money outside of"money was to pay bills and to survive." Not that money can be used to help us to get further ahead except in"paying for an education." What you're saying is, if you have some money that you can't afford to lose, then you definitely should consider a prenup, especially if it's a relatively substantial amount that you can't afford to lose. And I don't mean relatively substantial like to the tens of millions of dollars, because clearly that's something that you definitely want to protect. But like you said, if you have$50,000,$100,000 even$25,000 in the bank, you wanna walk away with that. That is substantial. You want to protect that. If you have a home that you already own, you want to protect that, or an investment property that you have, like an Airbnb or something like that, you want to protect that. I would also venture to say that that also includes protecting perhaps the assets of your business or something like that in association?
Nikki:Oh absolutely, absolutely. It involves protecting not only the assets of your business, but also think about your children. There are a lot of people that get married and they end up with blended families. And so prenups are designed to be mutually beneficial, not one sided. Another myth. It's not intended to benefit one particular gender over another. However, when we think about the makeup of our society, and our economic system, it tends to feel that way, but that is not the intention of a prenup. But if you're going into a blended family, and you have a son or daughter who's a minor, or even if they're adults, but you want to make sure that they receive certain assets when you pass away, when you get a divorce, whatever the case may be, then that's where these documents are helpful. Estate planning and prenups can go hand in hand by the way but that's when these documents are helpful. And I think sometimes it can feel very overwhelming to think about it. And we're always positioning it from worst case scenario. But what people don't understand is prenups can also help you decide and iron out decisions just about how money will be managed while you're happily married. What are the responsibilities of this person? The funds of this account. A lot of times people are aware of the fact,"Well, if I had it before I got married, then it's mine." Sure. Technically, also depending on the rules of your state, but technically, yes, it's yours. Once you co-mingle those funds, not so much. Once you move in your spouse into your home that you had before, and he starts contributing to the maintenance of that house, to the value of that home, making mortgage payments. Once you put his name on the deed, not so much yours anymore.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Right.
Nikki:So those things, while prenups are not the end all be all, I think that it gets an unfair bad rep. And people don't understand how they can aid and be beneficial with ensuring that you have very transparent, upfront conversations about money. And even if you don't get the prenup, go through the process. Going through the process will just teach you a lot about the person that you're marrying. How they think, they're character. Even if you don't sign the document.
Shai Boston, CPTD:And you know, that's one of the things too, that I think is really important because if you're not talking to each other about money, how you're managing your finances, if you're not being upfront and honest, and I'm going to be straight up, if you haven't pulled credit reports together and sat down and talked about them and gone through them. And I'll be honest, that's not something that I did before I got married, but my husband had perfect credit. I didn't have so perfect credit, but if we had done that, we could have managed and planned out our first couple of years more effectively. I'll be. upfront and brutally honest about that. But if you're not having those conversations, then you don't know how that person views money. And again, I go back to where I say with the word of money. Valuing money. Are they a miser? Are they going to hoard their money and hold on to it and not want to spend it? Are they a spender? Are they someone that's in the middle and knows balance or are they spending on certain things and don't want to spend on other things? You know, like, some people want to spend on vacations. Other people feel like, no, I want to spend on technology. So you need to understand these types of things. And like you said, having these real and honest conversations. Sometimes they are painful. I'm telling you, as someone who's been married almost 25 years, you'd rather know upfront what you're dealing with rather than getting into the mix and then now you're finding out otherwise. I like the suggestion of, well, go through the exercise, even if you don't sign one, because you're going to uncover all of this, and I also know that a lot of couples will go through, spiritual counseling. Some will also go through therapy, you know, a couple's therapy and that kind of a thing, which is great. Those things can help you to learn how to communicate with each other. Those things can help you to learn how to be on the same page with your morals, your values, your faith, and so forth. They don't always get into something like this, which is the money. They're teaching you how to live together. This is teaching you how to life together, so to speak. because the one thing I do know, and I don't know the statistic offhand, but I do know that most marriages and behind financial situations. It's infidelity and financial situations are the top two. I do know that much. You talked about the prenups. You touched on estate planning. So let's jump to estate planning before we come back to talking about whether or not you should have joint or separate accounts. So can you define exactly what is estate planning and then how does that fit into the prenup arrangement or the whole protecting your money before marriage?
Nikki:Yeah, it's an important part of protecting your money because you don't need to be married in order to have an estate plan or a estate document. So the most basic estate documents are your will, your power of attorney, that could be your healthcare power of attorney or your financial power of attorney. A durable power of attorney is another common name. And then also your living will. And so even the first statement and the last statement gets a lot of people confused. Your will and your living will are not the same thing. Your will is directing where you want your assets to go and who you want to be guardian of your children. It's primary intention of the will. And I am not not a legal expert, by the way. However, I am familiar and I have these documents too. So that helps. Your financial power of attorney as an example. When we talk about power of attorneys is a document that allows someone to take over in the event that you become incapacitated, or unable to carry out your normal financial duties, so if they need access to your accounts, if they need to pay bills on your behalf, whatever the case may be. Handling financial matters that document allows them to do that. Now, you could delegate it to a spouse. You could delegate it to a friend, but you have to name someone to do it. It is valid while you're living. No longer alive, no longer valid. And then your healthcare power of attorney allows someone to make healthcare decisions for you. Your living will, which it's like healthcare directives is the name and we don't need to get into all the specifics, but your living will essentially says, if I am in the hospital, or if I'm in a situation where it's questionable if my life could continue as is, this is what I want you to do.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Right.
Nikki:I want you to exhaust all options. I want to be on life support. I don't want to be on life support. The moment that they say, I'm not going to make it. I want you to pull the plug, whatever it is, you're naming the person, you're naming your desires. All of these things are really important. And so the other element that sometimes gets overlooked is having trust, whether it's a revocable or irrevocable trust. You can have a living trust as well, but the trust allows you to declare assets that the trust owns, and then the trust will fund to the beneficiaries of the trust. So my son, for example, he's a young adult. Let's say I have life insurance. I don't want him to be the beneficiary of the life insurance policy. Because I don't think he's at an age where he could handle it all at one time in a lump sum. So if I direct the proceeds to the trust, the amount of money he gets at certain milestones or certain points in his life is based off of what's in my trust document. All of those pieces in partnership with something like a prenup can be helpful when you're going into a marriage. Now, when you're married, you and your spouse can have estate planning documents together. Just because you're not married doesn't mean you don't need a will. If you own a home, if you have furniture, if you have things in it, if you have money in the bank and stuff like that, these are assets that you have. Now, life insurance policies, retirement accounts, you're often designating beneficiaries. Those designations, those documents, supersede what's in your will. A lot of people don't understand that either.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay. Didn't know that. That's good to know. Now I will say between me and my girlfriends, we've already, did verbal wills of who gets whose purses and all that and shoes. But in all seriousness, I appreciate you breaking down each one of those because they do get confused. Now I do have a medical directive for myself on what type of care that I want and that sort of a thing. And I recognize the important value of that many years ago. And quite frankly, it came in handy even when I was in the hospital of, Okay, this is the care I want. These are the people designated that will make these decisions." Recently my mom was in the hospital and it was the same thing. I'm not on her medical directive and we chose to do that for different reasons. So I contact her surrogates."Hey, you guys need to be aware she's in the hospital, such and such." All of that is invaluable. I won't go into more details about that, but I really appreciate that. And then also to talking about the trust. Because I have some friends who have children that have trust and as you said the way that they're set up a certain milestones, they'll receive different things. And that is also a really good way of handing down even if you're not wealthy. So again, let's go back to you may not be wealthy. You may not be well to do whatever that's defined for you. But you still want to protect that and still be able to hand it down. So going back to, if you had$10,000 in the savings account and you're never going to touch that, you would want to make sure that whomever you choose to have that money can receive that money, whether that's through your trust. Whether that's through the wills and things like that. And I appreciated too, just to reiterate what was just said, that one can override the other. You said whatever you have as your beneficiaries, like on your life insurance and things like that overwrites your will. Did I get that correct? Okay.
Nikki:Yeah. Generally speaking, from a legal perspective, there may be some caveats there, but generally speaking the beneficiary designations is what's in stone.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Awesome. That's good to know. So we've talked about prenups, estate planning, wills, trust, all of those different types of things. Again, ladies, this is talking about protecting what you have. So as you are building your financial assets, which is not only your liquid assets, which is your cash on hand, what you have in the bank. As we talked about in the last episode, you can quickly turn into cash. We're also talking about your assets as far as, your physical assets, your house, your cars, your things like that. We've got all of this going into things that we need to protect. It's part of the prenups, estate planning, and so forth, but one of the things that we often get into when we're getting married or we're coupling up. Joint versus separate accounts. Hit us with the facts and the hard truth.
Nikki:I have very strong feelings about this. I am not a fan of everything joint.
Shai Boston, CPTD:I knew you was going to say that.
Nikki:Probably you knew I was going to say that for obvious reasons. There is nothing wrong with having joint accounts. Everyone, women in particular need access and autonomy to their own funds. And just because you have separate accounts does not mean that you're hiding anything. It does not mean that you are not one as a couple. It's not what that means. It means that if you're ever in a situation we keep talking about in the event of, where you need access to funds. Conversations keep coming up about,"How much did you spend on this? I saw you bought this. Why did you buy that?" Doesn't mean again, you're hiding purchases, but there is something to be said for having power and autonomy over the money that you earn or the money that is coming into your household. Even if you're a stay at home mom or stay at home wife, I strongly believe you need access to your own account. If you decide to have everything joint, well we know some people do. Then my guidance is that, this is where I'm going to say"need". You need to have access to every single account. You need to know where they are. Your name on there if your joint. But passwords you can go online and look, even if you never want to look at it, you need to have the ability to look at those accounts when you want to. The perfect setup to me is a hybrid. You have something's joint, and you have something's separate, and you still have very transparent communications about what's happening in those accounts. Because, as a couple, as one, you need to talk about your financial position as a couple, and the only way you're going to be able to do that is if you know what's going on, in its entirety. So it's not about hiding. It's not about being deceitful. And another myth is if it's in a separate account, then it doesn't come up in the divorce. It's a lie. I'm sorry. If funds were used or funds have gone into the account, while you were married, it is a marital asset. It doesn't matter whose name is on the account. Now, if you had the account before this is where it gets into technical stuff with divorce. If you had the account before you got married, that's fine. If you start having money going into that account, that's considered marital income. Now, all of it technically isn't yours. The appreciation, interest that you're earning, technically is not just yours anymore. So, even as a tip, it's like,"Oh, I have this one account. I have$10,000 in the bank. I'm getting married tomorrow." Don't do anything with that account anymore. Open a new account, now, that you're married. That$10,000 stays. It remains separate property, period.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay. That makes sense. That makes a whole lot of sense. What I wanted to ask was, I'm processing all of that information because honestly, that's not something that we as women are often taught. We're taught to have a separate account, and, a lot of times, it's like almost like a hush hush like you don't talk about that you have the side account. So I do appreciate the fact that you said to be transparent about it. I also kind of ascribe to depending on what the purpose is for.
Nikki:I agree.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Put it on the side and don't talk about it. Some couples even do where if they have a joint account, the joint account is let's say for household expenses and they agree that certain amounts of money out of their personal checks or out of the overall family pot will then go into their personal accounts to use however they want. But again, I do firmly believe that the more honest and upfront you are in having those discussions the better, and no, they're not going to be easy. But here's the thing to keep in mind. The more those discussions happen, ladies, the more that you're talking about it, the easier it becomes. If nothing else, the easier it will become for you to talk about money. And the easier it becomes for you to talk about money, if you do find yourself in a situation where your partner does not want to talk about money, the easier it'll be for you to recognize that something is not right, and that you need to start checking things out, which is why they have people that do financial forensic analysis, because going back to one thing Nikki said, and okay, so I watched too much true crime as well as, you know, dramas. But the reality is, is that men will hide their assets. Women have learned to do this as well, but they will hide their assets. They will put their assets in other people's names. There's a reason why they do that. And that's because they don't want it traced back to them, which is why financial forensic analysis needs to be done when we're talking about divorce, but we're not on the divorce part yet. So one thing I did want to ask about is let's say, a woman, one of our ladies out there, our sistafriends has a separate account, solo account. Should she put someone else on there that she trusts that can have access to those funds just in case?
Nikki:She can, it doesn't hurt. If you put someone on the account as a joint owner, as a joint signer, then they are the joint owner. So in the eyes of law it's as much as their money as it is your money. So you may want to be careful about that. Okay. Because it depends on what the other person has going on. But I'm a signer on like my mom's account as as example.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Yeah, that's me. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.
Nikki:I touch her money, but if I needed access to it,
Shai Boston, CPTD:Well, I can't say that.
Nikki:I would have access to it.
Shai Boston, CPTD:I don't do it without her permission. But yeah,
Nikki:Right, no, I understand and every situation is a little bit different. So it depends on the circumstances. But you can also just make sure that you assign, TOD or POD, which is transfer on death or payable on death. So if something happens to you and you want that particular person to access those funds, and it is separate property, you can put them on the account, STOD or POD. So from a day to day basis, they can't access it, but if something happens to you, they can access it.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Awesome. Alright. I just wanted to clarify that and get that out there. Appreciate that. So we are covering ourselves before marriage. Now we're marriaged, we end this thing, we doing this thing. What are some things that we can do to protect our money while we are married?
Nikki:So if you didn't get a prenup, you might want to consider a postnup. Might. It's not very common. And there are other sticking points that go with that, but it is something that is an option and it could make sense for some people, depending on your financial circumstances or how things have changed. So that is an option for you. The other thing and I mentioned this about access, usually in most marriages, and this is how it worked in mine too. You have someone who operates as the household CFO. The business manager of the house and that's okay. Everyone has different strengths you play into those strengths. However, that doesn't mean that you should not be aware of what is happening from a financial perspective. Too often I'm having conversations with clients and they don't know how much money their spouse earns. They don't know how much money is in the bank because their husband takes care of all of that. Sometimes it's the woman, but that's rare. Because their husband takes care of everything they kind of turn a blind eye to it. There's some men that don't want to give up that control. From an ego perspective, they view it as you not trusting them if you start asking questions or that there's concerns or that you're trying to leave them if you start asking questions. And so it's important while you're married to begin to lay the groundwork of saying,"I want us to do things differently. I know you're the person that's always managed our household and that's great. I think you're doing an amazing job, but there, are things that I'm thinking about as we get older. And I do want to be an active part of the conversations. I do want to be more active in decision making." And the best way to do that is with information. So that means you may have something informal like date nights. Like a money date nights on a regular basis, or you may have something more formal where you're sitting down with your advisors. If you have a financial advisor, if you have an insurance agent, if you have an accountant or a tax accountant, if you have attorney. Get all those people in a room together, once a year, they can strategically bounce off of each other so everyone has a full picture and understanding of where your gaps are. And what's going on and if you're on track for whatever your retirement goals are, your travel goals are, or if you're off track and what you need to do, those are things that you can do while you're married, but the biggest piece of advice is do not hide from the conversations and make sure you have access to information.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Yes, I would tell you hiding from the conversations does not benefit anybody, does not benefit anybody. It actually does more harm than good, and causes more stress than necessary. And I love the point that you brought up, which I don't think many of us think about, that if we do have different specialists, for lack of a better term, that are working with us and assisting us in our financial management to get them all into the room at one time and have a conversation. I think one, many of us don't think about the fact that we might need a financial analyst or financial planner. I think we associate that with being"wealthy" and again, even if you had$10,000 in the bank,$25,000 in the bank, that's a good time to talk to someone as a financial analyst or financial planner to say,"Hey, what can I do to make sure I'm protecting this money and I don't end up spending all this money or blowing all of this money, or I have certain goals that I want to achieve." You have them, you have your accountant or whoever, whoever, all in one room. Yes, that makes for a great conversation for everybody to be on the same page. When we talk about making your money work for you, you get to see it from all different aspects because everybody's looking at it from different purposes. Your CPA or accountant is looking at it from tax purposes, right? Versus your financial planner is looking at how to build out your future. Your tax person wants to see how we can save you money now. Your planner is like, I'm trying to see how you can build money for the future. And then you may have someone else that's like, no, we need to talk about where we are right now. So that's really important. So, thank you for bringing that out, because that is definitely not something that I have thought about before, and, again, that's because you're coming from that experience and that knowledge and expertise of being a financial analyst of if you get us all in the room together, we can all be on the same page and really make your money work for you. That's great. If you've got an amount that you can't afford to lose.
Nikki:Then you need to have a conversation.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Then you need to have these conversations for sure. Okay. So we're in marriage. We're talking about finances. Just briefly, cause I know we're running out of time here and I want to make sure we hit on these last several points that are important to us. But, one thing that we were going to briefly touch on was like co-owning assets and retirement. What can you tell us about that when you're talking about being in the marriage, how to protect our money that way?
Nikki:Yeah. So, it depends on what the assets are. When you think about retirement assets, as an example, most retirement accounts that fall under ERISA, E R I S A are governed by ERISA, so there are federal laws that basically dictate what happens with those accounts while you're married, what benefits goes to your spouse and all of that. Not necessarily, a lot that's going to happen while you're married. If you're trying to do things like, take out funds from an ERISA managed retirement account or ERISA guided retirement account, you might have to get your spouse's permission. Those are laws that are in place to protect you and also to protect your spouse. So you need to be mindful of that. But, I think the biggest piece around co-owning assets. So jointly, is that what you mean by jointly owning assets?
Shai Boston, CPTD:Right. Yes.
Nikki:Is when you start to make those decisions, whether it's buying a house together, starting a business together, whatever it is. You need to really make sure you're understanding your spouse's financial philosophy, especially when it comes to debt. And I know you said assets, but very often, when it's big ticket items, there's debt associated with that. And so, understanding like your husband's or your wife's approach to how they think about money, what they intend to do with whatever the asset is that you're purchasing, how they see things going, all of the different conversations that give you insight into who they are and how they think before you sign on the dotted line. You should probably have those things and not ignore the pink flags may not necessarily be red flags. Take the time to explore things that make you pause when they say something. If you're buy a boat and maybe the average person is not buying a boat, but if you're going to buy a boat, it's like,"Hmm, why are we buying this?""How are we going to manage the expenses associated with this?" Or if you're going to buy a home. Now, if you are married, it's likely marital property anyway.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Right.
Nikki:So even if you don't title it in both of your names, if it is acquired while you're married, unless you have some special, again, situation that you've accounted for in a legal document, prenup or whatever, it's marital property. So not a lot that you really need to do because the law is going to dictate what it is for you. But just be conscious of different purchases and different things that you're doing. And it goes back to the awareness factor. Like you want to know if your spouse has retirement benefits, you want to know what they are because you're entitled to them, legally.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay, same with pensions.
Nikki:Yes.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Social security.
Nikki:Yes. Yes. Don't ever let a spouse tell you that if you don't do whatever they're telling you to do, and you're going through a divorce as an example, they're not going to give you their social security. That's not a thing. They don't have any control over that.
Shai Boston, CPTD:And here's the other thing, just as a sidebar, I'm not sure of all the ins and outs and nuances. But were getting ready to get into the subject of divorce, but when you do get into the point of divorce, if they have not designated someone else on their pension as beneficiaries, retirements, all that kind of stuff. If you're the last spouse, Just saying it's coming back to you. So that's something else for you to think about, ladies that if you are protecting your assets and we'll get there in a moment about divorce, but that's something that I know off the top of my head, you want to make sure those are designated to somebody or some beneficiary, you put it in a trust, whatever the case may be, you've planned for that because if you haven't and you don't remarry or you don't have children. Then that sir, that you just walked away from, could walk away with your money as well. Speaking of which, so this is truly your area of expertise, obviously. And unfortunately I know too many women right now that are either in the middle of a divorce or might be heading towards that way. And we need to talk about this. So let's talk about divorce. What are the financial implications and ramifications, particularly for women, when it comes to divorce, before we get into protecting ourselves, when it comes to divorce.
Nikki:The implications are often harsh because we know that women tend to suffer more as a result of a divorce financially. So the loss of income, the loss of assets, generally impacts women in a greater way than it does men. That's like just statistically speaking. Now, always going to be an exception to every rule. So, if you're a man listening to this and you feel like you got burned in your divorce, Hey, I'm not arguing with you. Okay. You probably did. You probably did, it's the reality. But, the other thing that comes up sometimes, and this is all connected to what we've been talking about in this episode and the previous episode, is because there's a lack of awareness, we women are making decisions with half of the information, or most, but not all of the information. You think you're getting, or you're negotiating a fair settlement, not realizing that what you're negotiating isn't necessarily fair because A. They're assets that are hidden. B. Because you've decided not to engage the right professionals, whether it's legal counsel or financial analysts or even a forensic accountant to make sure that you're getting everything that you're entitled to, which is very different than trying to drag someone through the mud and take them for everything they have. That is not what I'm advocating. I'm just saying, making sure you're aware of the things that you're legally entitled to is important. Because sometimes we just want it to be over. You hear the phrase,"I just want this to be done." And so you agree to a settlement that you don't realize causes you financial harm in the long term because of the of tax implications or because it's not enough money to help you sustain lifestyle and not necessarily the life you were living with them, but just regular life, right?
Shai Boston, CPTD:Right, right. Your day to day.
Nikki:Your day to day, yeah. Or you didn't understand spousal support. We're not even going to talk about child support, just spousal support. And the fact that maybe you're the higher income earner and you have to pay because there are a lot of women out here making a lot of money. And sometimes they are out earning their spouses and they don't understand that the implication of getting a divorce may mean that you have to pay him spousal support. Those are the types of things that we're not considering when we're going into a marriage, so again I am pro marriage, just because I am in the divorce space doesn't mean I want your marriage to end. I want you to have a successful marriage. But I think that very often women in particular. And those who are Black and Brown don't have enough information and do enough homework about what it really means to be married. There is the relational, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Warm and fuzzy. There's that side. It's beautiful, but there's business transactional side of marriage. And if there wass no business side, we wouldn't have to get the government involved. We wouldn't have to get a license in order to get it. So it's very easy to get married, which is detrimental to us, but it's very difficult to get a divorce.
Shai Boston, CPTD:And I think we tend to forget too, quite honestly, that in a lot of societies, marriage was all transactional, was about finances, and even though we want to believe down through history, it was all about love and so on and so forth, and no matter how you believe marriage started and came about, ultimately it became a financial transaction situation. That's something we don't leave out. Like you said, you have the romantic aspects of it, but the financial part is often the part that we don't talk about. And that's the other reason why we as women, get left in the lurch, so to speak. It's also true that nowadays, I don't know if it started necessarily since the pandemic, but I would say probably in the last 5 to 10 years, the trend is now that couples cannot really afford to be divorced. They get divorced, but then they end up having to stay in the same home or whatever the case may be. And part of that too is the communication around finances, around money, how the assets will be split, all of these different types of things. That's another thing that we also have to think about as women, that if we're the ones seeking the divorce, prepare yourself, make sure you're prepared in advance. If it's sprung on you, then do all the things that Nikki just talked about, getting the right people together so that you can better be protected financially in the sense of you can get what should be coming to you, especially if it was sprung on you, because that means somebody was plotting somewhere already. And again, moving assets around, putting it in different people's names. And I know we think that a lot of people putting money in offshore accounts and all that kind of stuff has to do with the"rich" and the"wealthy". No, you can take a couple of grand and go put it down there in Grand Cayman and nobody has to know, and it's earning money, you know, and all that.
Nikki:You can take a couple grand and give it to your mama.
Shai Boston, CPTD:That's true. That is true. Give it as a gift, whatever the may be, we'll put it into a car, any number of things. Before we move on and talking about some of the other things we need to consider when we're talking about divorce, we as women do not always want to think the worst of our spouses until they show us their worst. You know, like Lizzo said,"Why men great till they got to be great." Well, because that's how we see, you know there's a saying that's out there that says, Oh, I'm trying to think of how it goes. It's something to the effect of"You don't have to lie to a woman cause she'll lie to herself for you."
Nikki:Hmm.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Something along those lines. So unfortunately we'll do that. And when the divorce comes about or you realize you're on that path and you're like,"Wait, where did that come from?" Or he just hits you and blindside you, which I know many women that's happened to, they hit you and blindside you like,"Whoa". You're off guard. And that was the whole point was to catch you off guard and unprepared. So what we're trying to do today is to make sure that you are prepared in the event that this should happen, whether you're choosing to have this happen. Or if suddenly you see yourself on that path or it gets thrown at you, you now know what next steps it takes because I'm all about hiring a PI and everything else to go and get your business and handle it. I'm that girlfriend. But anyway, that's the story for another time. We don't have no tea for that. But anyway, with that being said, let's kind of talk about some other things. So we said the implications and ramifications, I have in my notes here, we were going to chat about protecting your assets during the divorce. So let's touch on that before we talk about rebuilding after divorce. So how do we protect the assets that we as women may have acquired or that we have brought into the marriage?
Nikki:Yeah, so a lot of it comes down to documentation and understanding what really is separate property versus what is marital property. That's a big piece of protection. Another simple thing that women can do, is freeze your credit. And your probably like"Oh, yeah I guess that makes sense." When I say it, usually it takes a second for people... freeze your credit. Even if you aren't planning to buy a new home after your divorce is final or maybe before your divorce is final, unfreeze it so they can run it. Refreeze it before you close, they're going to need to run it one more time. Just tell them to give you a heads up, unfreeze it again, refreeze it. Sometimes there are surprises, that come up during the divorce. And so you want to protect yourself from various angles. And that's one of them. You don't want someone to open up a new credit card right before they file. If divorce has come up in conversations with your spouse, and you think they may be filing but you haven't been served, it's okay to freeze your credit. It's okay. But again the other piece is the documentation of understanding what really is mine and can I prove it? That's often where we lose in the battle. If you've been married for a long time, it's going to be difficult to prove sometimes, or if you haven't kept great records, it's going to be difficult to prove. So all of those things that we talked about you doing before you get married, you do while you're married, it'll make your divorce process that much more smoother, emotions aside, and that less expensive if you follow some of those guidelines.
Shai Boston, CPTD:And to that end, that's one reason why getting a safe deposit box is good. So you can store your documents or store them in a safe somewhere else away from the home. That's why putting things into the cloud where someone else doesn't have access is good. So you can pull those documents down. I'll be honest, a lot of times we feel like we as women, like that's being shady, that we're being sneaky and we're this this and that. I'm just going to put this out there and keep it real. Number one, you do have to do what you have to protect yourself. Simple as that. Your doing what you have to do to protect yourself. Number two, like for instance, there are certain friends that have access to my passport, my medical directive, certain documents that I have written up, like, I need you to handle this in case something happens to me. Partially because I know my mom and my husband is probably going to fall apart. I need my girlfriends over here to handle this because they're not going to be able to do this kind of thing. But the other thing too is, and this is not all men, let's just say this is not all persons. But in general, divorces can get nasty. Very rarely are they amicable. Where it goes relatively smoothly. In most cases they start to get nasty. I have so many friends that are going through or about to go through very nasty divorces. And the reality is, assets were already being hidden. They're already withholding certain information about financial statements and records. All these things were already being maneuvered and they had no clue.
Nikki:It's very common.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Yeah. So we don't want to think that way and I get that. We don't like to think that way. We as women, we're generally speaking, we're loving, we don't want to see the negative, but this is about putting on protective armor. This is about looking at things from a different perspective. This is about the fact that you're going to be emotionally devastated. Every woman I know that has gotten a divorce. Even men, I know who have said it. It's like a death. Because it's the end of something that you've had, it's the end of your hope and dream of what you thought you were going to have with this particular person or the life you thought you were going to have, your life has suddenly taken a turn. Even if you are happy to have this now take place. It's still an ending of a chapter and period in your life. And so because emotions are in place, we don't think about these other things and you don't think about it until it's too late until it's too messy, until you're in the thick of it. So this is how to start preparing now. The other thing going back, you were talking about the credit and being able to freeze credit. That's when you want to pull your credit report. You get to pull one free credit report a year, pull your annual credit report, check your credit report, and start keeping an eye on those things. Put monitoring on your ID if you need to, so that if you're not freezing anything, you will know if somebody is trying to do something or trying to open something. Protect yourself in every kind of way. Because with technology and all these different things, we know each others social security numbers, all these different things. It's so easy to go and do a lot of this stuff. We've gone through the divorce. We've done everything that we could, no matter what monies we're walking away with, how can one rebuild their financial life after divorce?
Nikki:One of the things that won't cost you anything is getting a financial BFF. So your financial fill in or your financial BFF. You eluded to it a bit. If you are no longer with a partner, then you need someone to be aware of the ins and outs of your financial life. That doesn't mean they know how much money you have in the bank, but it does mean that if you need them to come and stand in or to take care of business, or to check on some things, you have a designated person to do that. Particularly if you are a parent, it's important even if you're not, but it is super important if you're a parent. That just means you're picking someone you can trust, someone you can depend on, someone who wants to do it. Sometimes we pick people that are like, I don't have any interest in being that person for you. So you want to make sure that all three of those things are there. It won't cost you a thing. The other thing is as it relates to your financial life. You need to update estate documents. If you didn't have any to begin with, now it's imperative that you get some, but you had some with your partner, those are no longer valid because you're no longer married. So you need to get your estate documents updated. I think the third thing that I would mention, there's a whole list of things that you can do, but the third thing from an overarching perspective is now it's time for you to get even more intimate with your money, because you're resetting your financial life Now it's down from two incomes to one. Some of your expenses may be lower. Some of your expenses may be higher. So that thing that we talked about with budgeting making sure that the foundation is there, you might need to reconfigure some things. But you need to know your numbers.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Understood. I really like to that you talked about the financial BFF, and making sure the person wants to do it, is able to do it, and willing to do it. Especially if you have children, like young children per se, but having someone that can assist with that, especially if something should happen to you and you're incapacitated. You want to make sure your children are cared for, their needs are met, that kind of a thing. So whether you're talking about your children's god-parent if you believe in all of that, or if you have someone else is designated to care for your child, as a step in guardian, so to speak, that's really important. And also the rebuilding of the finances may take some time. Let's just be honest. It may take some time. You could be walking away decimated because you were not prepared. You could be walking away, with less than what you thought because you're paying spousal support. You might be having to pay child support depending on how things go with the children. It could be any number of things. It may take some time, so that's where the patience come in. That's where we don't do the blame game, the shame game, the judgment,of woulda, coulda, shouldas and that sort of a thing. As we've said in the last episode, I'm starting from where we are now, and I'm going to go ahead and rebuild. The one thing to keep in mind, ladies, you did it once, you can do it again. Even if you went into the marriage and you didn't have any assets, so to speak, no real financial assets. No physical, tangible assets, such as a home and all that kind of a thing. Even if you were a stay at home mom, or if you weren't a stay at home mom, you just didn't have to work, that might've been the way things were set up in your home or that was the privilege that you had that you didn't have to work. What I'm saying is even if you didn't have any of those things financially that you brought in with, you're going to start where you are now and you're going to rebuild and you're going to be okay. It may take some time. Yes, ma'am. Throw in that"and" girl.
Nikki:Don't be ashamed of having to make difficult decisions even after you get a divorce. Sometimes we get very caught up in the life that we had before, whether it's from our perspective or for our children. So maybe you fought really, really hard for the house, because that's the house that you raised your kids in. That's where your memories are. That's the house they know, it keeps you in the same school district. But if it is killing you financially, then it's time for you to make some difficult decisions. And maybe that might mean might, because every situation is different. That might mean letting the house go.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Because like you said, it's about making your money work for you. And even though I've heard that in my adult life quite often, I never really fully understood what that meant. And now here I am at my big age now going, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, right. So it's the same thing, but it's life experiences as life lessons. These are things that we may not have known or been taught. This may be things that were whispered about in other rooms that we weren't allowed to be in or whatever the case may be. I just want to circle back on two things. So those difficult decisions also go back to what we were talking about, even in the first episode, laying that foundation and starting to work towards building our emergency funds and all of those sorts of things. We may have to make those difficult decisions. We may have to say,"Okay. Look, we gonna split this Netflix account. I know it's gonna cost five extra dollars a month. I got you on the five. Can you handle the rest?" You know, I'll be honest. I share my Disney+ with some other folks. I share my Netflix. I pay an additional cost for somebody. We're sharing those costs because there are certain expenses that some people just cannot have. It's just not within their budgets, but if we can make it easier for each other. Again, this goes back to the community. So even when you go through your divorce, ladies, the one thing to keep in mind is to look for your sense of community. If you didn't have a support system, now it's time to get your support system, get them in place. Let your sistafriends rally around you. Even some of your brothafriends, let them rally around you. Rely on your support systems because when you do have to make those difficult decisions, and they are going to come, you need your support system to keep holding you up. And those are the people again, going back to what we talked about before that are going to support you in the decisions that you're making. And they're going to say,"It's cool. We got you," but they're also going to reassure you."You're going to be okay." The other thing I wanted to circle back to is, when you said you're resetting your financial life. I think that kind of sums up both of the episodes that we've talked about. So whether you're putting your foundations in place to move forward, or whether you're talking about getting married, in your marriage or now after your marriage, if you're divorced, that you want to do everything you can to move forward from here. That means you're resetting your financial life. We're now looking at things differently because we have information and knowledge now, we did not have before. Now we can make better and more informed decisions. Now we know what to go and research. What questions to ask. Those are all extremely important. I just wanted to point back to those two things. Let's wrap this up with one final question and that is... What is the most common financial mistake women make before, during, and after marriage, and how can they avoid it?
Nikki:I like this question because it's a very simple answer.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Okay.
Nikki:They're not organized.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Mm.
Nikki:If you think about everything that we talked about, everything that we talked about, it comes back to, being informed, and having your information together in an organized way that allows you to deal with it. So if you're going through a divorce, you need to be organized because it's going to make your divorce less expensive. And it's going to keep you sane. If you're married, you need to be organized so you can reduce fighting about money and understanding where you stand from a financial perspective. If you're single, you need to be organized so that you can, again, plan your future, set goals appropriately. And before you walk into a marriage, you understand everything that you own and everything that you owe. Being organized has a direct correlation that people underestimate to the health of your financial life. And it doesn't cost you a dime to be organized. That's the one thing. It's not rocket science people.
Shai Boston, CPTD:It's not. I know I keep testifying to everything you say, because I'm seeing it. I'm picking up everything you're laying down. And the reason why I did that was because for a lot of us, it's just overwhelming, at least it seems overwhelming. And like we talked in the last episode, some things are overwhelming just because we didn't know. And now we're facing it head on. It's almost like, you know, I'm kind of think of it as like, when they rolled up to Jurassic Park and it was like,"Oh, this is awesome. This is so cool. This is great. And look at all this cool information." And then they're dropped in the middle of the park. Now they've got to figure out how do I survive? And so at this point, that's what I think some are thinking is like,"Oh man, how am I going to survive? How do I get to that thousand dollars? So I can start building that emergency fund", going back to the first episode. And then now we're talking about, I'm thinking about marriage or I'm engaged, I'm married, or I'm going through a divorce. And now I have all this information. I didn't know. I'm overwhelmed. And so I think too, when we talk about being organized, that's part of that. But you're absolutely right. Being organized and being informed. That's true about almost anything and everything.
Nikki:It is. And to your point about being overwhelmed, you don't have to do it alone. You don't have to do it alone. I know that we take pride in being strong women. And sometimes it's okay to lay the cape to the side and just ask for help. Whether it's me, there are a ton of financial professionals out there. There are a ton of emotional support professionals out there. There are a ton of relationship experts out there. That's the greatest thing about modern day society, whether it's a human or technology, you do not have to do it alone.
Shai Boston, CPTD:#Facts. So with that being said. Where can our listeners find out more information about you and the firm that you have?
Nikki:Well, again, thanks for having me. It's been a fantastic conversation. Of course. People can find us on our website: TheFiirmApproach.Com. Firm has two I's. So F I I R M. TheFiirmApproach.com We have a private podcast, which is just our newsletter, audio perspective. We have digital programs. We have live community programs. That's focused on helping pre and post divorce women. So when you go to TheFiirmApproach.com you can find all of that information. We're also on social media as well, but the easiest way to connect, like if you want to send me an email and connect with me directly, do it through The Fiirm Approach.
Shai Boston, CPTD:Wonderful. Wonderful. Nikki, I am so grateful that I met you. I'm grateful that we had a conversation. And from the first time that we had that conversation, I was like, Yeah, definitely got to have her on the show. The information that you shared, is just been so impactful. And so I just want the ladies to know out there, these two episodes were so powerful because they're helping us to get a start, a reset, to move forward financially. It may take some time. For some of us it won't take any time at all. Now we're better prepared to be, as my brother in law says, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. You're now forewarned, you're forearmed for your better financial future. So with that being said, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Nikki, for being here. I look forward to having you back again because I'm pretty sure there's going to be a lot more to talk about. I'm looking forward to collaborating with you again, and I really, really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of the day.
Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to chat with me. If you want to continue the conversation, follow me on social media. I'm@ShaiBoston on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. I hope you have a good rest of the day and a restful night. I'll see you next time for more Coffee, Cocktails, and Clarity.
