My 6 Tips to Financially Prepare for Divorce

In a fair world, the price you pay for divorce is your heartache.
In the real world, the price is heartache and cold, hard cash. 

It’s been about a year now since Max and I started separating our finances, but we didn’t fully disentangle until our condo sold in the beginning of September. It’s been three and a half months of living fully on my own financially. Since it’s the season of spending, here are my 6 tips for how to financially prepare for divorce.

Disclaimers: I’m the furthest thing from a financial planner, so these are tips I figured out or gathered from people who seemed to know what they were talking about. My financial situation with my ex-husband was fairly simple. We had a mortgage on our condo and otherwise had no debt. We don’t have children. There was no history of lying or deception. 

Six ways I financially prepared for my divorce:

1. Keep a joint checking as long as necessary. Max and I lived together for six months after we divorced. There was enough emotional stress, so we did not want to nickel and dime each other. To keep things simple and civilized, with the help of our mediators, we deposited equal amounts into a joint checking account to pay the basic living expenses like the mortgage and utilities. We also paid our legal fees out of this joint checking account.
2. Separate your savings as soon as possible. Savings accounts are about planning for the future. You and your ex don’t have a future anymore, so separate that money – or start a new savings account in just your name – so you can actively start preparing for your new goals. Also, separating the savings gives you a realistic look at what you have to work with.
3. Stay together on some services to save money. I looked into separating our auto insurance and cell phones, but it turned out it would cost us both a fair bit of extra money as two single accounts. So, we stayed on joint plans until the condo sold.
   (Speaking of cell phones, be ready to be totally irritated by separating your cell phone plans. I swear, it was easier to get divorced than it was to separate our Verizon accounts! I might’ve cried on the phone with a Verizon manager.)
4. Take a hard look at your current spending priorities. How will your habits change when it’s just you? Where can you cut corners? What will you absolutely not cut out? I knew I needed enough padding in my account so I could keep my gym membership. There is a nice-ish gym I could join for half the price, but nope -- my current gym is a priority, so I had to make it work. Bye bye, cable and a house cleaning service! Those cuts saved me about $150 a month, which I use to mentally justify my gym membership.
5. Figure out what your new expenses will be and starting living according to that figure immediately. My expected cost for rent was going to be about $300 more than my half of the condo mortgage payment, so I started putting $300 into my savings account every month to get used to living on that new amount. (Bonus: my savings account got an extra $1,800 while I waited six months for our condo to sell.)
6. Don’t just get tips from bloggers like me – talk to a professional. Did you know that there are financial planners who actually specialize in divorce preparation? I didn't! Make an appointment with some kind of financial planner before the divorce is final, and then make another one for after the dust settles. I have a second appointment the first week of January to take a look at my retirement savings in particular.

These are my favorite tips that helped make my financial life suck a little less during the divorce whirlwind. In terms of your finances, what did you do leading up to your divorce and living separately? What is your best tip or resource?

See also: 10 Things You Need to Do When You Get Divorced; Financial Advice for Divorce.