Courtesy of Lisa VanderVeen.
- When my 20-year marriage ended, I realized how little I knew about our accounts and investments.With the help of a financial planner and friend, I compiled key documents and set budgets.I also re-entered the workforce after years of being a stay-at-home mom and made a retirement plan.
I was 49 years old when I bought my first car. I'd never had to do it before because, for the past 20 years, I'd had a husband for that.
He was in charge of insurance, investments, and big purchases, like phones and cars. Then, we split.
In the early months of our divorce, my lawyer handed me a worksheet, asking for my budget and an accounting of assets. I stared at it, frozen.
I knew we had a bank account because I wrote checks from it for household expenses. However, I didn't know how the money miraculously appeared in that account each month, and I had no idea where our other accounts were (or how many we had).
My then-partner and I both had 401(k), but it had been years since I'd quit working to stay home with our daughter. I didn't know how to locate my own 401(k), let alone his.
"I need to know where our accounts are," I recall telling my ex over the phone, a few months after our split. That's when it occurred to me: We were no longer a "we."
If I wanted to protect myself and my future, I had to figure it out alone.
Slowly but surely, I got my finances in order and began rebuilding a career
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Together with a friend, I rifled through folders lodged in a metal file cabinet in what was once our home office.
We piled credit-card bills, insurance policies, and bank statements on the dining-room table and spent a Saturday morning making hundreds of photocopies at Staples. Her hand was steady on my back when I grew overwhelmed and scared.
Though my husband had quarterly calls with our financial advisor, I'd never asked to be included in those conversations. When we separated and I contacted our advisor for account information, he informed me that I was no longer his client.
So, my dad connected me with his financial planner. After a conversation with her, I felt safe and more confident. She helped me understand my budget and what I could and could not afford now that my situation had changed.
It was also time to find a job. I'd been in and out of the workforce since my daughter was born, 15 years before. Now, I needed a steady income and health insurance.
A connection from a colleague at a previous job helped me land an opportunity that felt like a gift from the Universe. I've been in my position for seven years now, and it's provided more than a livelihood: It's been an anchor, steady beneath my feet.
My career successes have made me proud of myself as a professional, something I'd lost in my roles of wife and mother.
Though I wish I'd done things differently back then, I'm proud of how far I've come
Looking back, I wish I'd been more involved in the financial decisions of running our marital household.
However, the "big decisions" I'd once yielded to my spouse are now ones I've learned to make myself. In the years since my divorce, I've learned to buy phones and computers, appliances and cars.
I've remodeled a flooded basement, managed tree removals, figured out who to call when my chimney was crumbling, and filed my own taxes.
Though my looming retirement looks nothing like I'd imagined, it will be on my terms. I can live how I desire, travel where I like (within my budget), and unapologetically pursue my dreams and hobbies.
I wish I could walk back through time to tell the younger, terrified version of myself that she would be OK — that she's stronger than she feels and smarter than she knows.
I'd tell her to march ferociously toward that light at the end of the tunnel because a new life awaits.
