In this episode, one woman shares her regrets and the financial and emotional realities of going through a divorce. To hear more about the financial impact of relationships and breakups, click here:
Making it work is brought to you by curiosity stream subscribe today at curiosity stream comm slash the financial diet having grown up a child of divorce i haven’t been able to shake the feeling that i should have been more prepared for my own not that i should have expected to get divorced myself just learn more about financial independence from the lessons displayed
To me during my childhood my parents divorced when i was young and both of them struggled financially because of it my brother and i were raised with a strong work ethic and with the knowledge that once we were old enough to work it was our responsibility to pay for most things outside of necessities there were actually several times when i was pretty darn proud of
My financial independence and maturity by the age of 26 i was married and my husband and i both had good jobs we had paid for a nice wedding and bought her for sess then by the age of 27 we were signing divorce papers i was starting over and it became abundantly clear that i hadn’t actually been financially independent at all well this led to the most difficult year
Of my life financially speaking it also taught me several significant lessons about restarting number one discuss financial decisions openly my ex-husband made more money than i did for our entire relationship by the time we divorced his income was significantly higher he also naturally fell into the role of managing the finances and making most of the financial
Decisions this meant that when it came to things like taking out a car loan or a mortgage he made the decision about how big of a monthly payment we could afford at the time this made sense to me i felt comfortable deferring to him since he was more in tune with our finances but it became a problem when we started dividing our assets it quickly became clear that
We had built a lifestyle around what my ex-husband could afford and that i couldn’t afford any of it on my own he was able to keep the house we had bought together simply because it was out of my price range and i was able to take with me only the items that i could fit into my new studio apartment as well as a card that happened to have a monthly payment i could
Barely afford for the first time after the divorce it was easy to blame my ex-husband for the financial decisions he made during marriage but my desire to avoid conflict was a large part of what kept me from chiming and earlier i was the one who chose to remain silent i failed just as much as he did to open a dialog about money in my relationship with my current
Partner i ensure that money is a frequent topic of sometimes lengthy conversation number two keep emotional spending at bay divorce is an emotional process it’s an emotional process even when you’re the one who chose it and emotional spending it’s very real for the first six months after the split i spent far too much money that i didn’t even have i went to alaska
To visit some family to vegas to stand up in a wedding and bought almost an entirely new wardrobe impulse spending has always been my downfall so it’s no surprise that the problem quickly escalated when i was going through an emotional time it’s now been two years since we split and i’m still paying off my credit card debt from that time the good news is that
This is a lesson i’m reminded of every month when my credit card bill is due which has prevented me from slipping back into the trap of emotional spending number three it’s okay to ask for what’s yours when my ex and i were divvying up our assets i was more focused on avoiding conflict than ensuring i left the marriage with what was rightfully mine i also began to
Really take notice of the signs of financial abuse that were present for most of our relationship early in the divorce process my ex-husband and i were adamant that we could stay friends however he would quickly clarify that if i forced him to pay me out for my half of the house we surely wouldn’t be able to remain friends afraid of creating any animosity i agreed
Similar jabs presented themselves over the next several months along with reminders that he could afford an attorney and i couldn’t which came up anytime i brought up the subject of equally dividing our assets wisconsin is a community property state meaning that had i asserted myself and asked for half of our assets the law would have been on my side instead i put
My fear of conflict ahead of my own financial future and left the marriage with next to nothing it taught me the invaluable lesson to ask for what i need and to stand up for myself not only financially but in every area of my life i allowed myself to feel a lot of anger in the months following my divorce anger at ex-husband for the way i felt he had wronged me at
Loved ones for not offering me more guidance and at myself for not being more assertive eventually i developed the self-awareness to realize that the financial mistakes i’d made in the past were distracting me from focusing on my financial future it’s been two years now and there’s nothing i can do to change the outcome of anything that happened during my divorce
Letting in those negative emotions does nothing but chip away at my own mental health and distract me from my life today letting go of anger has also allowed me to realize just how true it is that money isn’t everything and it doesn’t buy happiness i am grateful not only for the happiness i found in the new life i’ve built but for the invaluable financial lessons i’ve
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Transcribed from video
3 Things I Only Learned From Getting Divorced At 27 By The Financial Diet
