Merging Finances In Your Fifties After Getting Remarried

Joe and Jenny Smith

Joe and Jenny Smith are recently married, corporate litigators, both in their early 50s and each have two children from prior marriages. Before coming to Artemis, they had not yet merged their finances, their portfolios, or their households. They also still had three children who needed to get through college, as well as alimony and child support to pay, so they knew the next 5-7 years were going to be a challenge from a cash flow perspective. On top of it all, they want to retire as soon as the last child graduates from college.

How Artemis Helped

  • We built Joe and Jenny a detailed 10-year cash flow projection to ascertain how much cash they would need on hand to complete the children’s education, manage two households in different states, and pay remaining alimony and ongoing living expenses.
  • We convinced Joe to sign up for a home equity line of credit (HELOC) on his home in New York to ensure the availability of cash, given the lumpiness in his income stream.
  • We developed long-range wealth projection to quantify what kind of lifestyle they might be able to enjoy in retirement.
  • We performed a detailed cost comparison of owning two homes until retirement (when they could finally merge households and live in the same state) versus selling one now and renting instead.
  • We determined it was much more cost-effective for the entire family to be covered under Jenny’s health insurance.
  • We identified that they each had very different preferences for taking investment risk and crafted a consolidated investment strategy that effectively responded to these differing preferences.
  • Our insurance review revealed they had more life insurance than needed.

How Joe And Jenny Benefited

  • Per our recommendation, both Joe and Jenny stopped contributing to their 401(k) plans because they were at risk of needing to pull the money back out with penalties to fund their near-term cash flow needs.
  • Jenny was able to see the financial benefit of retaining her home over the next five years.
  • We helped them to save money by reducing their life insurance and consolidating their healthcare insurance.
  • The Smith’s were able to sleep better at night knowing they had created a plan to fund their cash flow needs over the next 5-7 years and retire on time.

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