Divorce can be emotionally and financially overwhelming. That's why I'm teaming up with Sunny Wishart, president and founder of A la Carte Financial and a certified financial planner. We will show you how to understand all things money without feeling ashamed, overwhelmed, or embarrassed. You will learn. Learn more. Ask questions. No question is a dumb question. Welcome to Money with Sunny. Let's get into it.
The divorce journey can create a lot of uncertainty about your money situation. These uncertainties arise from a whole variety of different directions. This week, Sunny and I will show you how to boost your confidence and walk you through the important steps that need to be taken, to ease some of those financial fears and worries. Building certainty and confidence involves taking crucial steps, like setting clear financial goals and learning key money management skills. We will explain what the process looks like when working with a professional. This knowledge, together with a proactive approach, will lay the foundation for you to master your money and create a more confident financial journey.
When working with people, we’ve noticed that when it comes to the topic of finances, women are often more timid, fearful, and worried about their money, whereas men just seem to be more confident about their money. We want to dive into it a little bit.
It's an overarching stereotype a bit, but often when someone reaches out to start the financial planning process, it's quite often the woman because she's worried about something with their money. It usually comes from a space where women tend to be the ones who lay eyes on the money more often and watch the money coming in and then going out. We have a long way to go in equalizing those burdens.
Another reason is also that often, the families of these women are in the most expensive stages of their lives. There's a lot of burden on us in our early years, like the young family years to do everything, get married, buy a house, buy a couple of cars, have kids, put your kid in daycare, and the parents are most likely in their early career years, so not the highest income earning potential either. It's just too much.
The stress of needing help understanding finances and creating a plan normally stems from not knowing enough, irrespective of the gender of the person. Putting in the effort, including going to a coach for help, starting small but diligently doing the necessary work to understand the process, and the ins and outs can build the confidence needed. It's also a self-discovery process where you start to realize that you can do this. It's just the little steps that stack on top of each other one at a time that make a huge difference when it comes to getting your money organized and kind of getting out of that rumination, worry and overwhelm.
The first step in getting started with understanding your finances is understanding the cash flow of your household: how much money is coming in monthly, how much is going out and where is it going? Once you have this well-oiled machine of cash flow, the next step is planning short and medium-term goals. Making them as targeted as possible to make them achievable. These are the baby steps to get started with before setting the long-term goals.
It is also important to understand that your planning needs to be adaptable and flexible because your life might not be the same 10 years from now, as it is today. So you need to be comfortable with understanding the process, building a solid foundation, and continuously adapting it to the changing circumstances.
It is normal to not discuss money with friends or family. There could be various reasons for it but it is important to know that that is normal. But if you want to have these discussions, it is important to know where to start and start educating yourself. Financial independence and financial literacy go hand-in-hand and are important to gain confidence with topics related to money.
It is important to remember that there are no silly or dumb questions in this process. This is a learning process. When working with an expert, it is important to prepare yourself with questions relating to the information you want from them. Understand where you are lost, note them down, and get those doubts cleared. The expert doesn’t know anything about your life, so simply telling them that you don’t know what you want to know isn’t helping in creating the strategy and plan you need.
In this process, it is also important to find the right expert to work with and it is possible to find the right expert when you know what you need help with and have the clarity.
I've created a free mini-course to help you get the clarity you need in this process.
So remember, you are worthy, you are loved, and you belong.
Wendy
xoxo
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