How to Divorce-Proof Your Finances (Whether You're Married, Divorced, or Somewhere In Between)

Tyler Gardner (0:00)

The period immediately following a divorce is one of the most financially vulnerable times in a person's life. You have just been through something that fundamentally reorganized your sense of identity and your sense of what the future looks like. Your nervous system is operating in a way that is genuinely not optimized for clear long-term financial thinking. This is not a character flaw. This is neuroscience.

Hello, friends. This is Tyler Gardner, welcoming you to another episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing. So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be.

Quick note before we get into it. May's pre-order incentive for my book Real Wealth is now live. When you pre-order this month, I'm sending you two chapters that didn't make the final cut. Chapters I genuinely love and wish I could have kept. Delivered digitally in early June. Pre-ordering also locks you in for every monthly incentive between now and the December 1st release. Go to tylergardner.com/book, click the button that says claim my bonuses, upload your receipt, takes two minutes, and you're in. Now on with the show.

I have never been divorced. I hope I never am, but I have spent enough time in the world of personal finance to know that the people who get hurt the worst, financially specifically, are almost never the ones who did anything wrong in the marriage. They're the ones who never saw it coming and had no financial infrastructure of their own when it did. Today, we're going to fix that. But before we get into it, a familiar ask. If this show has ever made you think differently about money, I'd be genuinely grateful if you take 30 seconds and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more people find the show, it costs you nothing, and it means more to me than I'll ever probably say out loud. Thank you to those who already have, and let's get into it.

Welcome back to Your Money Guide on the Side. I'm Tyler Gardner, and today, we're talking about the ever-so-fun topic of divorce. Now, before you skip ahead, this episode is not just for people going through one. It's not just for people who think their marriage might be in trouble. It's not even exclusively for married people. This is for anyone who wants to understand what the financial reality of a major life transition looks like, because whether you're newly married, comfortably settled, or standing in the middle of the hardest year of your life, the information we're covering today is going to matter to you at some point.

We've got 10 things to cover today, and I've organized them across three acts. Blame the former English teacher of me who has a flair for the dramatic. But I do think there are genuinely three different people listening right now, and each of them needs something slightly different from this episode. Act 1 is for people currently in a marriage, not because there's anything wrong, but because financial self-awareness is not a sign of distrust. It is a sign of maturity, and there's a massive and crucial difference. Act 2 is the technical section, the stuff nobody really ever explains clearly, the gaps in knowledge that cost people tens of thousands of dollars at the exact moment they can least afford to lose it.

Act 3 is for the person who's in it right now, or who just came out the other side, and is staring at a completely unfamiliar financial life, wondering what on earth to do next. That section is specifically for you, and I want you to know, before we get there, that the path forward is considerably more clear than it feels right now. Ten lessons, three acts, as always, hope something in the episode proves useful.

Act 1

Prevention. This is for people currently in a marriage who want to protect themselves. Again, not because anything is wrong, but because financial self-awareness is a sign of maturity.

Lesson 1

Never. And I mean never. Let one person control the finances. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard in my life, well, he or she controls the finances. And even worse, the person then laughs it off, or even says it as if it's some type of mark of distinction, or that you've made it, that you've married someone who can take care of all that, and you don't have to. Oh, boy. I also want to start here because this is the one that everything else is built on, and it's probably the one that's most likely to make somebody listening right now feel a little uncomfortable. I think that's a good thing. I want you to sit with that for a second.