When you start making the calls, you’ll hear the same refrain: “Sorry for your loss.” It will be spoken by an Ashley or a Hunter or some other chipper millennial. Some of these young people will endeavor to pack a bit of emotion behind the phrase, but for most of them, you’re the tenth similar call of the day. And it wasn’t their dad. They’re doing their best to grind through the building years of their own lives. The years you had with him.
You roll out the preliminaries: his name, birthdate, Social Security number. “How do you spell that?” “Did you say five or nine?”
In these details, the memories flow back. Your excitement in taking his last name 46 years ago and pulling your new Social Security card out of the envelope. The fact that no one ever spells that last name right the first time. The delight when a grandchild was born on his birthday. The 60th birthday party everyone came to where the bouncy house you got for the little kids started to float away.
Ashley or Hunter have no knowledge of the depth of the memories: good and not so great; joyful and sad; momentous and minimal. The sum total of decades together.
And you two did pretty well over those decades. You had a good job once the kids got older, and he had an even better one, leaving you with enough money and continuing cash flow to be safe.
Financial Considerations for Widows and How You Can Stay Financially Safe
But how can you stay safe now that he’s gone and you have to make the decisions on your own? What are important financial considerations for widows?
Over the next few articles, we’ll explore some of the ways you can preserve and try to increase the money you and he earned and grew together. FINRA, a reliable financial source, offers these ten tips.
We’ll cover each of these in the next few articles. Thank you for joining me.
Updated 3-24-2024
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