EP 84: Start Here in 2017 – Steps to Take Before Divorce

Divorce and Your Money exists to help you during one of the most difficult times in your life. We have developed many resources to help you, all available at www.divorceandyourmoney.com.

Online Courses
We have two great courses for you that provide you easy-to-understand, in-depth information for ways to protect yourself during divorce.
D101: Steps to Take Before Divorce  – Everything You Need to Know BEFORE Hiring an Attorney
D102: How to Get a Divorce without Losing Everything – 12 Ways to Avoid Common Divorce Settlement Mistakes in 2017

Our Book
For those who want an overview of the entire divorce process, consider getting my book Divorce and Your Money: The No-Nonsense Guide on Amazon

1-on-1 Coaching for You
Want 1-on-1 Help? Just visit us at https://www.divorceandyourmoney.com/coaching/

Start Here in 2017

This is the episode you need to listen to if you’re getting divorced in 2017. I’m going to start with the big idea. What is all this about? I’m going to tell you in about a hundred and thirty-six words.

You spend a year engaged, you hire an expensive wedding planner, invest tens of thousands of dollars on your ideal wedding. Unfortunately, your marriage doesn’t last forever and it’s time to get a divorce. Well, who helps you plan the ideal divorce? It’s not as simple as hiring the attorney your friend used, or the one you saw on the billboard. You soon discover that the legal transaction of divorce is just a small piece of the whole experience. There are emotions to work through, friends and family to deal with, dozens of documents to gather, kids to take care of and the rest of your life to prepare for. The essence of it though, boils down to this; Marriage is about love, and divorce is about money. I am here to help you navigate through the complex business of divorce. Maybe this is your first or second divorce, but I get to help thousands of people each year across the country navigate this difficult period. My mission is to educate you and to help you get through, not only today, but prepare yourself for a prosperous future.

Now in this episode I just want to go through and share with you some of the resources that we have available to help you. They’re all available at divorceandyourmoney.com. That is the place to find everything that I mention. That’s again, divorceandyourmoney.com.

When you get there, you will see an email list, a box, or even a popup that says, “Join the Community” or something to that effect, and it asks for your email address. That is the place that you should put in your email, and I will start sending you customized updates depending up on where you are in the divorce process. Also, information you need to know that helps walk you through step by step, the things you need to know as you prepare for divorce. You’ll get that on the email list. It’s also a good way to communicate with me directly. If you have a question about something I send out –I send out updates every week, or sometimes multiple times a week –you can just reply to the email and I will be there to answer it for you, or we will set up a phone call.

Also on the website, I have a new course. It’s called Divorce 101: Steps to Take Before Divorce. How do you find it? You go to divorceandyourmoney.com/divorce101 or if you just visit the website and click the courses button, you will find it there. This is an awesome new course I made just for you! It will save you thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees, months of fighting, and potentially even cut down on some of the therapy bills. This course, Divorce 101, comes from my experience helping people navigate some really rough and nasty divorces all over the country. What’s in this course? It’s about an hour and a half long. It’s not too expensive, but it has the information that I charge hundreds of dollars an hour for, for some of my clients. I’m giving it to you for a discounted price.

Some of the things we cover in this course (Divorce 101): I start with just giving you a landscape of the thirty-billion-dollar divorce industry. I will teach you the number one most important piece of advice, we’ll go through the divorce process, I will show you how to get organized. This is actually one of the most detailed sections that pays for the course and itself. It has lots of additional worksheets attached to it, and things to keep you on track. You’ll find out for a lot of people the divorce involves a lot of numbers, particularly at the beginning, but also through the whole process. I have these great worksheets and information to help me keep all of that data and help keep those numbers organized, and to walk you through it step by step. I have a section on how to protect your money, and your privacy. I have a section on how to know what options you have when it comes to divorce. It doesn’t have to be a fight where you go to court and drag it out like it’s portrayed on the TV shows. There are other methods available to you to make this a less painful process. I will also teach you how to build the perfect team around you. Your attorney is crucially important but there are also other people that you should have on your divorce team. I also have a special section as you navigate this process.

For the people who have taken this Divorce 101 course, it is an indispensable resource for you as you go through the divorce process. As I said, it’s about an hour and a half of material. If you follow everything in there it’s a whole day’s worth of steps to prepare you before you go through the divorce process.

On top of of that course, if you buy the course, there’s also some bonuses. I always like to give you more than what meets the surface. The course includes a copy of my book, Divorce and Your Money: The No-nonsense Guide. It’s only available on Amazon. This is the first time I’ve opened up my book to another channel. You can get Divorce and Your Money: The No-nonsense Guide. It covers all the major financial considerations you will have as you go through divorce. On top of that, the book is easy to read, it’s easy to follow, and it’s digestible, and it comes as part of buying the course. On top of that not only do you get the hour and a half of course, the worksheet, and my book Divorce and Your Money: The No-nonsense Guide, it also includes discounts to 1-on-1 coaching. I will tell you now, I won’t tell you exactly how much the discounts are. For coaching, if you take the course, complete the course and you say, “You know what, I got this information. I’m ready for 1-on-1 help.” I’ll tell you more about coaching. There is a huge discount on coaching once you’ve completed the course. Again, you can access the course at divorceandyourmoney.com/divorce101, or if you’re on our website just click on the courses button and enroll. I promise it will be a very worthwhile to you.

Oh, and by the way at checkout, if you use the promo code: PODCAST, if you type in PODCAST at checkout, I will give you a discount on the course. So don’t forget that as well. Those are just some of the resources; just one of the resources really. We’ve only gotten into the course Divorce 101. Well what else is there? Well you’re listening to the podcast now, which as I record this has a full day of content. So if you want to hear me speak to you about divorce –sounds really exciting for the whole day –you could do that non-stop and not take a break. Over twenty hours of material that you can find on the podcast. If you look through the episode, you will see just about every subject covered when it comes to divorce, and I’m always adding stuff that’s new each week. You should subscribe to the podcast to be continually updated with new episodes of the show.

You just click the subscription button on your podcast player. If you use iTunes, you just click subscribe. And then also, check out the episodes that are relevant to you. I have a lot of episodes on popular topics. I have episodes on, “Is your spouse hiding from you?” I have episodes on, “Can you change your divorce settlement.” Now that’s a very important episode that a lot of people check out. I have episodes on, “Can you afford the marital house? Can you really afford to keep it?” Lot’s of episodes how to prepare for divorce. Also, I have lots of great interviews with experts in the divorce industry. We’re talking about people who are experts in parenting, child support, attorneys, other financial experts, mediation experts, whatever it is you need or you might be thinking about. I have other experts on the show in interview format, that I got to talk to. Check out the podcast, it’s always free. By the way, if you like this episode or other podcast episodes, it’s really appreciative if you’d leave a review. On iTunes, you go to the iTunes podcast app and you click the review button and leave a five-star review. It takes thirty seconds, but it helps other people discover this show.

So, we’ve talked about the Divorce 101 course and we’ve talked about the podcast. What else is there? Well, as I said there’s my book Divorce and Your Money: The No-nonsense Guide. It’s still available on Amazon. I get a report every month of how many people are checking it out, and it is a large number of you. It’s inexpensive, easy to read, and it’s everything you need to know as you go through the divorce process from a financial perspective. So you just go to Amazon, type in: Divorce and Your Money: The No-nonsense Guide. It’s by me, and it’s a great book to help keep you on track and to understand all of the major financial issues, as you go through divorce.

One last resource I want to share with you as you go through this process is 1-on-1 coaching. This is important for you if you have a lot at stake, or you just want additional help. When you think about the divorce process, it’s not something that you can just go to your conventional, financial planner, or your CPA for. Divorce is a highly specific area of the law, of taxes, of financial things you need, and you want a specialist. I help people all over the United States with various issues as it comes to their divorces, to your divorces. Sometimes we’ll do calculations to figure out whether or not you should stay in the marital home, or maybe you should take another asset instead. We’ll see if you can afford a settlement you’re about to sign. Does it really make sense for you, not just this year, but five years from now, or ten years from now?

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they don’t sit and create a budget and figure out if the settlement they’re going to sign will actually provide for their needs. I see it all the time. Sometimes we can even just fill out the statement of net worth, and financial affidavit –which is the first statement that you have to file with the court –that says here is my assets, my debts, my income, and my expenses. It can be really complicated if you’ve never been deep involved in your family finances. Also, I can help you after divorce. If you want some help to make sure your financial plan is on track, then that is something else we can do in the 1-on-1 coaching sessions.

As I say, if you think about other areas of your life, particularly medical issues, you want someone who’s a specialist for you. If you were to have something terrible like cancer, you wouldn’t go to a general practitioner for your cancer. You would go to an oncologist. Or if you wanted to have your knee replaced, you would try and find a surgeon who just does knee replacements and is really good at knee replacements, and has good outcomes for their clients. It’s the same when it comes to the financial issues, and your divorce. You just don’t want to go to a general financial planner, or a general accountant. You want a certified divorce financial analyst who just deals with divorce cases, big and small, and is pretty much seeing all the financial applications that can occur in divorce situations, and that’s what they specialize in. That’s what I’m here for. As I said, I get to help people all across the country for those of you who want coaching.

So to get a coaching session, just go to divorceandyourmoney.com/coaching, or you could email me directly at shawn@divorceandyourmoney.com .We’ll have an introductory call to see if I can help you.

Thank you for listening to this episode. I expect a lot of great information for you in 2017. The podcast in 2016 was enormous, helping tens of thousands of people. This year we’re going to help tens of thousands more. The content is going to be better, the education is going to be better, the blog posts are going to be better. Everything that you hear is going to help you as you go through divorce. If there’s something that you need, don’t hesitate to reach out. You’re never imposing and this is why I’m here, to help you. Stay tuned for future episodes and I look forward to talking to you soon.