How to Plan for Your Financial Future as a Widow

Summary: Losing a spouse brings both emotional and financial challenges. This blog explains how financial planning for widows can help stabilize immediate needs, manage long-term goals, and build a secure financial future.

• Widows may face changes in income, higher tax rates, and difficulty accessing accounts not in their name.
• A fiduciary financial advisor can help assess assets, update accounts, reduce taxes, and guide estate planning.
• Support from CPAs and estate planners supports a holistic financial strategy.

Losing a partner is one of the most difficult experiences anyone can face across their lifetime. Along with the emotional and personal turbulence, financial issues can quickly rear their heads after the loss of a spouse or committed companion.

Financial planning for widows is a path toward addressing those issues and building a more stable financial foundation for the future.

Our story as a financial planning and wealth management practice starts with our founder, Jordan Dechtman, seeing the financial struggles his mother faced after his father passed. That experience motivated him to start a wealth management firm that helps people find financial stability and security.

Keep reading to learn more about financial planning for widowed individuals. We offer information and guidance on common challenges women face after losing a partner, and how to address them.

Financial Planning Tips for Widowed Individuals

Address Your Immediate Debts, But Don’t Push Yourself Too Far

Unfortunately, your spouse’s death won’t stop credit card or utility bills from coming in. As difficult as it can be, addressing these debts will help you avoid more complications in the future.

You might consider asking a trusted family member for help with making sure these debts are addressed, especially while you’re still grieving. You don’t need to give them access to your accounts – simply ask them to help you review your bills and make sure they’ve been paid.

That said, don’t take on more than you need to in the short term. Major, strategic financial decisions can often wait, at least for a little while. The shock of losing a spouse can make it difficult to think rationally about money and long-term financial plans for the future.

Keep Credit Cards in Mind

As NerdWallet explains, it’s crucial to make sure you have access to your own line of credit, generally a credit card, as a widow. Credit cards generally have just one primary account holder, and they technically aren’t supposed to be used after that account holder passes away.

Use your bank accounts or cards where you are the primary account holder to pay bills, especially as time starts to pass. The issuer of cards where your spouse was the primary account holder will eventually close the account, meaning bills set up on autopay won’t be addressed.

Understand Your Challenges

As a surviving spouse, you will likely experience significant changes to your income, expenses, and overall financial situation. That could mean the loss of income if your spouse was still working, or the loss of Social Security income if you had both already retired.

Losing a source of income is not an impossible challenge, but it does require careful planning and practical adjustments to overcome.

There are many other potential challenges you may encounter. As AARP explains, tax rates can rise because widowers no longer file as a married couple. Additionally, it will likely be difficult in the short term to access resources, like retirement and investment accounts, if you are not listed as a beneficiary.

Everyone’s financial situation is different, but challenges like these are often encountered by widows. Our suggestion is to take stock of your income, assets, and expenses so you can start to understand the specific issues (and even opportunities) that you will face. Financial planning for widows and survivors can’t start without knowledge of these resources and obligations.

A financial advisor can help guide you through this process, as well as address your bigger-picture financial planning needs for the future. That leads us to our next tip.

Consult With a Fiduciary Financial Advisor and Other Trusted Financial Professionals

If your spouse was mostly or completely in charge of your finances, losing them can quickly lead to confusion and frustration as you’re thrust into an unfamiliar role. If you took the lead on your finances, the many changes that occur when losing a spouse can be difficult to manage, to say the least.

Friends and family often mean well when they offer financial planning advice for widows, but they usually aren’t professionals. They may not understand the specifics of your financial situation or know how their suggestions might impact your overall financial position.

These are two reasons why having the support of trusted financial professionals is so important. A fiduciary financial advisor, who is bound by law and ethics to put their client’s interests first, can help widows with financial planning by:

• Helping you assess and stabilize your current financial position – the assets you own, the income streams you have, and the debts you need to address.
• Identifying financial needs that may arise now or in the future and building a plan to address them.
• Coordinating plans to transfer and update accounts and other assets so they are in your name and owned by you.
• Reviewing tax implications and finding opportunities to reduce your tax burden, such as managing retirement account disbursements.
• Conducting a Social Security benefits analysis to find the right approach to benefits.
• Providing guidance on estate management to reduce costs, increase benefits, and make the process less complicated overall for your heirs.
• Building a holistic financial strategy for the future that takes your new circumstances into account, along with your priorities for the future, and monitoring that strategy as time goes on.

Certified public accountants (CPAs) and estate planners can also provide more in-depth guidance related to their specific fields. Finding a fiduciary financial advisor is a great place to start with financial planning for widows, but these professionals can also offer informed and carefully considered support.

There is no standardized financial planning checklist for widows – every person’s specific financial situation is different. When you partner with a fiduciary financial advisor, you can build a path toward a stable financial future that’s tailored to your needs.

Financial Advisors Committed to Helping Widows With Financial Planning

Dechtman Wealth Management connects you with fiduciary financial advisors who take the time to learn about your needs, provide relevant advice, and build a holistic financial plan for your future. We understand how difficult losing a spouse or partner can be, so we’re here to help.