51 BUCKS COUNTY WOMAN

Consider long-term care insurance

Long-term care policies are designed to cover the costs of care if you are unable to care for yourself because of age or if you become ill or disabled. Long-term care is especially important for women because they often pay more for it than men do. The reason is simple: women typically live longer than men and usually require longer care during those additional years.

Review your retirement income plan

The reason that women usually need long-term care insurance more than men is the same reason that retirement income planning for women may be more important. Women live on average five to ten years longer than men. Eighty-five percent of people over 100 are women. This means a woman’s retirement savings usually must be stretched out over more years.

While retirement planning for a single person is easier in many ways than for a couple, remember that you can no longer rely on a spouse’s financial resources. It’s important to review your social security estimates, pensions, and retirement assets. You can then compare that to the kind of lifestyle you would like to have during retirement.

Because retirement may be more expensive, you may want to make an employer-sponsored retirement plan a larger deciding factor in any job search. Also, you may decide that you must retire at a later date than you had originally planned.

Update life insurance details

People often forget to update the beneficiaries of their life insurance and retirement accounts after a divorce. If not changed, your ex-husband may stand to inherit a large portion of your assets. Also, the estate laws give certain breaks to married couples that are not available to a single person. Establishing the proper type of legal trust may be a way to pass along more of your assets to your heirs, rather than to the IRS.

Look before you leap

Finally, after you have moved on from your divorce there may come a time when you consider remarriage. It’s important that you understand the financial effects this may have. If you were married longer than ten years, you may be collecting or entitled to 50% of your ex-husband’s social security benefit. If you remarry you will no longer have that right. While you will become entitled to your new husband’s benefit, you must know if your new husband’s benefit will be lower or higher, and how that will affect your retirement.

Remarriage can also lead to blended families, blended assets, and blended income. Your new husband may have his own family from a previous relationship. A financial professional can help the two of you prepare for this blending in a matter that satisfies the financial needs of each of you, as well as for your new family.

While it’s all in your hands, partnering with a financial professional can help you move on to the next phase of your life with a more solid plan for your financial future.

Story by Loretta Hutchinson MA, NCC

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