THE BLOG: At the Threshold
Open enrollment arrives every autumn and most people handle it the same way, which is by clicking renew and returning to their day.
In an ordinary year that is a defensible choice. In the first year ...
In the first thirty days after a death, almost everything that feels urgent is not, and the few things that are genuinely urgent are quiet.
That inversion is worth understanding, because grief comes ...
Someone has to do it, and it is usually the person who is grieving hardest.
The role has different names in different places. Executor, personal representative, administrator. In Wisconsin the term i...
Most people believe their will controls what happens to their money. For a significant portion of the average household's assets, it does not.
Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities,...
The first year after a death is loud.
There are casseroles and phone calls and a stream of people who show up. There is also an extraordinary volume of paperwork, and in a strange way the paperwork h...
There is a particular administrative cruelty in widowhood. At the moment you are least able to process complex information, you are handed the most consequential set of decisions of your financial lif...
There is a reason the first year after losing a spouse is the hardest. It is not just grief, though grief is enormous. It is the combination of grief and an unrelenting stream of financial decisions a...
