Welcome to a new week and a new theme here on the One Minute Retirement Tip! 

This week, I’m talking about gray divorce. The divorce rate among people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s has skyrocketed in recent years. It’s such a prevalent trend that there’s even a name for it - gray divorce. So this week, I’ll unpack this upswing in divorce rates among pre-retirees and retirees and what a gray divorce could mean for your retirement plan. 

Last September, I read an article in the magazine ‘401k Specialist’. The article highlighted the increase in divorce rates among Americans close to retirement, and the devastating impact that it can have on your retirement plans. 

After reading this article, I knew that it would be a worthwhile and important topic to cover on the One Minute Retirement Tip. It had confirmed a lot of what I had been seeing in my own life -  the uptick in divorces I was experiencing with my own clients who were divorcing in their 50s and 60s and how that was painful for them - both emotionally and financially. In addition, I’ve had several close friends whose parents divorced when their children had grown and moved out, even after staying in the marriage for decades. Those divorces later in life were so curious to me because I just assumed that if you could stay married for 20-30 years like many of these couples had, you were committed for the long-haul.

But as we’ll cover this week, despite staying married for decades, many couples are divorcing later in life, sparking this new moniker for the trend of gray divorce. 

The other thing I want to mention about this topic before we kick off the week is that I put off this topic for 6 months now since reading that article, because I didn’t know how to talk about divorce from a financial and retirement perspective while still being sensitive to the complexities involved in a divorce decision. 

And since divorce is such a contentious and emotional topic with strong extreme opinions on both sides of the issue, I want to be cautious in avoiding any land mines or alienating listeners while I cover this topic. 

My goal this week is to speak the truth and help you think through this difficult, painful, and emotional topic from the perspective of your finances. As I’m really not qualified to talk about the impact of divorce from other angles, we’ll look at the reality of divorce in your 50s and beyond, why there’s massive growth in gray divorce, how it is especially harmful to women, 5 ways that a gray divorce can impact your finances in retirement, and how you can calculate the impact of divorce on your retirement. 

For those of you who are struggling in your marriage right now or are contemplating divorce, I hope this week is especially relevant for you. 

That’s it for today. Before you go, though, if you haven’t already left a review in Amazon or iTunes for the One Minute Retirement Tip, can I ask a favor of you to go do that right now? It just takes a few seconds and it helps to spread the word, and raises visibility of this podcast to help others find it. And thank you to all of you who have taken the time to write a review. 

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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