The loss of income after a passing

I feel a little funny talking a lot about money and cash flow after my wife's passing, because this isn't really what I spend my time during the day thinking ab0ut. In fact, it really has not been on my mind at all.

But last night a friend of mine came over and we were just talking. At one point he asked if everything was going to be OK financially. My first comment was, I'm not worried about things like that. Everything will work out.

Well, I honestly believe this will be the case, but he hit me with a couple of thoughts that I honestly had not considered. Even though my salary was considerably higher than my wife (she being a new teacher), her salary was not insignificant at all.

In fact, he pay was about 30% of mine...which means that in an instant, our household income will be dropping by 25%.

Lucky for me, we have been savers all our lives, and we have never been the kind of people to live on the edge of debt. Our cash flow was always pretty solid, and I'm not saying I will not have to make any adjustments.....I will certainly have to. But we were on a pretty good savings trajectory and with some hopefully minor cutbacks and readjustments, I should be able to stay in the black. (albeit at a significantly slower savings pace)

Cheryl and I never calculated all this down to the penny, but we did consider all of this when we decided how our will would be set-up, and how much insurance we would carry.

I was the one heavily covered because the family really depended on my income. Thank God the kids are now older because we very much depended upon Cheryl staying home with the kids....not for monetary reasons, but because we felt this would offer the best foundation we could give our kids as they grew up. (most of our goals and moves were done to optimize the opportunity for our kids....and that will continue to be the case)

Life is complicated....and death can really complicate things if you have not considered that possibility. I thank God that Cheryl and I had thought a bit about this and had a decent plan.

As I said before....create a will, and think about whether you really need insurance!