5 Things Every Woman Should Know About Money, Marriage & Financial Independence

The Most Dangerous Words in Marriage: “He Handles It”

What happens when a smart, capable, educated woman slowly stops participating in her own financial life?

Inspired by the conversations surrounding Strangers by Belle Burden, this episode is not about fear, blame, or expecting the worst.

It is about awareness.

In this deeply personal and practical episode, Tracy Byrnes shares the five financial truths every woman should understand before she ever needs them, including:

·      Why every woman needs to know her numbers

·      The importance of maintaining your own financial identity

·      How titling assets can change ownership rights

·      Why couples need regular “money dates”

·      And why building your financial team before a crisis matters

This episode explores the emotional side of money, marriage, trust, independence, and participation -- without jargon, shame, or fear tactics.

Because financial independence is not about preparing for divorce.

It is about confidence.

It is about understanding your options.

And it is about making sure no woman ever feels lost in her own financial life again.

Hosted by Tracy Byrnes, MBA, CDFA
Vice President, Women & Investing, Lebenthal Global Advisors

If you've got a question, a topic suggestion, or just want to say hi, shoot us an email at TracyByrnesWealth@gmail.com!

Follow us on:

X: @TracyByrnes
Instagram: @TracyByrnesWealth

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Women, Wealth, and What Matters. I'm Tracy Burns, Financial Advisor, MDA, CDFA, and Vice President of Women Investing at Leaventhal Global Advisors. I've spent my career covering the markets, taxes, money. My mission now is to help women take control of theirs. Because here's the truth: you do not need complicated strategies. You just need someone to explain it clearly. Before we dive into today's episode, if you haven't listened to our previous ones, please go back and check them out. I think they're really fun. We've done five money terms, everyone, especially women, pretend to know and don't. Five things your tax return is trying to tell you. Believe it or not, your tax return is a planning tool. And one of my personal favorites, five ways to stay calm when the headlines get really loud, and they do. All are there for you whenever you need them. Okay, today. If you have not read Belle Burden's book, Strangers, go get it. After, of course, you listen to this episode. Now it is technically a memoir about divorce. And I underlined I Tal Black Highlight Memoir because the haters are coming out, and you know the haters are gonna hate. There's a lot of other innuendos about this book. The woman actually did have some money. Regardless, it doesn't matter. She wrote a memoir about a woman going through divorce and being blindsided. It's about what happens when a smart, accomplished, educated woman just slowly and quietly stops paying attention to her own financial life. And this happens. This happens all the bloody time. Think about it, right? You're in a, you know, we're gonna go with the old school heterosexual household. She, you're both working. You're young, you're happy, you're an ambitious couple. She gets pregnant, starts, we start having kids. Now all of a sudden she's probably taking care of the kids. He's still going to work and doing his thing. Now she's taking care of home and all the things, and the kids get bigger, and she goes back to work, and now all of a sudden we have to make sure little Johnny gets the baseball. And he, by the way, he still goes to work all day. And she's got all this stuff on her plate. And finally, one day she says to him, Please just take care of our long-term financial decisions. Because I got to do all this. I got to do the day-to-day stuff and make sure the wheels don't fall off the bus. He takes over long-term finances, long-term financial planning. And then one day she realizes she has no idea what's going on. It happens to all of us. Smart, educated, doctor, you name it, it happens. Do not feel bad about this. Just use it as a work up, wake-up call. So one day, as the book says, she woke up, she thought everything was hers, and it wasn't. This book has become a huge bestseller. Next Netflix, I think, bought the rights. I actually heard Gwyneth Paltrow wants to play her. I'm fielding calls, people are talking about this. Especially, I keep har I always hearken on my age group, my 55 and up people. It happens one day. You're married to someone, and all of a sudden that person is like, Yeah, I can't do this anymore. We've all I hate to say it, I've been there. I know a lot of people that have been there. A lot of people waking up saying, This is sort of my story. So now today, I am not going to summarize the book. I'm not a book editor. Belle tells her own story beautifully. I really do hope you read it. What I want to do instead is talk about the practical side, the five things I wish every woman understood before she actually needed to. And these are not just lessons for women worried about divorce. These are lessons for any woman who wants to fully participate in her own financial life. And I'm also going to say it's for young women thinking about getting married. And it's funny, I woke up thinking this morning about this podcast, and I'm going to send this to my son's girlfriend, future fiance, future wife, because I know her. She defers to my son. She should know everything. So before anyone starts panicking, let's say this clearly: this dynamic is incredibly common. You are not alone if this is you. I see smart, capable, educated women fall into this trap all the time. Not because they're weak, not because they're irresponsible, not because they're even bad with money, because life gets loony, loony. Careers happen, kids happen, trust happens. Like a lot of things happen. One person naturally takes over the finances, and the other person slowly steps away from it and takes care of the day-to-day. You divide and conquer, especially when you have more kids than adults in the house. That was my experience. You have more little people, you gotta play like zone defense and you gotta just divide and conquer. I get it. Honestly, sometimes it just feels easier that way. You're like, okay, you just do that. It's one less thing for me to think about. The good news is financial awareness can start at any time until it is starting today. You don't need to become a tax expert, you don't need to suddenly understand every investment in the market. I've said this before, no one cares where Microsoft is trading. You just need to start participating. And by the way, I will tell you, I have been there. I know what it feels like suddenly to be on your own financially with the kids, kind of not having a roadmap. My kids were peanuts when we separated. They were four or three, and my youngest was barely one. It took me years to get my you know what together. Um, but honestly, that experience shaped my entire career. Because women kept telling me they did not want to hand their money to another person who they couldn't relate to, to what they were going through, blah, blah, blah, completely understood. Here I am. So let's get into this. Okay, ready? The and I've said this before, and I know you're gonna be mad at me because you're like, this is all she preaches about, but I feel like this book has validated all my soap opera speech, my soapbox speeches over the years. Number one, know your numbers, all of them, and I mean all of them, all of them. I've said this a hundred times. Every investment, debt, mortgage balance, credit cards, 401k. Don't be overwhelmed. Just take your time. Brokerage accounts, insurance policies, safe deposit box if you are old enough to still have one. Where's the key? I used to love going to my mother's safe deposit box, by the way. Everything. Here's what I see all the time. One person manages the finances, the other trusts that it's fine. Most of the time it probably is, until it isn't. You just don't want to get there. Just ask some questions. This is what happened to Belle Burden. This is why she wrote this book. She was a lawyer, she was intelligent, not financially unsophisticated. She knew what she was talking about. And she handed financial management over to her husband, and eventually she just stopped looking at it. Don't stop looking at it. When the marriage ended, she didn't even fully know what she had. That's terrifying. I don't care if you have a little bit of money or a lot of bit of money. It is terrifying. And it happens. I see it all the time. So set aside one evening, just one evening this month, and do yourself a little full financial inventory. Pour your drink of choice, go through every account, every password, every advisor's name and phone number. Find out what insurance policies you have. Just make a little list. Do it in your phone, do it wherever you're comfortable. Make sure you know beneficiary designations. This gets screwed up all the time, especially for my people out there who are already divorced. Who is inheriting your stuff? If God forbid you get hit by that bus on the way home today, it better not be your ex. Write it down. Store it secure. This is not about distrust. This is about awareness. Knowing your finances does not make you controlling, doesn't make you distrustful. And it doesn't mean you expect your marriage to come to a screeching halt. It just makes you an adult participating in your own life. It's one of the healthiest, most dynamic relationships you can have, quite frankly. Knowledge is not suspicion, it is self-respect. Remember that. It is self-respect. You don't want to be in the dark. Number two, this one is near and dear to me. Keep your own financial identity. It is so important and so easy to lose, especially for women. Again, who step away from the workforce at some point. I did it too. I stayed home, which, by the way, a whole nother podcast on what that does to your 401k when you're not putting money away all those years, but we'll get to that. But here's what's happened to so many of us. Their identity slowly shifts from independent person to the supporting character in someone else's play, in someone else's financial story. And they don't often realize it until it's too late, until it's happening. And I know it sounds dramatic, but I see it. Your financial identity is your credit history, your income history, your accounts, your financial footprint. And if you don't actively maintain one, it can quietly disappear. I've sat across the table from women who are out of the workforce for 10, 15 years, and then all of a sudden they need credit of their own after divorce or widowhood, and lenders treat them like they're 22 years old and have no financial history. It's bananas. It's one of the most demoralizing things I witnessed, and I have to tell you, I've been through. So when I got divorced, I was in the exact same place. A lot of this, he was the breadwinner. And I'll tell you, I could not get credit. I couldn't get a loan on a on our the condo I was putting my townhouse I was putting my kids in. I actually had to went out and bought and got an Express. Express was the only place. God, I am forever indebted to Express. They gave me a credit card, and I would buy a blouse and pay it off. And then I'd buy two blouses and pay it off. And I had no credit, my name was nowhere. Please keep one credit card solely in your name. If you can use it, pay it off monthly. You don't have to blow it out of the water. Just use it. Monitor your credit score. Make sure you have one. I didn't do that. I admit I did not do that. I didn't know I was supposed to do that. And if you left the workforce to care for kids, understand that those contributions that contribution to your or those payments to that credit card matter so much. Because it doesn't mean you you you lack the value. The financial system just doesn't recognize invisible labor. What you're doing raising kids, by the way, should be the most important job on the planet. It is just not seen that way when you go to get a loan. So protect your own financial footprint. Your name on paper matters way more than people realize. Okay. Understand what you own and how you own it is number three. And the reason this is important, and there were trust issues in the book, and not all of us have trusts that we're turning over. I get it. But the plating, plating, the way things are um named is super important. This is where people's eyes glaze over. And I know it sounds technical, but stay with me because this one can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars if you get it wrong. How is it? Who does the asset belong to? If you come to the marriage with an asset, should you add your partner's name to it? I don't know. It depends on the situation, but this is where you got to ask some legal questions. In Belle's case, she used money from inherited trust to purchase property. So it was her money, she used it to purchase property that became joint. It got muddy, muddy, muddy. And at the end of the day, it was all part of the divorce, and it got ugly. In many states, that one decision could transform your protected separate property into and make them all of a sudden marital assets. So what was individual money in her name, in her trust, all of a sudden became joint, got muddy and messy, and it causes lots of trouble. All I ask is that you think just because it came from my family, it does not necessarily stay yours. If you follow the trail, if you put the spouse's name on the asset, just talk to someone. Retitling assets, co-mingling inherited money, depositing separate funds into joint accounts, using inherited money for marital purposes, all this stuff gets funky. It could completely change how those assets are treated legally. Once it happens, you often can't undo it. And and when we're in love, we're like, oh, it's gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. My therapist says that fine means you are effed up, insecure, neurotic, and excitable. I think that's what she says. Don't be fine. You do not want to be fine, you want to be in control. So the takeaway here before you add anyone's name to a house, an investment account, inherited assets, all the things. Talk to someone, talk to me, talk to a financial advisor, a CPA, family law attorney, talk to someone, get an outside, unbiased opinion. When you are in love, you don't think straight. That's what love does to the brain. It's beautiful. I believe in love. I want you to be in love. Do not fall for this stuff, though. This is at the end of the day, this is not about greed, it is about clarity. Okay. Have the money conversation before you need to. Again, I'm thinking about my son and his girlfriend. I don't know if they've talked about money. Nobody wants to talk about money before they get married. Oh, it's it's too, it it gives people the hives. It feels unromantic, it feels awkward, it feels like I don't trust you. We're not even married, and I don't trust you already. It feels like we're planning for failure. And it on some levels, remember that marriage is a business arrangement. It is a business arrangement. You just happen to have sex with your partner. It is a business arrangement. So if we could, for a hot second, think about that. It is unromantic. But discovering hidden debt later on, discovering the fact that there was secret spending, undisclosed accounts, gambling problems, who the heck knows? Or by the way, very different financial views of like how to save. I, you know, I was just talking to someone the other day. She's super conservative, saves every penny. He's out buying all sorts of things. It happens. It happens. We're not all alike in these things. It's very odd, quite frankly. You find two people that are on the same page financially and all the things. You could be married 15 years, and then you thought you were on the same page, and all of a sudden you're not. So it's worth revisiting these things. Clarity is kindness, transparency builds trust. One of the biggest relationship issues I see is financial avoidance. Look, money is one of the reasons people divorce. It's one of the top reasons people divorce. So, nip it in the bud, especially if you're young and in love. Please, please, please have these conversations. People assume he handles it, she handles it. We'll figure it out later. Nuh uh-uh. There's no later because that proverbial buzz comes blowing down the street, and whoever's been handling the money, God forbid, gets taken out. And then what? There's no later. A prenup is not necessarily about expecting divorce. Sometimes it's simply about clarity, transparency, communication, understanding. If your family has money, put yourself in your family's shoes. They don't know your dude or your woman who you're you're marrying. They have no idea who the heck. You might trust them implicitly. They don't. And by the way, they worked really, really hard for their money. So I get it. I get it. I bust in my butt. I, you know, divorced, broke, made some money, broke again. You name it. Like, I'm gonna hold on tight to my pennies, and I am gonna hold on tight as far as what my kids inherit from me. And I I'm sure their partners are all gonna be amazing people. I'm sorry, we gotta do what's right here. Two people sitting down, honestly speaking about money is beautiful. Here's what I own, here's what I owe, here's what matters to me. Honestly, that's it. It's easy. It's a more intimate conversation than people realize. It's beautiful. And if you're already married, it's not too late. Take it a little out of time. I've always said people should go on a money date and ask, women especially, ask one question if you don't know things. One question. Do we have life insurance? That's fantastic. Where is it? How do I access it? Just God forbid. One thing. That's it, and then get on with the rest of your night. You could also do a post-nuptial agreement. That it happened, those exist too. But beyond the legal docs, just talk. Think about these money dates, get to know each other's goals, know each other's credit scores. Do you know your spouse's credit score? Okay. Understand your cash flow. It doesn't have to be a giant mathematical financial summit that stresses you the hell out. It just has to happen. Take your time.

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Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

And finally, last thing I'm going to say here, number five, build your financial team before you need it. This is one I feel really strongly about. Because most people think they must they have to be rich to have a team of people. That is not true. And you don't want to build your team when you're in crisis. By the time you call, you want everyone in place. Like God forbid the divorce is happening or you're thinking about it, you got people. You want to know that you're already, you're, you know, you have your individual accounts, all the things are set up. Again, not planning for divorce. But emotions are wild when you're going through divorce and you don't think straight, knowing that some of this stuff has been done beforehand and that you have this team who knows your wishes. This is huge. This is huge. This is why planning early matters. So let me say this again: you do not need to be wealthy to deserve financial guidance. I don't care. You just need a person with a financial life near you, talking to you. You need to understand what the heck is going on. You qualify. If you work and you got a couple dollars in the bank, you qualify. You have a financial life. You pay bills, you qualify. At a minimum, every woman should have access to a financial advisor. And by the way, there's so many of us that don't have fancy minimums. I don't have minimums. I know the big banks do, but there's a lot of us out there that want to help. A lot of us that do not have minimums. A CPA or a tax advisor in your corner, an estate planning attorney, access to one. They do not have to cost a fortune. I know a ton that are amazing and don't. And if you're navigating divorce or a major transition, a certified divorce financial analyst like myself is super helpful. We talk about all the things that you need to know so they don't sound scary when you walk into your attorney's office. What the heck's a quadro and all the things? We'll do a podcast on divorce at some point. This is what we're trained for. Hiring people who understand the financial side of life's transition is key. And here's what I really want women to understand financial independence is not about preparing for divorce. I know it sounds terrible. It's about confidence, it's about knowing what matters when life throws freaking curveballs at you because man, oh man, do they. I always say when you make a plan, God laughs at it and detours you across the highway. Um, because who the heck knows what's gonna happen with marriage, motherhood, caregiving. Oh, like let's not even talk about our aging parents. Who the heck knows what's gonna happen on that side? Career changes. I might have had a few. I get it. Starting over, the pivot, those of you in that mid, you know, midlife thinking about what you want to do next, career changes, widowhood, it happens, reinventing yourself, all these things. You if you do all you go through these things in life and you have yourself financially somewhat prepared, it's just not as scary. It's not as scary. These changes help women move through life with confidence. I have seen women completely transform once they stop avoiding their finances and start engaging themselves. I could I could throw names at you of clients I have that I'm so proud of that took ownership. Not because they suddenly became obsessed with money, but because they started understanding that money gave them options. It gives you freedom, it gives you the ability to make choices. Okay, those are your five. I'm gonna give them two one more time. Know your numbers. All of them. Keep your own financial identity, get yourself an express credit card if you can. Understand what you own, how you own it, whose name is on what asset. Have the money conversation before you need to. Please, and I beg you, if you are a parent of children who are getting who are potentially getting married, insist they talk about money. We didn't, our parents didn't make us do that. Insist. And please build some sort of financial team. It doesn't have to be like some LA Hollywood expensive nonsense. You can get people in your corner that are not going to rob from you, that only want to help you. Bell Burden wrote a beautiful, honest, important book. It is a memoir. Please don't forget that. People are gonna come at her and say it's not factual and whatever. It is a memoir and it is a beautiful one. And what I want women to take away from these conversations surrounding it is not fear, it's just awareness. The women I worry about the most are not necessarily the ones without money. They're the what the woman with money, but they're just not paying attention to it. They don't want to pay attention to what they have. Don't be that person. Please don't be that person. You are smarter than that. You just need someone to offer you some clarity. That's it. All right. I'm gonna get off my soapbox. But she has validated everything that I've been saying all these years. Just know your stuff, just know the account passwords, just know the top-level stuff. You do not need to know where the SP closed yesterday. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Today's episode resonated with you. Please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And that includes younger women, please. And download our free guide. I'm gonna start doing this after every podcast. I'm gonna put a takeaway sheet on my website, tracyburnswealth.com. This one is entitled The Most Dangerous Words in a Marriage. He handles it. Remember Ronald Reagan said the most the nine most dangerous words you want to hear is um from the government. I'm here to help, or something like that. Anyway, I sort of riffed on that. The most dangerous words in marriage, he handles it. These are five truths every woman should know. It covers everything we talked about today. So you can find that on the website. You can also find this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and of course YouTube. And if you want to continue the conversation, you know where to find me, Tracy Burns Wealth at TracyBurns on X and at Tracy BurnsWealth on Insta. And until next time, please read the book. Take control, I'd listen to it, by the way, she reads it. It's fantastic. Take control of your financial life because when no one benefits, no one, and I mean the entire economy, does not benefit when women stay in the dark. I am here if you need me. See you next time. Labenthal Financial Services Inc. is a FINRA registered broker dealer. The content of this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investment advice. The views expressed in this podcast are subject to change based on market and other conditions. Information about the qualifications and business practices of Labenthal Global Advisors LLC is available on the SEC's website at www.advisorinfo.sec.gov. Information about the qualifications and business practices of Labenthal Financial Services Inc. and its representatives can be found on FINRA's broker check website, which is brokercheck.finra.org.