Reconciling with the future

Yesterday marked an emotional milestone for me. After months of putting it off, I finally spent some time crafting a financial plan.

I usually love financial planning: playing with the numbers, fiddling with different combinations to determine the best approach for the current situation. I typically enjoy setting short- and long-term goals, imagining the growth of savings or major purchases. But I just couldn't face developing a financial plan that didn't include Sandy.

Dealing with money scared Sandy; she had strong fears of poverty, and when she feared something, she tried to ignore it, letting it fester quietly. I promised her when she moved in that I'd never let us become homeless, and over the years, she developed more confidence in my promise. Still, it wasn't easy to pull her to the dining room table for a couple of hours for an annual financial check-up.

When I say "make a financial plan," I don't mean anything elaborate. We simply made a comprehensive list of assets, anticipated income, debts, expenses, and goals. And then we figured out how to make sure it all worked. Sometimes we had to have difficult discussions: Do we give up our vacation or donate less to the causes? If we can only do one of the big tasks we wanted to accomplish this year, which one is most important? How secure is that anticipated income, and what do we do if it drops? Sandy didn't enjoy the process, but she was always relieved to learn that we weren't going to lose the house. And once we'd made the challenging decisions, we both felt better prepared to face whatever came.

The last time we made a financial plan was in July 2010, after we learned how much she'd be getting from Social Security Disability every month, and when the payments would start ($1700, not till December). When she was working, we'd put equal amounts into the joint account every month, but in the summer of 2010, we changed that dramatically. We prioritized having her contribute enough to feel good about paying her share, but keep enough to feel free to spend money independently. We cut back on restaurant meals, delayed some home improvement projects, scheduled our grocery shopping to coincide with coupons and sales, and generally planned to be more conscious about money.

When she received a small tax refund last year, she announced
that we were taking a weekend away, her treat. We went to
Ocean Shores, the first place we'd ever traveled together, and
as we enjoyed the long weekend, we dreamed about our future.

As we cut back on other things, we were clear that health care expenses still came first. If we believed a treatment would help her but our insurance wouldn't cover it, we'd pay for it ourselves. In fact, we earmarked her IRA account for that purpose; she said she wanted to keep it in place so that she could draw from it over the years she survived, and so that we'd have it for a sudden trip to Switzerland or some place for some cutting-edge treatment. If it became clear that she was running out of time, we'd use it to travel and she'd splurge on anything she wanted. That was when we assumed we'd have notice, that she'd be feeling okay but told they'd run out of treatment options and she had six months or a year to live. Instead, by the time we knew she'd run out of options, she was too debilitated to travel or splurge. Now, that IRA has moved to my name, and because it's an inherited IRA, I have to withdraw a minimum amount each year. I haven't done that yet. That's going to be hard.

Yesterday, I surprised myself by grabbing a legal pad and starting to work on my financial plan. The first part was the hardest. We always started with three columns of assets: Brie's, Sandy's, and joint. Now there's only one column. But once I'd gotten through that anguish, I was able to lose myself in the numbers. And after an hour or so, I had a plan. I won't be retiring in the next five years, but I'm in pretty good shape financially. The house is paid off. The car is gone. The stock market is doing well, so the balances on long-held accounts are going up instead of down. I budgeted in the obligations I still have for Sandy, as well as political donations and charitable contributions, and will still be able to sock some away for the future. Inspired by the idea of saving again, I set up a spreadsheet to track expenses to see whether I'm at all accurate with the numbers I budgeted for various categories. In short, I played. I came away with benchmarks I can use to measure progress, and with the reassurance that cashflow is unlikely to be a problem for me this year, unlike last fall.

Over the past few weeks, I've felt myself starting to comprehend — deeply, physically comprehend — that Sandy's not coming back, and that it's not a betrayal of her or of me or of us for me to find ways to embrace the future. I've never doubted that she wants me to live fully, but I wasn't sure I'd ever want it. Creating a financial plan was a test for me, an exercise in imagining not just a future, but one I'd be engaged in, even with Sandy not here physically. I'm feeling pretty good about passing that test.