Community Chat

[FrostyBabe1]

@suzyQ3 - 

Good for you for taking that first step! Keep going.

When I worked in wealth management, I was appalled at the number of women who had absolutely no clue about their finances. None. They'd just say "oh, my husband handles that". But then something would happen to their husband and they'd have no idea what to do and it made a stressful situation much, much worse. 

Personal financial education and knowledge is absolutely critical for everyone - no matter how much you trust your partner to handle things. It's your money and future, too. 

Edited to add: you mentioned that your brokerage accounts are with Schwab. The client facing side of the Schwab website has some excellent educational material available which you could peruse at your leisure. Their research function will particularly help if you're interested in learning more about your investments. 

[SilleeMee]

Better late than never. Doing things yourself, no matter what they are, will always be a good thing when it's done right. I've done it all of my life. I've lived alone for the past twenty-five years and still doing it all on my own. 

[Nancy Drew]

This was my issue ten years ago. I wrote down all my questions, he answered them. He made a list of all bills with websites and passwords, when due how, how much, how we pay( check, directly from account automatically, etc).A yearly list because somethings are a lump sum once a year, umbrella insurance for example.He wrote an If I die for dummies list of what to do. He set up a financial advisor for us both connected to our 401k with a long standing company that will take over as just my financial advisor when the time comes. We are in the processing of putting everything in both our names. Anything I missed the Internet can fill in. I can sleep at night now. Forget about yesterday and what didn't happen, focus on today. It is a chore but I have everything in a notebook and now instead of establishing the initial data, we yearly update.

[haddon9]

I do all of the monthly bills and have been doing so since we were first married.  DH used to do our taxes until he got very sick 9 years ago and now our financial planner does them for us.  

He was forced into early retirement when he got sick and it was an eye opening experience trying to learn all about how to manage our retirement finances. 

Our financial planner goes over everything for us whenever we need him to discuss matters.  It's still very much a learning process for me since I often can't make heads or tails of many stocks and how they work exactly.  However I trust him (he is my brother in law) and he loves his work and everything finance!

I recently got together with a friend who is about to retire in June.  She told me that she and her DH had gotten together with their financial planner to go over everything and she seemed to be happy with the results. 

However she told me that in the early months of the pandemic, her DH withdrew all of their money from stocks when the market was going south....I told her that it has been doing great all year and is higher than ever.  I hate to see someone sell at a low point and lose so much in assets.  Of course no one knows what the future holds but my financial planner likes us to have a balanced portfolio and he looks at a bear market as an opportunity to buy.

In addition to finances, I agree with another poster that it's really important for us to know what many our husbands have mostly been taking care of like the water lines, etc.

[QVCkitty1]

Good for you, I was one of those people who stuck her fingers in her ears and sang nah, nah, nah. when anyone tried to explain finances. Fortunately I put on my big girl pants and learned what I needed to know.  It bores the stuffing out of me, but it has to be done. 💰? 💰

[LuvmyLab]

I'm the opposite of you. I pay all the bills and manage our money.  I've explained to hubs how to pay bills online and have had him do some on a regular basis.  He needs to know how to do this in case something happens to me. Regardless of who manages the money in one's family, both people need to know how to do it.

[patbz]

As my Dad said right after the stock market crash of 1987: "Its only a paper loss unless you sell".  In the stock market of 2008, we gulped hard and didn't change a thing; market has almost doubled since then.  Now that everything is paid off, we try to live on SS and our government pensions and let our investments ride.

[drizzellla]

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@suzyQ3 :

What a fortunate woman you are. That you realized you needed to learn more about your finances and your husband is giving you all the information that you need to learn.

I am so glad to read this.

My Mom had a few things that interested her and everything else she expected someone else to take care of. So unfortunately my Dad had a stroke. He was in rehab for 6 months to learn how to talk, eat, walk etc. And then spent 10+ years in a nursing home.

Mom was lost. She resented that she now had to buy groceries, cook and take care of the household. She had no idea about the finances and didn't want to learn. She hap hazard sold stock against the Stockbroker's advise. AND she kept no records of what she did. In fact she shredded all statements and cancelled checks. Not a pretty sight.

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[suzyQ3]

All your posts are so very helpful, not just for such good advice but also to hear all the different stories.

[AuntG]

You're probably more competent than you give yourself credit for. While working, we kept separate bank accounts. I liked that I still managed my own money. Each year, we'd alternate with one of us paying the mortgage, and the other the utilities and insurance. It all evened out. I was the one who actually suggested this separate but equal idea because I like giving gifts and I didn't want our money buying his gifts. It's a strange reason, but he understood and it worked for us. Now when we do the annual spring cleaning in our den, we go through the accounts and policies just to know where we are at.