Creating Post-Divorce Budgets for a Secure Financial Future

Hi, welcome to MediatorPodcast.com, a podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation and collaboration. My name is Melissa Gragg, and I'm a valuation expert and divorce mediator in St. Louis, Missouri – specializing in divorce and partner disputes. 

Today we are speaking with Amy Adler, a CPA, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst about creating post-divorce budgets to secure a stable financial future. She is based in Austin, Texas and brings a unique blend of financial expertise and personal experience to divorce support. With a background in public accounting, internal audit, fraud investigation, and corporate accounting, she now uses her skills to help others navigate divorce. Her mission is to minimize the stress, time, and cost of divorce, ensuring clients are well-prepared for a brighter future.  

Melissa Gragg  
CVA, MAFF 
Expert testimony for financial and valuation issues  
Bridge Valuation Partners, LLC  
melissa@bridgevaluation.com  
http://www.BridgeValuation.com  
http://www.ValuationPodcast.com  
http://www.MediatorPodcast.com  
https://www.valuationmediation.com  
Cell: (314) 541-8163

Amy Adler CPA, CFE, CDFA
Adler Divorce Financial Consulting
https://yourdivorceasset.com
512-484-2020
amy@yourdivorceasset.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, welcome to mediator podcast.com, a podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation, and collaboration. My name is Melissa Greg , and I'm evaluation expert and divorce mediator in St. Louis, Missouri. I specialize in divorce and partner disputes, but today we're gonna speak with Amy Adler. She's A-C-P-A-A Certified Fraud Examiner, A-C-D-F-A, which you're gonna wanna know about, and she helps people create post-divorce budgets in order to have a secure financial future. And I'm gonna let her tell you more about that. But she's based in Austin, Texas and brings a very unique blend of financial expertise, a little fraud investigation, a little corporate accounting, a little public accounting , um, and her own blend of personal experience to divorce. So, welcome, Amy. How are you?

Speaker 2: 0:50

Thanks. Good to be here, Melissa. Thanks.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Now you have an amazing background with a lot of credentials and um, I think they're very important in the divorce world, but we're talking about something that I think happens more often in divorce, which is , um, we have people that have a complex situation and they come in and maybe they have a business or maybe they have things and they don't know exactly where everything is, or they don't know how they're living. Maybe one person has more financial control and things like that. So they come into this divorce process and the attorney's like, oh my gosh, we got all these legal issues and the expert's , like, we got all these financial issues. And the person is really sitting there saying, okay, but um, can I afford to live in this house? Can, like, what's my budget? Like, what should I focus on? And there's more of a primal kind of urgency to understand the financial picture. So when we started talking, you started talking to me about like a post-divorce budget. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. But like, like post-divorce, like it's too late. It's too late. But you were talking a little bit like different. So can you tell us like, what is, when you think of this concept, what are you thinking of? 'cause it is very unique.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Well, thank you for saying that. Really, it, it, it makes perfect sense that before you go into your divorce negotiations, you need to know what you need and what you have to be able to figure out from a liquidity standpoint. You know, are you gonna be able to make it on a month-to-month basis with the income that you have? Or do you need money from your marital estate to help you get on your feet? So what I call a , a post-divorce budget for my clients is usually just one to two years post-divorce. We do like a monthly basis and then we also annualize so that we can kind of see how things are gonna look over the entire year. But I don't recommend doing more than one to two years post-divorce because almost every single person's life changes drastically in the first couple of years after their divorce. And it's really, really hard to predict and anticipate what those income and expenses are gonna look like. So I encourage people not to worry about things that far ahead, just know that it will, that things will always work out for us if we just have faith and we do the right things in those first couple of years. So the budget is really intended to look at your expenses and your income for one to two years post-divorce, and that's what I call a post-divorce budget. That is not budgeting after your divorce is final, it is beforehand, before you've negotiated your settlement. So it is a little bit of a misleading term.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Yeah. And it's interesting, but I think that it, it makes sense because you're, look , you wanna see post-divorce after you get divorced. What, what are your going to be kind of future expenses? And that has to take into account some things might change in the future. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Right . And realistically I think budgets are easy to understand, right? Conceptually, most people don't do them. Most people have no way of even starting to put one together, right? So it's like we understand the concept of like balancing our checkbook, but we don't really understand it. It becomes kind of important , um, in this process because you're gonna be making big financial decisions and in some cases you might even not even have told your spouse that you're going to be doing this. And so, you know, as we talk about kind of why it's important to create this post-divorce budget, can we also talk about some of the documents that they could just start to gather to get ready for creating this, this budget as well? Because it's, you know, like it could take some time to collect some of this information, right?

Speaker 2: 4:59

It can. I mean, there's a couple of different ways people can go about this post-divorce budgeting process. One is to say, I'm gonna put these numbers on this piece of paper and I'm gonna commit to living by them regardless of what I've done in the past. And so in that case, there may be less of the historical information that you need to gather, although I would argue that it's still helpful to see what you did in the past to be able to make sure you're being reasonable with what you're preparing for the future. And that , and of course, the other methodology is to look at your historical spending and think about the things in your life, maybe even your daily life that are going to change to try to anticipate what the cost differential or the income differential will be in that new life. For example, if you were on your ex soon to be ex-spouse's health insurance plan, but you are self-employed or not employed and you're gonna need to get new health insurance or maybe no health insurance for some people, that's an important thing to be thinking about in the budgeting process because there's, that's a huge expense for many people if they have to go get a plan off the marketplace or if they have to be creative with getting some type of catastrophic plan and, and integrative medicine, like monthly subscription service, all those different potential things. But you need to do that legwork to figure out how much that's gonna cost in order to build your budget. So in terms of documents, if you're gonna use that historical information and, and or if you're going to do the, I'm gonna draw the line in the sand and commit myself to live in this way, it can be helpful to communicate with some other professionals in the industries that, that , um, sell the types of services and costs that you're gonna be needing . Like a health insurance broker for that example, if you wanna talk with a mortgage lender, I always encourage people to talk with their, with their current lender and or a broker who I refer all my clients to, to find out what kind of mortgage can I qualify for? How much is that , is that gonna cost on a monthly basis using the current interest rate , which are outrageous right now. I mean, this is a common issue for all of my clients is that they bought their house or refinanced their house at 2% interest rate, but if they refinance after the divorce, it's 7%. Well that's a huge difference in your monthly expense there for your mortgage payment that we need to be able to plan for if that's where you wanna go. So this budgeting process , um, is super helpful, you know, in answering the why question as well. Super helpful for helping people who are going through the process, design their life after they're divorced too. Where are they gonna live? How are they going to make ends meet? What kind of job are they going to have? Are they gonna stay self-employed or are they gonna have to get AW two income in order to, you know, or a side hustle? You know, how are all of these things going to happen? Are they going to travel more? Are they going back to school? You know, so I also like in this process to talk with folks about dreaming their future life. This is an opportunity to hit that reset button on your life and figure out what do you wanna do with your life next? You're not going to be answering to a spouse anymore unless you're getting married to someone else right away, which we don't recommend <laugh>. Uh, so what do you wanna, do? You wanna take up new hobbies? Do , excuse me, you wanna go back to old things that you enjoyed that never had the time to do? Or do you want to, you know, travel the world , um, start a business, go back to school? It's, the choices are endless if you do this planning in advance before you start negotiating so that you can figure out how to make the, the financial piece of the puzzle that is your life work out well. So some other types of documents you, you were asking about if you are gonna go look at historical data, running your credit card statements for six to 12 months, your bank statements for six to 12 months, and looking at what you've spent previously, especially if you and your spouse have had different accounts, have had separate credit cards and separate bank accounts, it's a lot easier to figure out, well , what was I doing? Um , but if it's joint, then maybe you have to do a little bit more legwork there to figure out what's mine versus what's theirs. And , um, am I still going to be doing things this way? Do we still have this cost?

Speaker 1: 9:28

Which is why I think this is so, you know, like I , I think it's really interesting because I get more clients that are very confused with finances and they think they're stupid. And I am literally having an epiphany right now, and I do this finance all the time, but you are so right in that we're really spending for the litigation, right? When we're in the litigation, we're spending a lot of time trying to look at the past, spending the past historical whatever, right? And it's really misaligned with what, if you're looking at what your budget is, you are, you are dead, right? Like it may not be important what the past was. You kind of have to decide. Okay. And the two big things that you hit on really, really key. The first two things that people say, okay, okay, where am I gonna live and how am I gonna pay? And what health insurance am I gonna have ? Right? Because if it's tied, like they both were business owners, it could have been tied to the business. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , um, the house is always kind of stay split, things like that. So it makes perfect sense that you would start kind of fresh and say, okay, let's assume that you get to a different space. Like what would be your budget for a mortgage? Is that so you kind of do it a little bit more, build it up what the life is that you're going to want to live as an option. Um,

Speaker 2: 11:01

Yes.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Is it always assuming that the house would not be a part of it? Or like how do you start to go through some of those elements?

Speaker 2: 11:09

So if they really want the house and then they know that it's a contentious thing that both spouses want the house, I will usually recommend, let's do two budgets. Let's do one that looks like what happens if you keep the house one, what things look like if you move. Um , and so that's when I start reaching out to my real estate agent buddies in the different locations where my clients are to help them, to help the clients find what are the possible home options in the area that they wanna be in right now, if they were to go buy right now, what would that cost price wise ? What would, and then we go to the mortgage person, what would the mortgage payment look like for that? And can they qualify? So then they have <crosstalk> and

Speaker 1: 11:50

I , and I'll interject and I rarely interject, but I will say we have had so many calls and I know you and I , uh, get a lot of the same situation of people with the 2% mortgages that are like , uh, we wanna keep the mortgage but we want to separate. And for the most part, that's just not an option. And so you really do have to seek some, you know, like a certified divorce lending specialist or you know, like you really got to go look to see if that's even, 'cause if it's there is a possibility, it's a very remote possibility and you gotta consider that you're gonna have to refinance at the current, current pre housing prices, current rates, right? Like what's really happening. You're, you're forcing them to take a very realistic view, not like,

Speaker 2: 12:38

Yes.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Okay.

Speaker 2: 12:39

And using that in the negotiation process too, right? Because if the other spouse gets to keep the house, well maybe they're gonna compensate for the lower property tax basis and the, you know, interest rate difference by giving more assets from the marital estate to pay, pay the spouse who has to move. So it is, it's really helpful to have in mind already what you're looking at doing going forward. So you can go into, you know, mediation or negotiations, whatever methodology you use saying this is what I can do and in order to do that, I need this from you to make up for not having access to this from the house that you're in right now. And I do always encourage my clients to call their bank their mortgage lender to see if there is even an option to assume the mortgage so that they can at least have that question answered when they have the 2% rates that they don't wanna let go of. And if they can assume it, what kind of income do they have to show to qualify? So at least we have that answer too .

Speaker 1: 13:42

And I think that that's some of, you know, that's some of the legwork I think when we're counseling clients to how do you save, like really how do you save some money in this divorce process is you start to do some of this legwork and you start to do your budget before everything starts to escalate. And you do know you , like it might take you a week to call the mortgage company to get somebody on the phone to get to the right department. And if you want you , like, you can always pay somebody else to do the legwork, but understand that like it does take time and effort for somebody to do that. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And that's why like getting financial professionals involved is important, but I don't think financial professionals is just enough. Like you can't just be like, oh, my CPA or oh, my financial advisor, oh , my current banker or even my current mortgage person understands this because in the divorce world, there's a different game being played. Yeah . And you have to know budgeting in this process. Like even the fact that you're like, yeah, you need to focus on what your budget is going to be. And then is there any houses in that area with the school district that that works for? Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , you know, or calling about your insurance, right ? Like that's really, you don't know what you don't know. And maybe you guys have like more tips and tricks and ways to get information or help them, you know, go about the process. 'cause like, yeah, you, you gotta talk to brokers about all of this to get an idea.

Speaker 2: 15:28

Yeah. I have resources in most major cities in the country with professionals who can help my clients to be able to answer those questions for them. And what I love about them is that they have the heart for this. They, they feel compelled to help because they don't make any money from just answering these questions and helping people plan ahead. They don't make money until they actually make the sale. Which oftentimes for our clients doesn't happen until many months, if not years, sometimes down the road. But it's super helpful and, and they like doing that for people because they know that it helps everyone feel less anxious and more secure. Plus the added benefit to doing all of this in advance of negotiations is that you know, what your bottom line is, what you have to walk out of mediation with or you have to leave mediation, you know, negotiations. If you can't get to that number because you can't, you can't make it work or you know, obviously if there's legal reasons why that's what you're gonna have to accept, then you gotta go back to the drawing board with your budget. And that may be the case too. So financial people can also help with some of that tough love that may be necessary to help people come back down to reality that going from a dual income household or even just a two adult household to single adult household is gonna be tighter than, and, and a lot more work than it was when there were two. So it's a hard lesson and sometimes people have big chips on their shoulders about having to do it, but it's , um, makes life so much more peaceful when, when our clients can accept that and can financially plan for it ahead of time.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Well, and and unfortunately, you know, the divorce process takes a a bit of time. You know, even if you're going through it speedily, it could still be three to six months just filing things very, you know, like with no problems

Speaker 2: 17:20

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Speaker 1: 17:21

During that time period. Or even when you're thinking about it, most people think about getting divorced for years before they actually decide to even tell the spouse or, or make a decision in that time period. You get to start to heal yourself a little bit and you get to start to decide the areas that you're gonna cut back. You know, like this isn't traditional budgeting in like, okay, you're not gonna have your Starbucks anymore. No. Like, if there are things that make you, you know, happy and fulfilled, then it's, it's making space for those and then coming back off of the keeping up with the Joneses, you know, like, let's keep the house because I want everybody to think that nothing's happened and we're still the perfect family that we were before. Like that's a lot of what is the hard conversation? Like how am I gonna tell my kids that we can't afford to do this? Like maybe I'm just a tough love mom 'cause I'm like, Hey, no, you're not gonna have it. It's too much. That's ridiculous. You know? But, but those are the hard conversations that I think that they're also kind of coming to you and having these discussions, right? It's not just, you know, some of them might come out , uh, some people come out with some money to maybe start a business, to start a nonprofit , to do different types of things. And so what, what are some of the other things besides just budgeting? Because budgeting gets them into the reality, right? We're not saying these have to be low budgets, we're just saying you now are in control of your future and you have to know how you're gonna survive. Right? So what else can they do to kind of secure a financial future or look at like long-term money goals?

Speaker 2: 19:10

So in , I mean, in the budgeting process, of course we're talking about the long-term financial goals, whether it's kids, college, retirement, weddings, cars, whatever. Um, and so, you know, that they kind of go hand in hand in in planning for them. But , um, the things that people can do are a, to make sure that they're getting a, a reasonable settlement out of their marital estate since more than likely most of our clients at least have, have something that they've put away. Whether it's house equity or retirement plans or something that they can, you know, leverage at least to get a , a portion of in the divorce process, we hope. And , um, and if not, of course they still have, have an opportunity to build their own financial future by meeting with financial advisors and planners who can help them even fine tune their budgets even more to put some money away every month to be able to save and to put them in investment instruments that are going to grow at whatever level of risk tolerance they have . So I don't actually do that as ACPA and a fraud examiner and forensic accountant. Uh , my work is all just with them during the divorce process. Unless they want help learning how to file their own taxes after divorce, that's the one thing that I'll do with them afterwards. So I hand them off to a financial advisor and a fin and or financial planner to help them take the money that they've been awarded in their divorce process and figure out how to prepare for the long-term future that they're wanting financially. Um, so I think that it's really valuable to have somebody in that profession in their corner. Um, I, I don't like the stock market personally. I <laugh> I am very risk averse. So if I were in charge of my own investing, I would probably not have very much other than my equity in my house, which, you know, stroke of luck. So <laugh>, I I encourage people to let the professionals who are experts in their fields do their job and stay, you know, stay in our own lanes, which means, you know, don't try to be your own day trader. Your own trader. If that's not your your line of work, hire somebody and you'll be happy that you did because they will be responsible for helping you get where you wanna go.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Well, and I'll give a little bit of an example because I think that when we get into even considering divorce or in the divorce process, we, we kind of are told to, you know, talk to an attorney, get an expert, and then you're off to the races. And I think that this is one of the missing pieces , um, is really understanding like, how am I gonna actually live, you know, like a lot of times we're trying to get you assets or, or big pieces of chunks of something, right? A piece of the house, a piece of the , this a piece of money. And then it's like,

Speaker 2: 22:11

What does that mean? What , what do I do

Speaker 1: 22:13

Now? Right . You know , and we're not always concerned about, well , oh, you'll be fine, you'll figure it out, you'll talk to somebody. And I think that it's important to know that all of those people are still important. Like your financial advisor is still important in your CPA, but they might , you might be misaligning them with like, they're limited to their understanding of how it applies into divorce and, and having the conversation that things are gonna be different. Because just like I started into this conversation, I was like, okay, so let's look at the past and that's how much your budget's gonna be going forward. And that's not, that's a traditional financial view of it. And that's not, that's not how you do it. And you do have some credentials. I used to have the CDFA as well. Um, I think I'm just letting all of them go. I don't know. But how do you as ACPA and A-C-D-F-A assist your clients through the entire divorce journey? Because tell 'em a little bit more about the CDFA and how it, it , it's not only a decent credential if you wanna go into understanding how the finance and accounting world merge with divorce, but maybe you can also tell them like how you're training people to also do this kind of process , um, and learn because it's a , it's a very needed process and it's unique. It's not just CPA, it's not just CDFA. You're kind of creating a unique process and maybe you could tell us more about it.

Speaker 2: 23:48

Sure. So you kind of alluded to it, but , uh, I, my services are very customized to whatever the client needs. So pretty much anything in the financial space as it relates to divorce specific issues is in my purview. The only thing that I don't do and I refer out is business valuations. So, and I have a , a right hand man, I call him my work husband. It's funny , uh, 'cause we are always working together. 'cause that's, I , we have so many cases that , that have the same needs. Uh, so that's the one thing I don't do. But everything else is for, is on the table. So the budgeting is one thing that I recommend for everyone, and I let them do it to whatever degree they want to do it on their own and whatever amount of handholding they want. So, you know, like we talked about, is this gonna be something you wanna look at historical data for? Do you want to figure out what your new life is gonna look like and commit to a , a different kind of budget that looks different from what you might have been doing before spending and bringing in? And then, you know, I have an Excel template that I use because I like to simplify the process as much as possible for people knowing that divorce is just an overwhelming emotional experience for people. I try not to add stress and activity to their plate as much as I can without compromising the value and the , and the necessity of the things they need to do ahead of time. So my Excel template is just very simplified and it's, you know, on a monthly basis, an annualized basis. And , um, and then they can go fill it out and send it back to me for feedback and I'll talk to them about, well, have you thought about what this might do for you? Um, if you considered this type of health insurance program, you know, if you decided to go with a non-traditional plan since your health costs are normally like this, could you consider doing this instead? You know, or your kids are healthy, maybe they could be on this plan. You know, all kinds of options after I've seen it and I'll challenge them . So that's one big part of, of the process with me. And then the other is more of like the, the CDFA role , um, which is C DFAS are actually designed the CDFA licensed , uh, certificate is really designed for financial planners and advisors because they're the ones that have access to the accounts and statements for their client's , um, accounts. And so they naturally become a , an easy resource to be able to build the marital estate in a spreadsheet form and be able to give it to clients or even advise clients about how they should negotiate their division. What I will say though is a challenge that I've seen in the industry and with that particular , um, designation is that attorneys oftentimes feel that c dfas are not, are not neutral and are not necessarily reasonable with their clients because they're , they want their clients to get as much money as they possibly can in hopes that their client will ask them to be their, you know, their financial advisor afterwards. That's not allowed , uh, without some, you know, major finagling that has to happen because the, the C DFAS can't actually take on clients afterwards without a lot of things happening. But that's the impression that attorneys get. And so , um, the key is, is doing this work for me anyway, in a neutral position where if I'm, if I'm representing both spouses, which I do, and that's one of the main services that I offer, I I I use the word mediator very loosely because although I do have mediator training, I don't actually consider myself a mediator because I'm disqualified because I make recommendations to both clients about the best way to move forward successfully. I do the budgeting with both of them. I build their marital estate, I help them in a zoom meeting, all of us together to negotiate their division in a way that sets them and their children and their families up for success for the future without attorneys until the very end when it comes time to write up the legal documents and get them filed. So , um, that's a big service. And then when I'm also doing this for just one client, then I am more of an advocate. Oftentimes it's the spouse who doesn't know as much about the finances and the family and needs education. And oftentimes it's also a spouse who does have a lot of financial knowledge but just isn't good with taxes and wants to understand what are the tax consequences of these decisions. 'cause divorce is so different. Even CPAs will refer their clients to me and say, my client has asked me this stuff and I don't have any idea, can you help 'em ? Because you're specializing in divorce. And there are some unique things that can be done from a tax perspective as a result of divorce negotiations that a lot of times CPAs don't even realize are options. So I do offer those services. And then the training, I'm always big on education because I do think knowledge is power, as cliche as that phrase is. It's very true. So I want people to be able to move forward in life knowing what their decisions mean for them financially. So I, I always educate my clients who are going through divorce, but even bigger right now, I'm working on training a lot of the professionals in the industries who work with clients who are going , who are going to be going through these life transition activities. It's not just divorce, but divorce is probably the biggest one where there's issues that need to be understood and resolved, but also before they get married and, and in death when their parents may be passing away and they're inheriting assets. All of those things create very similar challenges in the financial space. And I want those professionals, like real estate agents, financial planners and advisors, insurance agents to be able to understand what's happening from a bigger picture perspective with their clients so that they can better advise them how to move forward in their own particular area of expertise. So that, like for example, with real estate agents is the first group that I'm starting to train the most right now, and I'm spending a lot of time with them, helping them understand how real estate fits into the full divorce financial picture and also explaining to them about the concept of community and separate properties . Since there are 10, nine states in the country and one optional that have community property rules, I want them to be able and mortgage lenders too, to be able to explain to their clients like, Hey, if the down payment is coming from your inheritance money, did you know that that means something different for your ownership than if you, if your down payment comes from your brokerage account that you've been saving together as married? Because then it opens the door for the conversation. It's an uncomfortable conversation, but it's a necessary one. And at least everyone involved knows what their decisions mean for their financial future In the long term , they might still make the same decisions, but I can tell you that a lot of my clients who I do the forensic work for and and tracing separate property for, tell me good grief, if I had known this rule before I got married, I would've invested very differently.

Speaker 1: 31:28

Yeah. Well , and I, I'll say that I don't think people have a clue of how to protect their money in a divorce or getting married, but one of the things that you said I think is, is very interesting and it's about mediation. Mediation right now is like the wild west and mediation in divorce, I would say is happening in litigation in, in the courtroom, in the halls, in settlement conferences. So mediation as a concept or really negotiation as a concept. And so it really becomes how smart are you financially at the stages of the divorce, right? And so the more that you can arm yourself with knowledge at the beginning, you can make quicker decisions during the process. But let's be real in divorce currently we are always trying to get settlements and always trying to get things done. And how you negotiate is having pieces of paper that say what you have, what you owe, how much money do you make, what are your expenses. So like these are documents, the budget that you're going to use in the process in order to, and if you're the one doing it, you might bring it to a media like we're loosely calling, you could loosely call everything mediation, right? Because we're just trying to work together to find solutions where the normal solution is not gonna fit that couple, right? And they could be easy as like, you know, nesting concepts where kids stay in the house and the parents come in for one week and then the other parent come . Is that uncomfortable? Hell yeah. Is it worse to put your children uncomfortable for your decisions or you uncomfortable for your decisions? Again, just choices, right ? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> . And that's what, when you are talking to a professional that has a financial and a divorce background, you're gonna have those conversations as opposed to in the real world, they're gonna be like, well, that's not fair. You should stay in that house. That's your house. The conversation is, can't can you afford that house ? Oh, you don't know. Okay, well let's look, okay, we can't, okay, do we have other options? You know, and you're going to have somebody kind of walking you through the process that it, it is not as emotional or like, oh my gosh, everything is like those things are gonna change, but you have these conversations and you slowly make some decisions that you're comfortable with changing. Or some of it does become uncomfortable going from two households to one. And so if they're in that kind of situation , um, you know, and I don't know at what stage people typically come to you at, but maybe you could tell them a little bit more about, you know, when they're considering things or how to reach out to you. And we'll kind of scroll some of, you know, a little bit more about Amy and , uh, what , what's Amy's why for doing this? Like,

Speaker 2: 34:54

Oh gosh, <laugh> <laugh> . Well, so I have been divorced twice and after my second divorce went all the way to trial , uh, the marriage was only two years. And when I realized that my ex was not going to accept reality <laugh> and then we had to go to trial, I realized just how complicated the financials in this process are and that people who don't have the expertise that I have, I mean, I had a 20 year career in audit fraud investigation and corporate accounting. So it was easy for me to put all the numbers together, but to do, but for other people to have to do this. And attorneys, my attorneys were very impressed by all the spreadsheets and things I had prepared and gave them . So it, it just made me realize that there needs to be more support for people going through this process to help them make good decisions. It's, it's also very hard to make decisions unemotionally when you're in a very emotional state. And so I see a lot of people who make irrational bad financial decisions for themselves , purely out of the desire to stick it to their ex and they end up cutting off their own nose despite their faces. So it's, that is what made me realize that this work would be really, really valuable. Plus I've always known that I have a need to be of service to other people. And my career in audit and corporate accounting was slowly sucking the soul out of me. So when I had this revelation, I, this was the perfect , uh, marriage of my professional and personal experience and my desire to really help people. So it's been unbelievably rewarding. I just, I love it so much.

Speaker 1: 36:48

Well, and it is, I would say, you know, the divorce arena and financially is , is rough. And, and you know, like in any given week it's like we're going to battle. And so I think you have to have kind of a, a thick skin and you have to have some passion around it because, you know, the divorce community wasn't built for people to go through it. It was built for them to have difficulty going through it, you know, to be a process. And the financials though , were never really thought about. And so I think that that's, there's sort of an afterthought. We do a lot of things as afterthoughts financially, you know, and even some of the rules and laws in states are kind of not necessarily thought out very financially well or use the right terms or have consistent terms or, you know. And so I also would encourage people to, you know, understand what's happening in your state and , um, you know, reach out to, to people that you think are going to be of benefit. They're , you know, like you and I can't help everyone, but I think that we're trying to fight the good fight and we're trying to train people to also do some of this work. And I would really encourage other CPAs and financial advisors and professionals to reach out to you because I think that you're creating a training that would really be helpful. And it's, it's like, it's just the nuances. Like , and once you know those nuances, you're like, oh, but they make a big, they're , it's, there's sometimes it's a, like, it's sometimes catastrophic

Speaker 2: 38:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:31

To not understand what is happening in the divorce arena. So, so you know, like we might be a little dramatic , um, but you know, I think we've seen the good and bad side of the divorce world and, and we're just trying to help people maybe pave a little bit clearer way , uh, for them. So I appreciate all of your time, Amy. If you have anything else that you wanna add or anything that you think you'd wanna revisit , um, we can certainly provide that. And then we'll maybe we'll come back on for some more topics if they have, you know, we should maybe like run through an example of how to get budgeting because maybe visually people would start to understand it's, you know, it's not that complicated. It's really talking through some of those big issues. You know,

Speaker 2: 39:18

I'm actually almost done with developing an online budgeting course for post-divorce. Um, that will be made available to anybody online pretty soon. So , um, I think that'll be a great resource for people who want ADIY or if they want to work with professionals. It's, it's really just educational and walks them through the template that I have and brings up a lot of the same questions that you and I talked about today and some additional things too to think about that may be impacting your life post-divorce. Um, I think it is going to be a really useful tool and try to simplify a process that , uh, that could be really overwhelming to people who are not used to doing that kind of stuff. The only other thing I wanted to bring up is just, you know, you , you kind of alluded to it earlier too, is that if people are thinking about getting divorced and, you know, going through that and you know, their own healing process and, and are realizing that this is the direction they need to go, it is incredibly invaluable to reach out to a professional like us to start planning that budgetary stuff. Um, and in fact, I have actually had experiences where some people have hired me to help them and they stayed married because they realized that when they took the money issue off the table and felt like they had control of their own financial situation, that they weren't fighting anymore.

Speaker 1: 40:41

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> .

Speaker 2: 40:42

So, you know, there , there are benefits to that too, even if they're not quite over the edge of decision deciding to, to leave. Um, and if, if I can help them stay together and be happy, then boy, that makes me feel great. So divorce is not a not a happy thing. I would love to see nobody go , go through it anymore, so then I can tackle the health insurance problem in the world next <laugh>.

Speaker 1: 41:04

Well, and and the interesting part is like when you go through some of these healing groups and post-divorce groups and , and things like that , um, there is , did you know what money equals in like healing and such trust? So when you have trust issues that usually will manifest in money. And so you're, and if you're in a relationship and the trust issues, you know, you can rectify, you can kind of fix some things and, and, and, and because we use it as control Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , you know , so it's a lot of dynamics of healing that needs to happen for somebody to kind of move to that, that position. Um, but I think that, you know, sooner than later, like, do I think you should hire an attorney first? No, I think you should figure out your fine and you need to do it under the radar. Like you literally need to work with people that understand that this is highly confidential and that we need to do the some of this planning without somebody else knowing so that you can really say, okay, I feel good about this now I have a plan and I take action. And if somebody doesn't understand that in the divorce arena and they call you back up and be like, Hey, were you calling about your divorce plan? Blah, blah, blah , you know, like your whole plan is busted. These, we can't undo these things that happen . You can be prepared , um, and take, and, and what I say is every hour that you put into this process is an hour that you're not gonna pay somebody to do something. But when you find them, then it is worth it to have them really know that piece and do it in efficient way. So you can't be penny foolish. Right. Do the things that you're capable of, you know, do a divorce calculator, do the initial stuff and be like, whoa, that's outta my league. Okay? But then get somebody that helps you walk through it because your attorneys are not gonna know what we're talking about. And that's the reality in divorce right now. And so you really, if you are concerned about the financial talk to somebody who talks the same language as you and you can understand them and they understand what your fears are and your concerns. 'cause that's really where we're coming in is that's a great point. This anxiety about like the future. Well, the more you know, then again, we can't change the reality, but if you understand it, maybe you make different decisions, maybe you do give up the Starbucks, but to keep the Pilates or vice versa, whatever, it's not a judgment call about that. It's a getting a reality about what , what decisions do I need to make to be financially more secure kind of situation. So. Brilliant. Thank you Amy. Thank you. All right . And hopefully we'll have you on again because I think we have , uh, maybe when the training comes out, we gotta walk them through some calculators,

Speaker 2: 44:08

Right? Happy to. Yeah. What a great idea .

Speaker 1: 44:11

I love it. Well, thanks again.