Divorce: How to Get It Right, and Get on with Your Life |
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Gaining Financial Stability as a Single Person
Trying to reclaim your life as a single person during your Third age years can be devastating, liberating, or a bit of both. Emotional and financial setbacks are an unfortunate consequence of divorce. It's up to you to leave the past behind and chart a course for the future.
A financial planner can help you project your future financial needs and invest wisely. Consider a fee-only planner, who will charge a flat, one-time rate for the service. To find one, contact the National Association of Personal Financial Advisers. If you need to clean up your debts, try credit counseling. These organizations, which offer numerous financial management services, can arrange extended payment schedules for your loans. Contact the National Foundation for Credit Counseling for more information.
Once you develop a realistic picture of your financial future, you may decide to postpone your retirement, save more, or even get a job for the first time in your life.
Gaining financial stability can be particularly challenging for Third Age women, since statistics indicate that females generally experience a significant decline in their post-divorce standard of living. If you've sacrificed years of your career to raise children, you may find if difficult to rejoin the workforce. Sharpening your educational and computer skills may help, although you'll never have the same income potential as someone half your age.
But even if you're young enough to work for ten or twenty more years, you could amass some retirement savings. Combine that with a responsible plan for the funds you receive from your divorce settlement and your situation may not be entirely hopeless.
Whatever decisions you make about money and your future, your divorce grants you the autonomy to make them on your own. It's a grueling process through which you trade a failed relationship for more control over your life.
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