Transcript

Welcome to the Life Unlimited Podcast with Larry Heller. You deserve complete financial advice so you can confidently live your life your way for life. Now, let’s get into this week’s podcast episode.

Hello and welcome to Life Unlimited with Larry Heller from Heller Wealth Management. I’m Larry’s producer Aric, and I’m here to learn along with you the listen audience. Larry, what’s going on?

Hey, Aric. Oh, another beautiful day in New York here. How is things in Nebraska?

Eh, it’s Nebraska. Let’s move on. You have a guest today? I do. So, uh, she’s from Kentucky, so we got Nebraska and Kentucky. Yes. I can tell you that Kentucky’s a whole lot better than Nebraska. So all of our Nebraska listeners, I’m sorry, there’s one of us. It’s me. So anyway, I you’ve given me the privilege of introducing your guest. Can I do that now?

Absolutely.

All right. This is Christine Luken, everybody. As the founder of the Financial Dignity Movement, [00:01:00] Christine Luken has coached hundreds of high-earning professionals, business owners, and divorcing women to pay off staggering amounts of debt and massively increase their net worth.

The author of three books and host of the Money is Emotional podcast. Christine Blends Wise money management with emotional intelligence and serves as a member of the National Association of Divorce Professionals. That is a fantastic resume. Larry, I think I’ve joked about this before. I’m not sure if I read three books and she’s written three.

Come on. I mean, this is awesome. I’m to start. It is like three good books. So time to start, Aric. All right, I’m on it. I’m on it. So what are you guys talking about today? I’m pretty excited to hear this.

Well, we’re gonna focus a little bit more on the, divorce side and what to do and what about money and mm-hmm. Uh, we’re gonna let Christine kind of explain that. So, uh, so that’s what we’re gonna do today, Aric.

All right. Fantastic. I’m all ears.

Great. Christine, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So, so I, I’m gonna [00:02:00] start. So I, I did read one of those three books, Aric, so, so the book, actually, I have the book here, uh, financial Dignity After Divorce, if everyone can See. Right, right there. So, so Christine, you know, it starts off right from the beginning. You share something really personal about hitting, financial rock. Bottom. Mm-hmm. Uh, despite having a accounting degree. So why don’t you tell the audience kind of what happened?

Yeah, so I call it my almost divorce because I almost married the wrong guy. Right. I found myself at age 26. In financial trouble. I was deeply in debt. I was in this unhealthy relationship with a guy who was not good with money. He was in and outta jobs, and even in and outta jail. I thought if I just loved him enough that he would change. And he did. He got worse. So after being with him for seven years, I [00:03:00] realized, wow, we’ve graduated from college.

We’re supposed to be acting like adults now and getting our crap together, so to speak. And he was just stuck in that college boy mode. And I was just done with that. And the problem was, I didn’t have enough money to leave him. I mean, my bank accounts were negative. My credit score was about 3 0 1.

I j I used to jokingly say it was negative, but then I found out like the lowest it can be is 300. So it was probably 3 0 1. Okay. But I mean, I owed payday lenders money. I mean, my finances were a mess. And a good part of that was because of that relationship I did things with money in that relationship to keep the peace that I never would have done previously.

And so I really [00:04:00] understand firsthand that smart people can do dumb things with money, and when we’re in unhealthy relationships, it can really tarnish our relationship with money. And depending on the things that happened to us and the different traumas that we might experience in relationships and in divorce and breakups, those things can actually.

Come with us into our new life. And I think one of the best things that I did when I left that relationship was to get counseling. So first of all, I had no idea what codependency was. And I learned pretty quickly what that was. And it permeated the whole relationship, not just the financial piece of it, but you know, our finances are not in a silo.

They touch every part of our lives and. This comes to the forefront in a [00:05:00] big way during divorce. Yeah. So, so I mean, you know, why do you think, money is so, emotional to us. Yeah. Well you know, my first book is Money is Emotional. Prevent Your Heart From Hijacking Her Wallet and I just knew from my own experience that money was emotional and I saw it in my clients and the people that I was helping with their personal finances, like I could see them.

Even though they had like the checklist of the stuff that they were supposed to do, it was like they couldn’t make themselves follow through or, you know, they would for a time and then they’d kind of fall off the wagon. And, you know, this was back in the early two thousands where we weren’t really talking about behavioral finance.

We weren’t. Talking about money, mindset and things of that nature in the personal finance space. And the stuff that we were talking about, [00:06:00] behavioral finance, we were talking about it in psychology circles. We really weren’t talking about it in the day-to-day management of personal finances.

So I realized that that was largely missing from the personal finance space. And about a year after I published money is emotional. I found out that science has actually proven that the moment of decision happens in the same part of our brain. That process is emotion, so we literally can’t take emotion out of the decision making process, whether it’s about money or anything else.

Our emotions are going to color our decisions, and so, Once we understand that, then we can start developing emotional intelligence. We can start to learn how to manage our emotions [00:07:00] rather than being the victim of our emotions. Hmm. Very interesting. Now, you know, in your book, financial Dignity after the divorce there, I mean, it’s a great book to, to read after you’ve divorced, but it’s it, it could be extremely helpful to read, you know, before or during a divorce Absolutely as well.

So you mentioned, I think this would be important for. People that are contemp or going through or about to go through, you know, three costly divorce mistakes. Mm. Would you mind sharing that with us? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the three mistakes are using money as a weapon. The second one is giving away the store, and the third one is the deer in the headlights.

So using anger as a weapon is probably what most people would think. Like as soon as I say that, they kind of have this picture in their heads. Mm-hmm. [00:08:00] And a lot of times there can be anger in divorce, especially when the person feels like. They were the victim in the situation. They were cheated on, their soon to be ex-spouse spent a bunch of money you know, whatever.

They feel like they’re the victim of the circumstance. They didn’t choose the divorce, and it can be really tempting to try and get revenge on the other person using money. But the one thing we have to realize is that, in, in a marriage situation where there’s not a prenuptial agreement, that half the money is yours, right?

So if you’re doing like revenge spending, half of that money is yours anyway. So it’s not like you’re really punishing the other person, right? It’s like half of that is yours. Anyhow. Mm-hmm. But the example that I use [00:09:00] in the book is there was a woman who, I mean, and I understand her anger, her ex-husband cheated on her with her best friend.

So she was really, she was really pissed off about this. Mm-hmm. And so, what, you know, she got half of his 401K money. In the Quadro because she was a stay-at-home mom. Well, she told her financial planner that she wanted to withdraw $50,000 of that money. Now, she was not of retirement age, so she was basically pulling it out early, so there was gonna be penalties.

So she pulled that money out and she bought a red BMW convertible because she wanted to throw it in his face. That she had spent, quote, unquote, his money on this fancy car every time she dropped the kids off or mm-hmm. Picked them up at his, you know, at his [00:10:00] house. And, her financial planner had pleaded with her and, and begged her like, don’t do this because, she, she got hit with the penalty.

She got hit with the taxes. Mm-hmm. And then, She missed out on all the growth of that because she was 10 to 15 years away from retirement. So that $50,000 car probably cost her closer to a quarter of a million dollars. When you figure all those factors in there. So what I suggest to people if they’re feeling a lot of anger as they’re going through the divorce, is to find a productive outlet for it and.

Something physical is perfect for that. Like go take a kickboxing class. Take up running, do something that’s going to get that angry energy out of your body because the best revenge. [00:11:00] Is your long-term financial success. Mm-hmm. So I’m gonna, I wanna go back even a little bit further than that. In your book where you talk about when you’re really just starting to get divorced and the things you talk about, the first one you said is not to use the same attorney.

Oh, yes. So, yeah. Which I didn’t even think you were allowed to do, but I guess you can do anything in a divorce, but that, that people would be using this the same at attorney. So that’s one. The second one that you mentioned is playing ostrich. So what, what, yeah, what do you mean? What do you mean by that?

Yeah, that’s definitely a big mistake that that’s just burying your head in the sand when it comes to what is going on with the finances and many times. This is, this happens with the person who wasn’t proactive with the personal finances. You know, their spouse handled the vast majority of the day-to-day.

You know, [00:12:00] spending bill pay, managing the bank accounts. If that person doesn’t feel like they’re a natural numbers person, then it can feel overwhelming. However, if you bury the head, your head in the sand and you don’t. Go out there and find out, well, how much money do we have in all the accounts?

Mm-hmm. How much do we have in debt? What are our investment balances? The other person could spend down assets and or potentially even hide money. Mm-hmm. And you wouldn’t even know it. And so, one of the tools that’s in the book is the divorce and money checklist, where it’s like, Hey, as soon as you are thinking the D word, here’s all the things you need to start gathering so that you can get your hands around what’s been going on in our personal finances if you haven’t been involved on a deep level.

Absolutely. Which leads into the, your [00:13:00] third mistake that you mentioned there are not having a third partying sounding board, such as a certified divorce financial analysis, C D F C D F A. Um, which I, which. To me, it makes so much sense, especially for the non-financial spouse. I’m not gonna just call ’em wo women, cuz believe it or not, we’ve had a, we’ve had two men who have stay-at-home dads who aren’t the financial spouses who are going through the same thing.

Yep. But I don’t know. But what, what you’ve found, and maybe there’s a big disconnect with a Maimon attorneys, but if someone’s, you know, getting divorced, the first thing is they do, they pick up the phone, they call the attorney. Right. And the attorney, you know, gets all the financial information, but most of ’em, I’m not recommending that they get a, a sounding board here such as a CPA or a C D F A.

So how do you kind of get the word out there that, hey, you’re going through this divorce, you’re gonna be spending money on an attorney, but yes, you gotta hire another. Sounding by another [00:14:00] financial person. And why is that? And sometimes I think that should be your first call before the attorney call.

Yeah, potentially. And it really depends on the individual and their specific needs. But what I find frequently is the. Basically the, the person that’s taken the lead in the finances is usually the one that has the closer relationship with the financial planner, with the C P A, with the banker and the other person.

Although they may have had conversations with those people and they may know who they are, they may not feel super comfortable with those people, especially knowing that the relationship is going to end. And they wanna have that confidential person that they can confide in and that they can feel is giving them their unbiased opinion and is a hundred percent on their side.

And with [00:15:00] most financial planners, they’re basically being paid out of your investments. So you may not. Actually be paying them a fee upfront, because I know that’s also a consideration with people, right? It’s like as soon as they think about divorce, they’re like, oh my gosh, this is gonna cost a lot of money.

And they wanna, they wanna clamp down and not let the money go anywhere. But I have found if they don’t have some sort of financial counsel as they’re going through the divorce, There can be some major mistakes made that cost them even bigger money over the long run. Yeah.

Absolutely. You know, in trying to, we speak to a lot of matrimonial attorneys in trying to, get them to understand that, to counsel their potential client, how important that I that is, is still, I think in the infancy stages. I think the attorneys still really take [00:16:00] control over that part of it.

And reading and hearing from you, and a couple chapters in the book about how important that is, is is really critical. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and most of us financial professionals want to w work in cooperation with. The other people who are helping the person through divorce, you know, that’s important.

You know, I’m not necessarily helping with the investments, but I, I do have a lot of divorce and matrimonial attorneys who will refer clients to me because their clients have been largely uninvolved with the day-to-day finances. Mm-hmm. And. They may even be having trouble getting information from them to say, okay, I need to know what your expenses are.

And they’re like, I don’t even know. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, they don’t know what questions to even ask, so. Right. Yeah. So, so, but let’s say we’ve gotten, you know, you know past that and you know, the, your book talks a lot about [00:17:00] money and, emotions. So, you know, so a, as you going through divorce, after the divorce, you know, how can you increase your, what you call your emotional intelligence so you can make money decisions that you’re happy with now and in the future.

Yeah. So one of the best things or the best pieces of advice I can give people is to wait for strong emotions to subside and then make your financial decision. So I honestly think that the best financial decisions are made when we consult both our intellect and our emotions. So I don’t know if you’ve ever.

Gone against a gut feeling where, you made a decision logically on paper it seemed like, this was the right thing to do, but you kind of had that gut feeling of eh, I don’t know. Something seems off, but you’re like, I. You know, you just kind of brush it off. Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] And then later on down the road, you find out why that was.

You know, you gotta trust your gut and you do need to check in with your emotions, but we also wanna make sure that we are listening to the voice of reason and not just our emotions. And the analogy that I like to give is that, It’s almost like two radio stations are playing at the same time. Hmm. And so you’ve got the voice of reasons, kind of like the classical radio station, right?

So it’s, it’s kind of real soft and real low in the background, but the voice of Reas or the voice of emotion, it goes up and down, right? Mm-hmm. So it’s kind of like the top 40 radio station. So you could have this really loud. Rap song come on, and then it, it’s immediately followed by some soft love song, right?

So it goes up and down. What we wanna do is make sure that the emotional volume, [00:19:00] Comes down enough so where we can also hear that voice of reason. And people can typically know when that happens. You know when your emotions are very high, you know it, you feel it in your body. Mm-hmm. Most financial decisions don’t need to be made on a dime.

Right. They can wait 24 hours or 48 hours. And I also think that this. Kind of goes back to what we were talking about previously, about having that financial sounding board. Mm-hmm. When we’ve got somebody, like a financial planner, a financial coach, that we can say, Hey, here’s what’s going on. You and I don’t have any emotional connection to that divorce.

Like we don’t feel that emotional charge to the extent that the other person does, and we can. We can amplify that voice of reason for them. Absolutely. I mean, obviously the money is very [00:20:00] emotional, but, you know, the biggest thing that, what I see with going through the situation that becomes emotional is the house and how they, how you get so, attached or you, you make certain decisions about this mm-hmm.

Without really looking at it from a financial sit situation. So, what do you, how do you counsel somebody about that? Yeah. Well, and I, I think I talk about that specifically in, in the book is, do I stay or do I go, right? Mm-hmm. And for some people, they just wanna go because there’s a lot of bad memories there.

Other people, they wanna stay because, they raised their children there and, there was all these wonderful positive things that happened. Or I see this a lot. They don’t wanna move out of the house because they wanna keep things as stable as possible for the kids, right? Mm-hmm. And they say, you know, [00:21:00] I don’t wanna pull ’em out of their school system, or I don’t wanna pull ’em away from their friends.

But we really have to look at, can I afford to stay in this house? And if I am stretching myself too thin, I’m gonna be stressed. Which means I’m not gonna be a positive and present parent, and if I’m putting my financial health at risk long term to try and keep this house, that’s not good either.

Really the goal as a parent is to be positive and present and have a good, strong, solid financial foundation. And home is really where you make it, right? Yep. I mean, there’s probably things that you can take from your house and, make the next place be as, as homey as you can make it, but, [00:22:00] You’re right.

Some people do get extremely emotional about the house. Yep. So, and you, you talk about, you know, a couple things in the book, which I thought were great when it comes to, to to money and some suggestions that you have is one was writing a letter to money. How’d you come up with a hat idea?

Well, I, you know, one of the things I like to say is money is like the third person in your relationship and even though you are leaving your ex behind you and money are gonna be together forever and. The, the tagline of the book is how to repair your relationship with money, because you do have a relationship with money.

It’s kind of like when we say you have a relationship with food, right? Mm-hmm. The, there’s, there’s emotions, there’s social constructs around it. It’s not neutral, right? And so I [00:23:00] ask people to think about, how are they interacting with money? How are they. How are they treating money? You know, if money was a person, would money feel respected, would money feel like they’ve been abandoned by you?

Because you never pay any attention to it. So I, I often find that some of my divorcing clients, it’s almost like. After their ex leaves because their ex handled the majority of the money. Mm-hmm. It’s almost like figuratively, they’re sitting on one end of the couch and money’s sitting on the other end of the couch and they don’t even know what to say to it.

Right. Because their only interactions with money. When they were married was through their spouse, right? Because they abdicated all of the responsibility and the authority to their, to their spouse. So they have to learn how to start relating to money again. And, you know, if you wanna have a positive relationship with money, [00:24:00] you do have to spend time with it.

You do have to respect it and, and speak positively of it. And the reason why I have that exercise is because I. That’s really a good test to see. What is the state of your relationship with money right now? Hmm. So if money was a person, what would you say to money and, my letter to money is in there.

Mm-hmm. And I basically, I felt like I did money wrong because I didn’t protect money. Right. So I was making the majority of the money. And I allowed my ex-fiance to misuse the money and he would talk me into doing really stupid things with money. And because I was a people pleaser and I wanted to keep the peace mm-hmm.

He knew how to wear me down. So I would give into his schemes. And it was almost like, [00:25:00] I felt like my relationship to money was like, I didn’t protect it. Almost like money was this child. Or teenager and I didn’t protect money the way I should and money, and I stayed in that relationship way too long.

Like I should have taken money and left the relationship a lot sooner. And so to me it was like I had neglected money. You know, it wasn’t the way some of my clients were where they felt like. Oh, I’ve just ignored money and didn’t have any relationship with it at all. You know, to me it was like I allowed money to be misused, and so I felt bad and I felt guilty about that.

And writing that letter kind of processed through all those emotions. And then once the letter is written, I tell people to take a couple of days to think about, okay, this is my current relationship with money. This is how I feel about [00:26:00] it. What do I want it to look like? What do I want it to feel like?

And then rewrite that letter to money as if it’s a year in the future or two years in the future. And how do you wanna be trading money? How do you wanna be interacting with money? Mm-hmm. How do you want money to be supporting you in your happiness? And a lot of people have never really given themselves permission to think about that.

Yeah, no. Great. Great, great suggestions. And the last thing that I wanna, you know, bring up, I mean, We work with a lot of mostly women who are the non-financial spouse and mm-hmm for a couple different ways. The divorce a widow, and, in all likelihood, women live longer than men.

So at some particular time that woman who’s a non-financial spouse is gonna, whether it’s through a divorce or whether it’s. Through the loss of a spouse is gonna need to be able to handle, handle money, [00:27:00] so mm-hmm. Even though that’s not their strong fault than the spouse maybe that we think it’s critical that they, you know, learn about that before that time comes.

Right. And you talk a little bit about the non-financial spouse raising their financial iq. Yeah. So, So, I mean, I, I can’t be, you know, more agree more than that, but what are some of the things that they could do for that? Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s so easy these days because we have all of these free resources, right?

You’ve got this wonderful podcast. I’ve got the Money Is Emotional podcast. There are lots of books out there that Aric hasn’t read about Pod, about money and personal finance. And so it’s just like, find somebody that resonates with you. There’s so many voices out there in the personal finance space where you can start learning about the basics and you know, you don’t have to be an expert on [00:28:00] investing or estate planning, but just start diving in and, you know, start, start to learn some things.

It’s not. It’s not hard, you know, I think unfortunately, I have seen some financial professionals who make it more complicated than it needs to be because they wanna appear smart. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And. That’s not me. That’s not you. We wanna make this information accessible to everyone, and it doesn’t have to be hard.

No. A a absolutely. You can explain it in the right way so they can understand it. They don’t need super technical skills, but they need, just have enough so they can under understand the, the basics and the cr and the important aspects of it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And even if, let’s say you’re in a happy marriage right now and your spouse is handling the majority of the money, you know, all you need to do is say, Hey, you know what?

I realize that I’ve kind of left you to [00:29:00] handle all of this, and you’re doing a great job, but I’d like to be a little more involved so I know what’s, I know what’s going on, and so that I can, I can help share the burden because sometimes the person that’s taking care of everything, Feels the weight of that responsibility because the other person doesn’t wanna be involved at all.

Yes, I mean, it’s maybe changing a little bit, but just having both spouses together at, at, at meetings and I, I do have one client, one friend who kind of the spouse doesn’t wanna be involved, but once a year he kind of has their financial. Meeting to really go through everything.

Mm-hmm. Everything with it just to show where everything is and explain it and talk about their income and their expenses. So if you’re that spouse, that non-financial spouse right now, be a great thing to go the, to your spouse and say, let’s have that meeting once a year so we can really, so I can at least get an i an [00:30:00] understanding of where everything is.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what? Personal finance apps make this so easy. That’s one of the things that I do with my clients is I, I help them set it up and, both spouses can log in and look at it and see what’s going on. So even the person that’s not doing the day-to-day money management can log in.

And see the big picture of what’s going on. Yeah. A a a a Abso. Absolutely. So this has been great. I think our audience learned a lot from this today, but if you wanna, you know, speak to Christine or, or purchase one of our, our books and learn more about some of these topics, Christine, where can they reach out to you?

Yeah, they can, uh, hop over to my website, which is my name, christine luken.com, and I’ve got books, courses, and if people are interested in one-on-one coaching, all the information’s right there. Great. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show today, Christine. This was great. Thanks for having me. Oh, Larry, she’s funny.[00:31:00]

That’s great. I was just at the library while you guys were talking. Check, checking out some. Let’s be honest, I was checking out some 3d. I was one of you to listen to while I was, I was done. Listen, no, I’m just kidding. This was fantastic and Christine, I don’t know if you know this about Larry, but Larry has a ton of podcasts on his belt.

One of the things you guys didn’t touch on today, because I know it’s not part of the overall picture of what you guys wanted to get across, but money is emotional for parents. And for grandparents, and there’s so many levels to what decisions you have to make. And Larry has touched on that in many of his podcasts as far as you want to help your family mm-hmm.

But you gotta guard yourself as well. And so I, I love the fact that he’s covered this. I love that he brought you on the show, Larry. This was great. Um, I love it. I know that you gave Cine an opportunity to give her contact info folks that want to talk to you, uh, and that, that and what you do and how you incorporate folks like this into not only your podcast, but the things that you do with your clients.

How do they get ahold of you? Sure. Well, first, I mean, they can check out our podcast Life Unlimited on YouTube or on [00:32:00] various sources, right from our web website. We do have a one podcast that I did with Belinda, which is solely on investment in women. So, but you can go to our website, hello wealth management.com, or if somebody wants to schedule a, a call with myself and one of our planners, they can reach out to us at 6 3 1 2 4 8 3600.

Fantastic. Christine, thank you again so much for being a great guest. Larry, thank you for hosting this podcast and, and getting out educational material to everybody worldwide. Really, this thing’s all over the place. iHeartRadio, iTunes, Spotify, you name it, you’re on it. So thank you so much for that. And of course, our last thank you always goes to the listening audience.

Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the Life Unlimited podcast with Larry Heller. If you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, Please click the subscribe now button below. This way when Larry comes out with a new podcast, it’ll show up directly on your listening device. And if you’re watching this on YouTube, we’d appreciate a like and a follow there as well.

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