Reassess Your Planning
When the day-to-day stuff is all working nicely, you will need to think a bit further forward and look after your own financial planning.
If you have lost your partner while still working and earning, you will need, unfortunately, to reassess your plans for retirement, which previously you will have made together. This can be really, really difficult. Up to this point all your planning has been with the two of you in mind, and it can seem like a bleak outlook to consider a future without your best friend and partner.
As difficult as this is, I’m afraid you really can’t bury your head in the sand. The future won’t look after itself, and your partner certainly wouldn’t have wanted you to drift through the rest of your life without them. Try to turn your mind to the future, again perhaps with the help of a trusted friend or family member, and start to set things in place.
If you have lost your partner in much later life, then your future planning will largely centre around preparing for your own passing one day and making sure things are tidy for those left behind when you have gone.
But it might also involve planning for needing care one day, or even moving in with family or downsizing your home. Or maybe it’s time to buy that Harley Davidson and go riding off into the sunset – who knows?!
There’s no immediate rush to get on with this; do it in your own time, but again, don’t avoid the need for planning. We all need to look to the future when it comes to our finances, to make sure we’re as well prepared for that future as we can be.
Simplify (Again)
Finally, make sure that your own, sole-name affairs are simple enough for someone else to sort out when the time comes and you yourself pass away. Many times I've worked with people who have had a nightmare sorting out their parents' affairs, say, and as a result want to make sure that their own affairs are more ordered, so that their own kids suffer the same fate.
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