We previously wrote about what you need to do when you get married. However, life does not always go your way and you might find yourself needing to divorce. Divorce is an emotionally and mentally draining process that involves many parties. More importantly, what happens after is a big financial change in your life. In this article, fundMyLife shares tips on how you recover financially after a divorce.
#1 Step up
If you were the one handling the household expenditure and finances, you should have less trouble managing your finances post-divorce. However, if you’ve always let your now ex-partner handle things, you’ll have to step up to take charge of your own finances again.
The difficulty depends on how dependent you were on the other partner for keeping track of finances. Fret not, there are plenty of tools out there. It ranges from simple things like an Excel spreadsheet, to finance tracking apps like Seedly. You’ll also need to read up on personal finance from media sites like DollarsAndSense, SG Budget Babe, and even our own blog posts.
#2 Review your expenditure
As mentioned, make sure you keep track of your expenses so that you know where and what you’re spending on. If you track your expenses, you can make better plans for where your money go. Then again, this is a generally good habit to have when it comes to personal finances for everyone.
#3 Set up a budget
Since there is the possible transition from a double-income household to single-household one, you will have to redo your budget to reflect this change. You’ll have to cut back on luxuries and set a realistic budget.
Also, expect your expenses to increase slightly. In the past, you might have purchased groceries in bulk for family use. Now, you purchase things only for yourself. However, some expenses don’t end after a divorce. If you have a child, you still need to pay child support. Similarly, if you two shared a pet and you decided to take custody of the pet, you’d be responsible for keeping it and its upkeep.
#4 (Re)gain financial independence
If both of you and your ex-partner were working before the divorce, you’re less vulnerable since you’re financially independent. However, if you quit the workforce to be the homemaker, going back to the workforce may be tough. This is more so if you haven’t been working for a while.
To address this, reskilling is an option to equip yourself with employable skills. For example, you can use your SkillsFuture to learn a new trade. If you still have trouble finding a job, you can book an appointment with an employability coach from the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) for career guidance and coaching. It is hard to recover financially after a divorce if you cannot feed yourself – make sure you’re as independent as possible.
#5 Speak to your financial adviser
Just as how marriage counts as a life event that requires a financial portfolio review with your financial adviser, a divorce is also a life event that demands a similar treatment. As such, it is important to speak to your financial adviser to readjust your portfolio to take your new and old expenditures into account.
For example, in the past if your beneficiary of your life insurance was your ex-partner, you would need to change the beneficiary to someone else. Another example is that you no longer need to service your mortgage insurance after selling your HDB. And you might have to strike out your ex-partner from your will.
Ask fundMyLife financial questions today!
We hope this article is useful to you if you’re going through a divorce, or if you’re considering it. It’s a huge change to your finances after splitting with your partner, but it is definitely possible to recover financially after a divorce.
If you want to engage more financial advisers, or if you haven’t found the right one, why not consider advisers of fundMyLife? You can head on over to fundMyLife and ask our awesome financial advisers questions. Alternatively, you can check out our curated pool of individual advisers and ask them questions directly.
There is life after a divorce. You got this.
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