The Financial Reality of Losing a Spouse

**Ron Studds** (0:01)
Here's what's coming up on this edition of The Retirement Huddle with Mark Howard and your host Ron Studds.

**Mark Howard** (0:07)
Sometimes the greatest value is not somebody trying to pitch investments, it's just helping people feel steady again, get back on their feet.

**Ron Studds** (0:16)
It's time for The Retirement Huddle with your local financial coach Mark Howard. If retirement is a game, you're in it to win it.
The Huddle is where your financial battle plans are drawn. And Mark Howard is here to help with the X's and O's. So, let's kick it off and break the huddle. The Retirement Huddle starts now.

**Ron Studds** (0:43)
Hey Mark, let's talk about one of the most painful things that you have to go through all the time. I know that sometimes things can get rather emotional in your office, particularly when you have a situation where there's a death of a spouse.
When a new client comes to you, whether it's a man or a woman right after losing their spouse, what are they typically most concerned about?

**Mark Howard** (1:07)
Well, after walking alongside widows and widowers for many years, I can tell you that the first concern usually is an investment performance. Right?
It's just fear. It's uncertainty. It's fear of making a mistake. You're emotionally overwhelmed. You're grief stricken. And they're thinking about things like, am I going to be okay financially? What am I supposed to do next?
How did my spouse leave things in terms of whether they're organized or not? Who can I trust in this situation? What if I make a bad decision and I can't recover from it? And honestly, one of the hardest parts is that grief and financial decision making just don't work together. I think people, when they're going through grief, their brain is exhausted, simple task can be just overwhelming. And I've had clients apologize because they just can't focus during the meetings because they're teary eyed. And I always tell them, listen, we don't have to have it all together right now. That's what we're here for.
And it's an honor to help these people. I tell you, especially in older generations, the biggest anxiety for women who've lost their husband is that he handled all the money. And it wasn't because the wife was not intelligent. It was just, that was how many marriages divided the responsibilities. And all of a sudden, this left, the spouse that's left, the wife, the widow, is dealing with investments and taxes and Medicare and Social Security and required minimum distributions and estate paperwork and all trying to figure out how they're going to sleep in an empty house. So, for men who have lost a wife, they're mainly worried about health care and loneliness and daily structure and just, can they maintain the lifestyle and the home without their spouse, that was just held everything together emotionally and practically. So, they don't say this out loud, but am I vulnerable now? And this is where I've seen this so many times. We've got a client that unfortunately was, her husband passed away a couple of years ago, and we've helped build a great plan to get her to the finish line of life. But unfortunately, a scammer got a hold of her, and she lost $18,000. And then on top of that, Ron, there was another company that came in afterwards that she chose to help her go after the scammers, and that was a scam. And somehow or another, she figured it out. But these are the things that I want people to lean on, lean on to us for, because we want to help people get everything stabilized, organize the income, review what kind of survivor benefits there are, simplify things, have a good written plan, and just help them regain their confidence one step at a time. And so it's a challenging time for folks to go through, and we've helped a lot of people through it. And it's one of the reasons that if we can, we don't insist on it, but if we can, we love to meet with the husband and the wife, and get to know them both, because typically they're not going to leave this earth in notebook fashion. One's going to go before the other, and when that happens, it's always good for them to already know who the money was with, and we just don't miss a beat.
There's a lot of things that are immediate challenges for them. Reduced income, because the social security is lost. Possibly a higher income tax bracket. Negotiating the execution of whatever wills and trust and things like that. Possibly filing for a life insurance claim. For a lot of times, it's the first time they've had to look at financial matters themselves.