I'm 65 And My Retirement's Gone (What Now?)

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I'm 65 years old and I recently found out that my husband lost all of our retirement and all of our money and I ultimately ended up getting a dissolution because he gave me the house. I have no debt basically but I have a $300,000 house. I had to get a job and have a little bit of alimony, a little bit of social security. I have about $70,000 from money that my mom left me and I'm just wondering how to move forward. Do I sell the house and invest the money? Wow. No, Karen. I'm so sorry. Yeah. You said you're how old? 65. How long were you married? 15 years. He's 59. What did he do with the money? He retired at 54 and took a lump sum and then because he dabbled in the market, he decided to do that full time and I managed the daily budget. He managed the retirement money and what I did not know is that he moved his retirement money into his trading account and last year he went all in on something and lost about $500,000. Whoa. And so he left and then he came back and when I found out we were lost the rest of it, I told him to get a job and he left again. Oh, Karen. So what do you make at your career? I retired a while back, many years ago, so I've got, because I'm 65, I don't want to start a career again, so I'm a receptionist and I'm bringing in about 25, well, about 1,600, I mean, yeah, 1,600 a month. Other than your broken heart, how's your health? It's okay so far, I mean, my plan is to maybe work for another 10 years, I'll have to. Okay. Is the house paid for, Karen? It is. It's paid for, okay. He had me take my social security early so I don't get as much there and my 401k's gone, so. That was part of what he lost. Well, we lived off of it for a while while he was investing. Because I was older and I was 59 and a half. So you could take it without penalty, yeah. Yeah. So you got 70 grand and 300 grand and a $25,000 a year job. Okay. Yeah. How we got here doesn't change the answer. Although it just, it adds to the emotion of everything for sure. But I'm still gonna say, I'm gonna set 20,000 of the 70 aside as your emergency fund. I'm gonna sit down with a SmartVestor Pro and invest the 50. And do you sell the 300? I wonder what one. What's the history on the house? Don't wait for the interest rate to be perfect before buying or refinancing a home. Talk to Churchill Mortgage. Smart buyers buy the home they can afford now and then refinance later if rates improve. Churchill helps you make decisions with confidence instead of guessing. And Churchill Mortgage has a webpage with special offers just for our audience. Go to churchillmortgage.com slash ramsayoffer. This is a paid advertisement. NMLS ID 1591. NMLSconsumeraccess.org. Equal housing lender. What's the history on the house? The history? I mean, do you, how long you owned it or? Yeah, we've owned it 14 years. It's in pretty good shape. Um, I mean, if you, if you, if we're only doing math. And all we're trying to do is just maximize everything regardless of, uh, the emotion or regardless of just quality of life. You know, you go buy $150,000 condo and you take another 150 of that house and you put it in good mutual funds. Now you've got 220 at 65. Now it's 70. That 220 will be a half million if you don't add anything to it. So yeah, I'm probably doing that. Go get a condo or something. And then the second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to reset your narrative in your head of I'm 65. I don't have time for another career. Yeah, you do get plenty of time in the world we live in today. Things, things spin up so fast and make so much money so quickly. I would not take somebody as bright as I'm talking to and make them only a receptionist because I'm 65 for the next 10 years and I make nothing. Instead, I'd try to figure out a way to go make some money. And I think, I think you got shops, girl. I think there's some stuff you can do. What was your former career? Um, I was a medical lab technician making about 50,000, which is pretty intense of a job and hard to start over in. You know, um, he, he's supposed to be giving me a thousand dollars alimony, but that's not going to change your life. Well, I don't know if it's going to be besides that. He's not dependent either. Yeah. He's not dependable. He's not, you can't, can't project where you're going to end up with that. But so if I rent, I mean, the alimony, I'd go buy something for $150,000 condo. Yeah. And the condo fees. Yeah. But you know, you got 150,000 freed up when you do that and invest the 50 that's, you know, then you've got 200 and that'll be, that, that will grow to a half million dollars by the time you're 75. And so by the time you're 72, 72. So, and you'll be adding to it during that time. And so you could retire in a very good shape, um, you know, in, in your early seventies, but the thing, the, the, the variable is if we could triple your income and that changes, that changes the math on this dramatically, um, and increases the probability of a good outcome. And the bad news is you're by yourself. The great news is you're by yourself. You don't have to convince anybody to do this, but you, and, um, you, you, you know, all the baggage is in the rear view mirror. Um, that's why they call them an X. Wow. I'm so sorry. I know Karen. That's horrible. Oh, horrible thing to go through. So, um, yeah, gang, we, we, we talk about this all the time, combining your finances and having full transparency and full decision-making as a paired thing. Both of us know everything that's going on. Both of us know. And so that gives us checks and balances when we do that. And I can hear in my other year, people are like, this is why you don't combine, you know, yada, yada, yada, but here's the deal. It's exactly why you do combine because you, you got, you're looking over his shoulder. And the first time he day trades, you shut the whole thing down. Yeah. Well, if you're in, if you're looking at the details of what you're saying, but he took her, they had money combined and he took her 401k. They weren't combined in their operating of their household. Okay. A hundred percent. That's what I'm saying is I can hear someone say, oh my gosh, that scares me. I want to keep my stuff over here to protect it, to make sure that he doesn't touch it. But what I'm saying is you have to, that's it. Yeah. That too. Yes. If you can't sit down together and both of you talk about everything in the going on with your money, you shouldn't get married in the first place. Not talking about her. I'm just talking about in general. Yes. And it's easy in a marriage just to let one person, you do this, I do this. And it's kind of, that's kind of what she said. I did the monthly budget. He did the investing and you both have to be doing both as well. And George just did fresh research and it was amazing. It used to be a lower number, but he found that if a person day trades for consecutively for 24 months, 97% lose money. I believe it. That's all of you. That's stupid. And all eggs in one basket. He put everything in one thing. 90% of the time I drive down that road, a kid throws a rock at my car. You know, I'm not driving down that road anymore. I mean, 97%, that's not even a statistic. That's just a fact now. So just day trading is stupid is what that means. And so soon as somebody says that all of your bells and whistles and alarms need to be going off and going new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new with a capital H. No, we're not doing this. No. Wow. I'm sorry, Karen. I'm sorry. You went through this. I'm not, we're not preaching at you. No, we're just saying that just to be aware. These are the reasons situations like yours are why we get so hyped up against some of the things that happened to you. Yeah. That's what it amounts to. Wow. Karen, call us back if you need us though. We really are. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.