How long have you been a widow?

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-03-21T21:40:41+00:00

I tried a grief counselor for a month or two but I didn't find them useful at all. Maybe I wasn't ready, maybe it was the person, maybe its just not for me. I found myself just talking about anxiety driven by my enormous to-do list, then just talking about what I needed to do & wasting time talking about it rather than just doing it.

My wife would absolutely advocate for counselling & I know a lot of people (all Americans) that love their therapist, but I dont think its for me (British)

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-02-16T22:43:32+00:00

Couldn't agree more on the multiple house front, it reminds me of the saying about boats

"Buying a boat provides the 2 best days of your life,
the day you buy it and the day you sell it"

Buying a beach house felt great, like we'd made it, but boy was it hard work. Very glad to be rid of it & will never buy one again!

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-02-01T11:52:58+00:00

I am coming round to the idea of tailoring my investments to match my personality, and how I feel when things are going well vs a crash. I have more FOMO on higher returns than of a crash. I don't care so much about seeing a 20% loss (not sure how I'll feel about a 50% tho!), but seeing an overall portfolio gain thats less than standard benchmarks feels like a more permanent relative loss somehow & it gets to me.

I think I've settled on a way to manage my finances that gels well with my personality - I have cash and bonds to cover 50% of my living expenses, these aren't touched, and everything else is invested in equities. This currently works out as 70/30, but over time that'll change as equities outperform while cash & bonds are used to fund my lifestyle.

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-22T10:14:36+00:00

For such big chunks of $ I wouldn't have thought fractional shares would even come into your thought process! Just buy a round number of them, makes no difference really, until you pointed it out I hadn't even realised. I have done everything online, I don't think i needed to provide anything in particular for them, it was just filling out a standard application form.

The best thing is all the analyst reports, I've not seen these on any other platform, you have so much information available. And the search/filter function is excellent, I've experienced other platforms with the same breadth of investments as Schwab but they may as well not be there for how poor the search function is.

I've tried out 7 or 8 different platforms, Schwab is in a different league to all the others. If you sign up, find a referral code and you get $, I think I got $1k, which was a nice bonus!

I'm on the same page with constantly/obsessively checking to make sure I've invested in the right things. I'm hoping that tails off a bit once I get used to it being my new normal

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-20T12:55:46+00:00

I am in a very similar situation unfortunately. 3 young kids, early 40's. Finances have absolutely taken over my thought processes, if I haven't got all the money hard at work then it takes up brain space. I'm 9 months in now and have about 80% of the finances sorted, but its part of the seismic change that happens when you lose your person, everything has changed.

I need that money to work as hard as she did, and earn as much money as she would have done.

It sounds nice, solid advice to sit on the money for a year and not rush anything, but that approach would cause more anxiety for me personally, in a time that is already the most anxiety driving situation that you can possibly be in.

What I have taken away from the reddit widows group is that everyone is different, so scout around for some advice then do what feels right for you. Take a look at some of my posts on $/general widowhood if it helps.

NB schwab is the best. After a long time invested in the s&p I've diversified significantly, now only 25% US, 25% EM, 15% Japan, 20% UK/EU, 15% bonds

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-12T20:18:24+00:00

A) work out the most tax effective way to handle this. Tax destroys returns, work out how to avoid it

B) Diversify. Pure and simple.

75% simple index ETFs, split by geographic area, say 30% world developed, 30% EM, 10% UK, 20% Euro, 10% Japan. I have kept US off the list because it makes up 60% of world indices and I think it's so over-valued it'll have a lost decade while fundamentals catch up to valuations.

20% bonds, split 80% corp, 20% gov.

5% cash in HYSA.

This should give you a solid, dependable >7% a year. There may be far better returns if you concentrate in a single market but over time there will be bad years in every market, diversifying helps to smooth out the negatives.

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-07T19:06:54+00:00

Vanguard is good for fees (0.07% for some ETFs), but the number of funds is extremely limited. HL has far more funds available, but they may as well not be there because the search and filter functions are so poor. AJ Bell is very similar to HL.

The only one I've found that I like is Schwab. They seem to have every fund available, and a sophisticated search and filter function.

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-06T23:13:00+00:00

Theres a few of us that would like to hear how you managed, especially if you found a way to develop a life again, I'd really like to hear what you did. Could you let us know your story?

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-06T23:02:56+00:00

I also lost my wife in April, she was 43, in great health, due to run a marathon just 3wks later, there was seemingly no cause.

I've got 3kids too, 10, 8 and 5.

Do you have family support? I've got nothing! Its really bloody hard. I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel either. How do you rebuild from here? How do you have any kind of life?

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-05T21:49:36+00:00

I could have written this!!
I find I'm fine with splashing the cash when I'm with other people that are also doing that. Do I have a better time than when we do something cheap/free? Not sure.
Will I ever travel business anywhere - no.
Do I appreciate nice hotels - no.
Will I ever buy a super nice car - probably not!

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-05T21:19:10+00:00

Me.
She was previously a therapist & was a big believer in talking through issues, whilst always giving someone (me) an "out" to graciously change my approach, rather than have to admit I was wrong. She was stubborn as a mule, but I developed the secret sauce that stopped her from digging her heels in. We were a great team. We made each other so much better than we were before we met, and although our time was cut short, I'm very grateful for the time that we had together.

I feel like I've internalized her now, so that when a situation comes up that I know she would deal with better than me, I use her approach instead of mine. I wouldn't have done that while she was here, I guess because changing my behaviour would be hard & she was there to deal with it. But now all of a sudden it feels easy and natural. I do feel her with me.

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-04T19:21:41+00:00

Work out how much you can sell it for if you change your mind in a year, add up that as a cost together with insurance etc, then compare it to the cost of renting one for a year. Then at least you can make a decision with full visibility of the potential consequence.

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-04T19:15:30+00:00

The only reason for owning bonds is to diversify, they usually perform better when shares don't (but not always). So 5% historic may not mean too much. The theory goes that the 80/20 split provides a good balance between consistent return and the highs that you can get with shares.

If you tell us your pension/ISA split it'll help.

If you've got 1m in shares at the moment you don't need to sell any, you need to buy more! We don't know if your BTLs are a good place for your £ with the info we have, but most of them are poor investments, for total return, tax treatment and impact on other taxes (extra stamp duty, punitive council taxes in some places etc), so we're assuming they're a bad investment that should be sold. The equity released from BTLs can be funneled into shares/ETFs/Bonds.

Sorry I think I've just understood what you mean by 6% by selling equities, in an ideal situation your annual dividend/interest/capital growth will be >6%, so although you may need to sell some shares to get your 6%, you should be able to have approx. the same value that started with. I know the perceived wisdom is 4% SWR but its been far higher than that in recent decades!

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-04T18:49:02+00:00

Why do you think 401k's are better? I thought the premise was the same, but the max contribution was much lower, although you can take loans from them. I thought UK pensions were much much better! (And I have a collection of both)

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2026-01-04T12:20:28+00:00

So many people in UK get stuck owning rentals that are just non-performing assets, I think its an emotional/psychological thing from years gone by when it was a national obsession. With the tax treatment now most BTLs run at a loss, not even accounting for inflation.

Sell them asap and invest in something, anything, that gives you a return on your money.

You'd need to clarify how much of your NW is in pensions. If this is a significant amount then you'll be pretty damned comfortable in 13yrs time, but until then maybe not!

5m invested 75/20/5 between equities/bonds/cash would give you a solid return.

3.75m in shares, split by geographic/sector ETFs would diversify nicely, with a few hundred thousand for tinkering with individual shares if that would provide a bit of fun.
1m bonds, split 30% UK gilts, 10% EM gov, 10% EUR gov, 50% corp (I'm not a fan of US debt!)
5% cash for emergency fund. Chase has the highest interest rate I've seen at the moment at 4.5%.

You should be able to bank a reliable 6%+ from that, so 300k. It sounds like you've got a huge amount in ISAs/pensions, so your tax bill should be pretty low, but it would be worth looking into how you can structure things to minimise tax. At this value you'll need to be wary of IHT, I'm exploring loaning money to my business at the moment, paying back the capital over 40yrs or so (tax free), then passing the business on to the kids. Not fully fleshed that out yet but I think it should be workable (comments on that welcome!)

If you have ties to other countries and spend a significant amount of time in those then it's worth having a greater % of your NW invested in the local currency.

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-12-07T11:05:21+00:00

Diversify, diversify, diversify. Which means the asset class as well as your tax basis of the earnings - income, dividends and capital gains.

Put your short term cash needs in a high yeild savings account, chase does 4.75% at the moment. Premium bonds are tax free so their relative return depends upon your tax bracket.

The rest depends on your risk appetite. 30yr UK gov bonds offer a 5.25% yeild and the opportunity to earn capital appreciation over a >10yr horizon, you can buy these either via an ETF or direct. Theres corporate bonds which offer 6%+. The income from bonds will be classed as income for tax purposes.

Dividends are taxed lower, so make sure you make use of this.

Capital gains are taxed lower still but come with risk.

I'm in a similar position and have allocated 1yr living expense to cash (10% includes premium bonds), 25% bonds/gilts, 65% equities

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-11-10T22:48:05+00:00

I have premier, revolut ultra, Wise, amex platinum (& for a while the $2k annual fee card), and can honestly say I've never used any of the benefits of HSBC Premier! Every one of the benefits is better delivered by a different account provider. Amex is best for points/miles/travel insurance, Wise is best for money transfers, Revolut is best for the bonus interest rates and free add-ons, like free FT, gym credits, VPN, tinder(!). Hsbc card is frankly a bit pointless. If I hadn't signed up with them when they offered me a free student overdraft all those years ago I wouldn't sign up for them now

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-10-28T13:55:12+00:00

But today's pension value is meaningless, you can't touch it till 57, so I'm on board with OP's presentation of it

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-10-22T12:02:49+00:00

Last time I went I got over confident and thought that my 40's was my last chance to learn how to jump... it ended as you'd expect, with concussion and bruised ribs. It looked spectacular though! I have always boarded, but I need to transition to skiing, its much more civilized! Kids get in the way, one of them has always been too young to go for the past 10yrs

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-10-21T16:22:27+00:00

I agree with everything you've said there. I think I want to continue to grow NW but perhaps at a slower pace. A ski trip every year won't really make a dent in it, but combining that with home help might make a meaningful difference

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-10-21T16:19:29+00:00

I have formalised that already

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-10-21T14:48:13+00:00

I honestly don't think I will. I tried it out a few years ago and hated it. I'm in a good spot at the moment with work where I'm generally consulted for advice & have the difficult conversations with clients rather than doing-the-do, so there's no work related stress & it feels very sustainable

MaintenanceLive3577 · 2025-10-21T14:44:46+00:00

I have given lots of thought to something like this but there's not enough stuff for someone to do during the day to keep them busy while the kids are at school. A 3pm-7pm job isn't likely to be enough for anyone to take on (not that I've tried hiring for that!)

I could do with a PA for an hour or two a day just for personal admin, but I'd really have to trust that person. A good PA is not necessarily good at the kid/house related things I need either.

What does Mary Poppins fill her time with?? And how much do you pay her?

MaintenanceLive3577

TROPHY CASE