What I Gained When I Lost Half

Divorce Dividends

Early in our relationship, before we were engaged, I excitedly showed off my proceeds from a Nordstrom shopping spree. My habit was infrequent but indulgent: after getting a bonus or tax refund I’d spend a few grand at the mall, usually on work attire.

Years earlier my (male) mentor in a career development program had instructed me to invest a portion of every bonus in good work clothes. At 22 I found that idea both ludicrous and tantalizing. It was the same feeling I got when he told me to make Roth 401k contributions because one day I’d be in a higher tax bracket.

I thought of his advice every time I splurged on a Hugo Boss suit or Jimmy Choo pumps. Collecting a new handbag or dress became a ritual to mark big interviews, raises, and promotions. Those purchases offered exhilarating evidence that I’d Made It and wrapped me in a daily shield of empowered professionalism.

I can’t be the only Millennial girlboss who idealized the sexy-but-serious embodiment of successful corporate womanhood on shows like Scandal and The Good Wife.

My boyfriend’s appalled reaction to my designer haul surprised me, which just goes to show painfully naive I was. Frugal Midwestern sensibilities flaring, his only question when I showcased the gorgeous, over-the-knee, brown suede Gucci boots I knew I’d cherish forever was how much they cost.

Deflated but defiant (which would become a recurring reaction throughout our relationship), I was honest. They were $1600.

It was an enormous sum in 2012, and I was giddy with the idea that I could afford to defend the purchase as reasonable: I made good money, budgeted carefully, and was intentionally curating a long-term wardrobe and image.

He didn’t tell me what to do. Shaking his head he simply said, “if my sister knew how much you spent on those, she’d shit a brick.”

I returned them.

My husband was not overtly controlling. He didn’t ask me to organize my schedule around his, or keep track of the foods and shows and friends he liked and avoid the ones he didn’t. He didn’t make me watch golf every weekend, or stop going to church, or pretend to like electronic dance music.

Ok he did try to push that last thing, at least until he found me teary on the curb outside a club after midnight, the vodka and ear plugs failing to dull a sensory assault that I could only endure for the opener before literally running for the exit.

Outspoken and independent, I was never the type to feign interest for a man. Our values and attitudes were similar, and I liked and respected him. So I adapted to his preferences without much objection or even conscious awareness.

He didn’t ask me to delete the anonymous personal finance blog I’d published for years when we started to get serious. I did it impulsively after he expressed discomfort with my candid disclosures. It was time anyway, I thought. I was entering a new phase.

Abandoning that cherished effort is one of my biggest regrets, but at the time I was just happy to keep the relationship on track, eager to maintain his approval along with my color-coded timeline for traditional milestone achievement.

Changing myself for marriage didn’t feel like sacrifice; it felt like growing up. Adjusting my comfort zone seemed trivial compared to the reward of finally being chosen.

De-centering the self is not inherently bad. In fact, it’s kind of the point and a natural result of marriage. You become part of a unit; what’s best for you morphs into what’s best for the whole. This can be healthy if both people prioritize the relationship.

It goes both ways, but in my experience women are a lot quicker and more eager to do the morphing. We often don’t even ask for compromise or acknowledge what we’re giving up, at least in the beginning.

As the years passed it became impossible to separate my desires from his. Did I really not want kids? Did I really not care if he didn’t wear his wedding ring? At some indiscernible point, being agreeable crosses into self-abandonment.

It wasn’t just his expectations that took hold. Internalized marital roles are deeply rooted. Like most women, I was conditioned from birth by my parents, religion, and popular culture to figure out which hoops to jump through to get people (namely men) to like me.

I cooked constantly and insisted we eat at the table because, well, good meals were how I’d seen good wives express care. I timed my workouts and happy hours to make sure I always got home first and had an appetizer ready when he arrived.

He sipped beer and watched a game (did you know there are only like 2 days a year devoid of a live sporting event?), and I sipped wine and rattled around the kitchen, trying in vain to get every dish hot and ready at once.

Is there a more endemic image of Americana?

[I would like to pause and clarify for the record that I was in no way a trad-wife, and my spouse contributed readily to an egalitarian, if somewhat gender role-conforming, household.]

Initially I planned elaborate meals, choosing recipes that required a dozen ingredients and multiple pans. I enjoyed this (in the way that you can embrace any labor of love), and he appreciated it, but eventually I wised up to the fact that a lot of this work was self-imposed and unnecessary.

At some point I missed a grocery run and heated up frozen chicken fingers and canned baked beans in a pinch. He raved that it was the best thing I’d made in ages and eagerly asked for more. I literally couldn’t believe it (I really was so naive).

I enjoyed our life, and many of our opinions neatly overlapped: TV shows, instagram memes, political views. Once he was gone though, after more than a decade As One, I had to confront how much I had delegated and learn to identify my actual desires.

Some things were genuinely surprising. I haven’t watched a single minute of sports since the day he moved out nearly three years ago. I thought I was into it, but apparently not enough to keep up with it on my own.

My sleep schedule shifted forward by 3 solid hours. Hobbies like reading and writing quickly reemerged.

I rarely cook anymore.

I quit my job and retired from banking almost immediately after our divorce was final.

I appreciated the balanced power dynamic that our similar paychecks reinforced, but I realized I’d kept working mainly because our hours, vacation schedules, and conversations revolved around the same banking industry calendar.

I’d dreamed about “what’s next” for years, and a decades long career in finance was never part of my neatly-outlined and regularly updated Life Plan. Going with the corporate flow became a survival strategy, a consolation of status and achievement.

It was also a frenetic irritant to my frazzled nervous system.

The ever-looming possibility of children (and divorce) made hard financial goals impossible in marriage. He used to ask when we could retire, and my response was always “it depends.” He never wanted to discuss the variables though.

On my own the math was simpler. I didn’t have to work anymore.

I had over 22x my projected expenses invested, which is less than the minimum 25x generally recommended. But it included a mortgage that would be paid off within a decade and plenty of discretionary padding I could slash.

Plus there were future prospects: earnings, a partner, an inheritance, social security. Disability would only reduce my spending (and possibly boost income from SSDI).

The retirement calculation is never definitive, especially at the absurd age of 40, but One More Year Syndrome evaporated effortlessly as the remnants of a traditional life dissolved beneath my feet.

I’d been clinging to the Right Path stubbornly my whole life, ignoring sign after sign, and the universe finally knocked me off course.

I’d figure it out. I always had.

Prenuptial Decisions

Sure, I lost nearly half of our net worth and more than half of our household income in the split. In other words, I actually lost nothing. What had been joined was simply divided.

We’d discussed a prenup but couldn’t come up with terms different from the default in our community property state: assets before marriage remain separate property, along with inheritances received during marriage, as long as you don’t co-mingle them. Income earned and assets accumulated during marriage are community property.¹

I came in with a lot more assets and actually earned a bit more in the early days, but we had similar career trajectories. We didn’t know who would end up making more, whether we’d have kids, if one of us might start a business that took off - or flopped.

(In actuality, I assumed correctly that his career and earnings would quickly outpace mine, what with his strong work ethic and white manliness. I also assumed incorrectly that my focus would shift from work to raising kids.)

Ali Wong hilariously frames the prenup dilemma in her 2018 stand-up special; her Harvard Business School fiancé (or his wealthy parents) insisted they get a prenup. Plot twist - she became a famously successful comedian, and her income and wealth were protected in their eventual divorce.

I remember sketching out the risk I was taking; I knew that keeping separate property separate was easier said than done without trusts and strict cash flow rules. Rents, dividends and capital gains on separate property can be deemed joint income, and when they are reinvested the asset can become co-mingled.²

I was too cheap and lazy to set up a trust. Plus I trusted my fiancé would be too proud and honorable to go after my separate property. I reasoned that if we divorced after a few years, any claim would surely fail; after a long marriage, we would have build enough wealth together that I’d come out ahead either way.

Worst case, if we split between the 4-8 year mark, I was putting some portion of my individual net worth at risk. In exchange, I had a chance at lifelong love and a family of my own. What’s the point of money by comparison?

The decision was easy.

The Dissolution

I’d kept a monthly net worth spreadsheet since a decade before we met, and on our honeymoon I combined our balances into an exciting new Excel file. Marriage pushed our new household just over the line: overnight we became millionaires.

While lying on a beach in Hawaii, I happily outlined a joint budget and initiated what I thought would be a debate about our combined target asset allocation (he didn’t have a strong opinion on the matter - score!).

He laughed, but having precise financial records from just before marriage is important when dividing assets in divorce. Nearly ten years later, I pulled the old figures right up and divided our net worth the day after he said he was leaving.

It wasn’t simple, because of course I had been idealistic and trusting and co-mingled assets over the years. I’d directed proceeds from the sales of two properties I’d bought before marriage to joint investments, plus what was left of my college fund and some family gifts. He’d done the same on a smaller scale and also came in with a student loan we repaid with joint income.

I backed everything out and applied an imputed growth rate - what was “mine” wasn’t just the $100K I’d co-mingled, for example, but what it would have grown to over the years if I’d kept it separate.

It added up to more going to me than I knew he would expect, and I held my breath when I delivered the proposal. Luckily, on this matter, he kept his word and didn’t fight for my (formerly) separate property.

Our wealth helped soften any financial angst and quell the impulse to argue over details. I gave a little on the home equity calculation and agreed to ignore the student loan payoff. He’d earned more, but we called it a wash.

We both wanted to avoid paying attorneys who might encourage an expensive fight. We congratulated ourselves as we sat on the kitchen floor divvying up a cabinet full of company-sponsored Yeti mugs. Imagine how much we’re saving by not paying two attorney teams plus a mediator by the hour to supervise this!

One benefit of us both earning and contributing to the joint pot of money was that we each had a vested interest in keeping the pile as big as possible - and no incentive to drag out the dissolution.

Many women face a different experience. They can’t afford to keep their home after divorce. They don’t earn enough to maintain their lifestyle, if they earn anything at all. They don’t just lose a partner and the scaffolding of their sense of reality. They lose financial stability, income, security.

Or more accurately, they realize they never had it in the first place.

I’ve never been more grateful that I prioritized building wealth than during my divorce. It could easily have been different. I would have stayed home with the kids, given up my career, ceded the earning potential and financial power to my capable husband. I would have volunteered; I probably wouldn’t even regret it.

But I would not have survived my divorce in the same way. It was hard enough without having to worry about the money.

Still, my intuition told me to finalize things swiftly. Logic and goodwill only go so far if your estranged spouse starts spending joint income on a new girlfriend. We shared all income and expenses for several more months, even after the divorce was final. I completed deferred maintenance and home renovations; he rented and furnished a new bachelor pad.

In the meantime I prepaid and stocked up on anything I could think of. Everything was effectively half off while we still shared money, and the cost would double once we stopped. He noted my unusually packed freezer while picking up some things one day, and I foolishly shared this little tidbit of perspective.

Luckily he seemed bewildered, and I didn’t have to prove I could win what could easily have snowballed into a spending battle.

I spent far more money that year than I had ever been comfortable spending, and I was amazed when it didn’t really change the financial picture. My new solo balance sheet was still in infancy, so there were no trend lines to monitor. I felt like I was breaking all the rules - and getting away with it.

In the end, as I’d hoped when we decided to skip the prenup, we both came out ahead financially by getting married even after divorce. By a long shot.

We helped each other build careers and pushed our joint savings rate past 50%, investing through a historic bull market while enjoying a much better lifestyle than we could have afforded as individuals.

We’d gone into marriage with the shared belief that the point of a legal union was to build wealth and build a family. We succeeded with the former.

Under the right conditions, I’d do it again. Although if there’s ever a next time I will definitely be getting a prenup.

I didn’t realize I’d scheduled my last day of employment on the summer solstice. My journal entry that day was optimistic and excited, and it seemed fitting to be opening up to new energy and possibility in tune with the changing season.

Autumn had been period of profound loss. My husband left, for good this time. I turned 40, leaving behind any semblance of youth. My corgi Winston, my first pet and companion, died in old age.

Even Mint shut down, and I lost over 15 years of spending history - all the transaction data that categorized my former life neatly into color-coded charts.

I released these attachments as the trees shed their leaves.

It was such a reorienting tectonic shift that I knew in my bones it was for the best. Like a briefly painful chiropractic adjustment that leaves you suddenly in alignment.

The divorce was final in winter and I rested, disoriented and dormant, savoring the seasonally appropriate darkness.

I showed up later to my crowded, humming, fluorescent open office and left earlier, escaping the sanitized template of a workplace in regular intervals to wander in a nearby park.

Energy returned with Spring, and I maniacally tackled my swollen to do list. Name changes, account divisions, home renovations. The distraction of busyness and dopamine hits of little accomplishments soothed my fried nervous system, along with copious amounts of chardonnay.

I lost the willingness to feign anything at work: optimism about my pipeline, enthusiasm for a new insurance product, desire for the hectic schedules and even more absurd production goals that the MDs managed. I was honest with my manager and negotiated my exit. She couldn’t put me on a layoff list, but she graciously let me give a months-long notice.

I’d been saving for a plethora of nebulous futures for as long as I could remember. At some point though, the future arrives. It turns out you can just decide that the tomorrow you were planning for is today.

After years in limbo, I relished the flood of milestones. I’d spent my 30’s striving: saving aggressively without a goal, tracking fitness metrics with a stuck scale, achieving professionally without promotion, and trying to enjoy companionship with a partner who refused to envision a future with me.

Then all at once, on the summer solstice, I was free.

The slate was wiped clean, and I had a box of new art supplies waiting. I had all the time in the world and no more excuses.

Summer is for basking in the nourishment of the sun and absorbing the energy to grow what you’ve planted. It’s the solar equivalent of the full moon, a climax or ovulation. It’s the ripening part of the natural cycle.

Across time and cultures, the solstice marks a period of awakening, gratitude, and celebration.

This solstice marks two years since I began to design a new life. I have reimagined my daily experiences, work, and relationships as an ever-evolving expression of my values. The high status career and big paycheck are long gone, but I feel more abundant than ever.

My divorce took a lot from me, but it was also a gift. I lost what I wanted as a girl, but I gained autonomy, control, financial freedom, and peace as I blossomed into a woman.

I’m deeply grateful for my wealth and privilege. I believe all people deserve to be free, and part of my purpose is helping others find - and afford - their own authentic path.

I hope you’ll join me on the journey.

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I help people get organized and use wealth to design a life that feels secure and aligned. A former Wall Street banker and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, I act as an unbiased advocate without selling products or managing investments. To learn more, visit my website.

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DISCLAIMER: I love writing about the personal, emotional, and practical sides of money, but please remember that my Substack is strictly for educational and coaching purposes. The insights shared here are general in nature and do not constitute specific investment, tax, or legal advice. While I am a CFP® certificant, reading this does not create an official advisory relationship, and any comments or likes should not be interpreted as client testimonials. For personalized investment advice, please consult a registered financial professional.

1. I am not a lawyer, and there are many nuances, but this is my understanding of the gist. I work with people going through divorce though, and there are lots of ways people can screw each other despite state law (and despite having a prenup).

2. Again, this is not legal advice and may be inaccurate where you live.