One of our main goals at Worthy is to empower women to make informed decisions about selling jewelry you’ve outgrown. So when it comes to making smart and educated decisions regarding divorce and your financial situation, we know that consulting with a CDFA® (certified divorce financial analyst) is a way to ensure your financial future is bright. With that in mind, in September 2019, Worthy partnered with the Association of Divorce Financial Planners (ADFP) to conduct a short survey to follow up on our research in Building A Financial Fresh Start from 2018.
The survey was open to the Worthy community, including clients, readers of our newsletter, and our social media followers. We received responses from 659 women across the country. Our biggest takeaway from this survey is that while there are significant financial blindspots for women, they are involved and knowledgeable about their finances. Divorced women recognize that with the ending of their marriage comes the opportunity for them to get educated and take control of their finances.
In order to understand how their financial outlook had changed from pre to post-divorce, we asked what the women’s level of involvement in the household finances had been during the marriage.
When it comes to retirement, studies show that there is a gap between what men and women are able to get out of retirement finance-wise, and one of the leading reasons for this is that they avoid long-term planning and investing. However, there are many easy ways for women to grow their retirement savings. And one of the best ways is to start making smart investments as early as possible.
As our legal experts often point out, there are as many ways to get divorced as there are to get married. To find out how women approach the legal aspect of their divorce, we asked which options were they aware of before starting the divorce process. While most of the surveyed women were familiar with the more traditional routes, like litigation or mediation, only a small percentage of them knew about low-conflict collaborative divorce and working with a CDFA® during divorce proceedings.
| Litigation | 53% |
| Mediation | 48% |
| DIY Divorce | 45% |
| Collaborative Divorce | 25% |
| Working with a CDFA/Financial Planner | 5% |
| None of the above | 23% |
We learned in our 2018 that the financial literacy gap can have a big impact on women in the midst of divorce. We asked our participants if they felt sufficiently informed to make decisions regarding the issues listed below:
| Issue | Yes | No | N/A |
| The marital house | 56% | 28% | 16% |
| College education | 38% | 26% | 36% |
| Children’s extracurricular activities | 42% | 18% | 40% |
| Children’s vacation and/or summer activities | 41% | 19% | 40% |
| Childcare | 39% | 15% | 46% |
| Alimony | 34% | 35% | 31% |
| Health insurance | 60% | 27% | 13% |
| Debts | 56% | 34% | 10% |
| Dividing assets | 57% | 34% | 9% |
| Taxes | 48% | 45% | 7% |
This information is particularly telling as it shows that the majority of women felt sufficiently informed to decide on issues like health insurance or the marital house. However, when it came to issues outside of the immediate household, such as taxes, the participants felt less informed.
We found that only 6% of our participants worked with a CDFA. The reason for this low number? Six out of ten women didn’t know about CDFAs and three out of 10 women couldn’t afford one.
However, 61% believed that working with a CDFA would have been valuable and important to them and their attorney.
Working with a CDFA is beneficial both for the immediate future and for the long-term simply because they are trained to help you get the best financial outcome from your divorce and lay the financial foundations of your new life.
Our participants revealed that 35% of them are currently receiving monthly support payments such as child support, spousal support, alimony or maintenance. Alarmingly, 42% of the surveyed women don’t have a plan to replace that income once it runs out. For the ones that do, their plans vary:
Moreover, 6 out of 10 women contemplate having to work past retirement age to meet living expenses. And 7 out of 10 women consider selling their unwanted jewelry as a way to finance their future.
When it comes to financial goals for the future:
Want more resources and insights on divorce and money? Read the latest finance articles from our top experts.
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