Leah Hadley [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I'm Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor, and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I'll be your guide through the complexities of divorce, finance and emotional wellness. Join me as we uncover practical tips and empowering insights to help you navigate your divorce with clarity and intention.
Leah Hadley [00:00:24]:
There's a moment that happens for a lot of women going through divorce or coming out the other side of it, where they look at their financial life and think, where do I even start? Not because they're not capable, not because they don't care, but because everything they thought they knew about their money was tied up in a life that no longer exists. The accounts, the plans, the assumptions about retirement, the idea of what the future was supposed to look like, all of it has to be rebuilt. And that can feel completely overwhelming. Welcome back to Intentional Divorce Insights. Today I want to talk about that moment, what it actually feels like, why so many smart, capable women get stuck in it longer than they need to, and most importantly, what it actually takes to move through it and build something new. This episode is for you, whether you are in the middle of a divorce right now, whether you have been out of it for a year or two and still haven't fully gotten your financial footing, or whether you're supporting someone you love who's navigating this difficult time. Because here's what I know after nearly two decades of working with women in financial transition, the path forward, it exists. It is absolutely possible to come out of one of the hardest experiences of your life and build a financial future that is stronger, that is clearer, that is more aligned with who you actually are than anything you ever had before.
Leah Hadley [00:01:56]:
But it does not happen by accident. It happens by design. So let's talk about how. First thing I want to address is something that I hear constantly, and I want to gently push back on it. Women come to me and say, I feel like I'm starting over. And I completely understand why it feels that way. I really do. When the life you plan together is no longer the life that you're living, it can feel like you're back at square one.
Leah Hadley [00:02:23]:
But I want to offer you a different frame, because I think starting over isn't only inaccurate. I think it's actually harmful to the work that you're doing. And here's why. Starting over implies that you've lost everything. It implies that you have nothing to build on. And for the vast majority of women that I work with, that simply just isn't true. You have assets, you have income or the capacity to generate it. You have decades of experience managing a household, making decisions, navigating complexity.
Leah Hadley [00:02:57]:
You have resilience you didn't even know you had until the moment that tested it. And what actually is happening isn't starting over. It's a recalibration. You are taking stock of what you have, getting clear on what you want, and building from there. And here's the thing about recalibration. It requires honesty and not panic. It requires clarity, not speed, and it requires intention, not reaction. I've worked with women who came through divorce and told me afterward that for the first time in their adult lives, their financial life was truly their own.
Leah Hadley [00:03:40]:
They got to decide what to prioritize. They got to choose how to invest. They got to build something that actually reflected their values and the vision that they have for their life. That doesn't make divorce easy. Nothing makes divorce easy, but it does make the other side of it not just survivable, but genuinely promising. The framing matters. So starting over keeps you looking backwards at what you lost. Recalibration points you forward to what you're building.
Leah Hadley [00:04:14]:
And where you focus your attention makes an enormous difference in what you're able to create. Now, let me get practical for a moment because I think it helps to name what women are actually dealing with when they come out of a divorce. The financial picture post divorce is almost always more complicated than people expect. And I don't say that to scare you. I say it because complexity is easier to navigate when you can see it clearly. First, there's the immediate cash flow reality. Your household income has changed, your expenses may have changed. The way money moves in and out of your life looks different than it did before.
Leah Hadley [00:04:53]:
And for a lot of folks, especially those who are not the primary financial merit manager in the marriage, this is the first time that they're looking at all of this on their own. Second, there are the longer term assets to sort out. Retirement accounts, investment accounts, property, business interests. In some cases, you know, the divorce settlement determines how these get divided. But what you do with your share after the settlement, that is entirely up to you. And the decisions you make in that first year can have significant long term consequences. And third, there's insurance, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance. These often get overlooked in the immediate chaos of divorce.
Leah Hadley [00:05:38]:
And then folks find themselves uninsured or underinsured in ways that create real vulnerability. And last, there is estate planning, beneficiary designations, wills, power of attorneys, trusts. These need to be updated after a divorce. And, and it's one of the most commonly Skipped steps. I cannot tell you how many people I've worked with who, years after the divorce, still had their ex husband listed as a beneficiary on a retirement account. Now, that is a very fixable problem, but only if you know how to fix it, right? And then underneath all of this practical complexity is the emotional layer. The grief, the anger, the fear, the relief, sometimes the exhaustion that comes from fighting for your financial future while also just trying to hold your life together. All of that is real.
Leah Hadley [00:06:29]:
All of it affects your ability to make clear financial decisions. And all of it deserves to be acknowledged. With all of that as context, let me talk about the three things that I see most often keeping women from actually building a financial plan after divorce. And none of them are what you might expect. The first is waiting for the dust to settle. Now, I hear this all the time. I will figure out my finances once things calm down. And I definitely understand the impulse, believe me.
Leah Hadley [00:07:02]:
You're tired, you're exhausted. You just want one thing in your life to feel stable before you have to take on something else. But here's the truth that I've seen play out over and over again. Things calm down when you have a plan. The plan is what creates the calm. So waiting for stability before you plan is like waiting to feel motivated before you go to the gym. It works the other way around. You take the action first, and then the feeling follows.
Leah Hadley [00:07:30]:
Every month that passes without a plan is a month where financial decisions are being made by default rather than by design. And default decisions almost never serve you as well as intentional ones. The second one is trying to do too much at once. Now, I know I am guilty of this more often than not. But when everything feels uncertain, there is a natural impulse to try to solve it all immediately. Retirement investments, the house, insurance, estate planning, college funding for the kids. Right? All at once. You want to get ahead of everything because you feel behind.
Leah Hadley [00:08:07]:
And what happens when we try to solve everything at once is that we solve nothing. We get overwhelmed and we stop, we close the laptop, we tell ourselves we'll come back to it, and then we just don't. Now, the antidote to overwhelm is not more information. I want to say that again. The antidote to overwhelm is not more information. It is a focus plan with a clear next step. One thing that if you do it this week, moves you forward, then the next thing, then the next. That's how real financial momentum gets built, not a giant leap in intentional sequential steps.
Leah Hadley [00:08:44]:
And the third is not knowing who to trust. Divorce has a way of shaking your confidence in your judgment and other people. And frankly, the financial industry has not always done a great job of making women feel respected or heard or served. So you end up paralyzed. Not because you don't want to move forward, but because you're not sure who's actually on your side. You've heard stories about advisors who push products, who, who talked over women, who treated them like they didn't understand their own finances. And so you wait. Because waiting feels safer than trusting the wrong person.
Leah Hadley [00:09:19]:
Now, if any of these three things resonate with you, I want you to hear this. That is not a character flaw. That is a completely reasonable response to an unreasonable amount of change and uncertainty. You're not behind, you're not broken. You are a smart woman in a hard situation. And you deserve support that actually meets you where you are. So let's talk about what building a real financial plan actually looks like in this season of Life. Because I think a lot of women have an idea of what getting your finances together is supposed to look like.
Leah Hadley [00:09:58]:
And it's more complicated and intimidating than it needs to be. So here's what I want to offer instead. A plan doesn't have to cover the next 30 years to be useful. In fact, trying to plan 30 years out when your life has just changed dramatically is often counterproductive. You just don't have enough information yet. Too much is still in flux. 30 year plan built on a shaky assumptions is not actually a plan. It's kind of a guest dressed up in a spreadsheet, if you will.
Leah Hadley [00:10:29]:
Right. What you actually need is clarity on the next 90 days. So what does your cash flow look like right now? Honestly? What decisions are in front of you in the near term that need to be made? What do you need to protect and what do you need to start building? What is the one financial move, if you made it in the next 90 days, would give you the most confidence and the most momentum. Now, when you can answer those questions, something starts to shift. The overwhelm isn't going to disappear overnight, but it becomes manageable because you know what you're doing next. You have a direction. And once you have a direction, the next step after that becomes clear. Also.
Leah Hadley [00:11:10]:
Now, I want to tell you about a woman I worked with. I'll call her Sarah, though that's not her name. She came to me about eight months after her divorce was finalized. She had a settlement, she had assets on paper, she was all right, but she hadn't done anything with any of it because she had no idea where to start and she was afraid of making the wrong move. We sat down together and we didn't try to solve everything. We looked at her cash flow, we looked at what decisions were actually in front of her in the next 90 days, and we built a plan for that window. And at the end of our time together, she said something that I will never forget. She said, I feel like I can breathe again.
Leah Hadley [00:11:49]:
I want to spend a few minutes on something that doesn't get talked about enough in financial planning conversations. And that's the role of community. There is a tendency to treat financial planning as a private, solitary activity. You sit down with your advisor or you sit down with your spreadsheet and you figure it out alone. And there's nothing wrong with privacy around your finances. That's appropriate. But isolation and the process of rebuilding, now that is something different. And it can make an already hard thing feel so much harder.
Leah Hadley [00:12:22]:
What I've seen over and over again is that women who do this work in community with other women, they move faster, they stay more committed and they come out with plans they believe in and they follow through on. And here's why I think that is. When you are in a room with other women who are doing the same hard, intentional work, something shifts. You hear someone say something out loud that you've been afraid to say, you realize you are not the only one who feels this way. You stop being embarrassed about where you are and you start focusing on where you're going. The shame lifts. And when shame lifts, action becomes possible. There's also that accountability piece.
Leah Hadley [00:13:07]:
When other people know what you said you were going to do, you are much more likely to do it. That's just human nature. We show up differently when we're not doing things alone. Then there is the simple power of being witnessed, of having someone see you do a hard thing and say, yep, you did that. That matters more than we usually admit. Which brings me to something that I want to share with you and I want to be transparent. This is an invitation, not just information. On April 25, we are hosting a one day event called Own youn Path, Design your financial future.
Leah Hadley [00:13:45]:
It's at Williams on the Lake in Medina, Ohio, and it's intentionally small. This isn't a conference. It's not a seminar where you sit in rows and take notes that live in a folder that you're never going to open again. It's a working day. We do the actual work together in the room. Every woman who attends leaves with a real 90 day financial plan. Not a template, not a workbook to finish someday. A plan built during the day around her values, her goals, her actual life.
Leah Hadley [00:14:18]:
We built this event around everything that I've just talked about in this episode. The importance of getting out of overwhelm and into focus. The power of doing this work with other intentional women in the room. The difference between having information and actually having a plan. So if you are in a season of rebuilding, have you been putting your financial life on hold, waiting for the right moment? If you've been meaning to get this together and just haven't found the right support to do it, I want to invite you to consider this registration closes on April 20 and spots are limited by design. I want this room to be small enough that every woman in it gets what she came for. You can learn more at the link below that is available in the Show Notes, but it's on the Watch Her Thrive website. Now, before I let you go, I want to come back to something I said at the beginning of this episode.
Leah Hadley [00:15:12]:
The path forward does exist. I have sat across from women who were convinced that they had waited too long, made too many mistakes, lost too much ground. Women who were not sure they could trust themselves to make good decisions. Women who were exhausted and scared and not sure where to start. And I've watched those same women build something remarkable. Not because they had it all figured out, not because everything went perfectly, but because they decided to take the next step even when they couldn't see the whole path. You don't need to see the whole path. You need to know your next step.
Leah Hadley [00:15:51]:
That is really what building a financial life after divorce looks like. Not perfection, not linear, but intentional. So thank you so much for spending time with me today. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you would share it with a woman in your life who might need to hear it. And if you're ready to take the next step on your own, I truly do hope that we will see you on April 25th. Until next time, be Intentional.
Leah Hadley [00:16:20]:
Thank you for joining me on Intentional Divorce Insights. It's a privilege to share this time with you. I hope each episode offers valuable guidance to navigate your journey. If you find our content helpful, please leave a review to help others discover the benefits of intentional decision making in divorce. Until next time, take care and continue to embrace your path with intention.
