I am the first person to admit that while I can cut into your chest and crossclamp your aorta within about 2 minutes, I cannot balance a checkbook.  I make a mean souffle, but my eyes cross whenever I try to enter even a month’s worth of expenditures into Quicken.  Since I plan on toddling into the nursing home in $800 Louboutin 5 inch heels, I had to admit my weaknesses and seek expert financial advice.

While my husband and I were still surgery residents, we first started visiting with a certified financial planner.  Now keep in mind that in our last year of training, our net worth was somewhere around negative $350,000 since our school loans/car payments/credit card debts far outweighed our meager assets which consisted of….. a lot of used scrubs and some drier lint.  To say I was skeptical about our need to see someone who might pee their pants looking at our bank statements….. you get the picture.

But it turns out that it was one of the best things we ever did.  They helped us set up accounts for important – future- life events such as a college fund (now funds with the addition of daughter #2), retirement planning, investment accounts and a debt paydown strategy which allowed us to eek away at the monster loans while still going out to dinner occasionally.  Now all of these accounts started out with only meager initial contributions, but those little seeds grew over time.  Granted, they got squashed like bugs on a windshield when the markets collapsed a year ago, but they’re now once again worth more than we’ve put in, which cushions us for the future.  And most financial planners charge little for initial consultations or offer them for free.

If I had stuck with my pitiful financial sense and my Scarlett O’Hara-esque sense of “tomorrow’s another day” then I’d likely be shuffling into SunnyShades Retirement on a pair of Payless bargain rack specials instead of plugged into some Jimmy Choos.  So let me please recommend seeking out a certified financial planner (the “certified” part is important – you don’t want somebody’s smelly aunt Franny who claims to be an expert, but got her “degree” from a Bazooka bubble gum wrapper) to help you set up a goal and devise strategies for getting there.  We chose a firm recommended to us by a friend with expertise in advising health care professionals because that was a good fit for us.

A good financial planner will fit your needs.  For those of you starting a new family, I recommend Vita Vie financial planning.  They specialize in helping young families plan their financial future.  I couldn’t say it any better than Kristin Harad, their founder, so check them out at their video link Certified financial planner.

Remember, it’s all about the shoes!

Nurses CAN talk turkey to collection agencies!

In the last post I told you to avoid debt consolidation agencies, but I really want you to understand why and not think I’m just prejudiced against these financial behemoths.

It seems like it would be such a wonderful relief to be able to hand over all those nasty and tense phone calls from creditors. But the reality is that the phone calls don’t stop just because you engage the services of one of these companies. The way they typically work is this: you pay them an up-front fee of $700-1000 and then you send them a payment every month which they save for you. Of course, you often have to pay a monthly “management” fee as well for the privilege of them saving your money for you. Once you start paying them, they tell you to stop all payments on your credit cards.

When you stop all payments, your FICO (aka Credit Report) score plummets. Your account will most likely be turned over to a collection agency who will continue to harass you with threatening phone calls. As your FICO score drops, you will end up paying more money for any loans you take on – if anybody is willing to lend you money at all! Your car insurance is also likely to go up as you are seen as a poor credit risk for them as well.

After about a year & a half or so, the consolidation company will take all of the money they saved for you and approach your lenders (or collection agencies depending on who now has your loan). They usually negotiate a payoff to the lenders equal to 40-60% of the original amount you owed. At this time they will collect from you one last fee which will be a percentage of the amount they settled for you (usually about 15%). The last insult is that you will likely low taxes on the difference between the original loan and the settled amount. For example, if you originally owed American Express $30,000 and you ended up settling for $16,000, you will have to pay taxes on the $14,000 difference just as if it were income you made in your paycheck.

So with a debt consolidation company you pay:

$700-1000 initial fee

monthly management fees

resolution fee of 15% of the total settled amount

the actual amount of money settled with the creditors

and federal taxes on the difference between the settled amount and the original amount!!!

All with the cherry on top of a ruined credit score making it almost impossible to take out any kind of loan again (for at least 7 years or so).

So just think about how much money you would save by dealing with the credit companies directly – thousands of dollars and you have a shot at saving your FICO score since you’re not defaulting on your debt for over a year!!!

But if you do this for yourself, there are several steps you need follow to avoid any unintended consequences after you think everything’s over and done with. For example…..

1) When you negotiate an amount with your creditors, do NOT pay them with a personal check. Only use a money order or cashier’s check. They do not need access to your the name of your bank or your account number (which is printed on all of your checks).

2) Make sure you write on whatever you use to pay with (money order or cashier’s check) the following sentence: “IF THIS CHECK IS CASHED, THAT MAKES THIS ACCOUNT (write down the account number#) SETTLED IN FULL.” You do not want any doubt that you owe any further money to anybody, whether it’s a collection agency or the original creditor.

3) When you’re negotiating your settlement amount with your creditors, make sure before you’re through that they agree to report the debt as “paid in full” to your credit agencies instead of reporting it as “settled.” “Settled” will tell future lenders that you had credit problems in the past and will serve as a red flag, making you extremely undesirable.

4) If you’re settling with a collection agency instead of the original lender, demand (nicely, of course) that they specify- in writing!- that you are to be released from any and all obligations to the original creditor. The last thing you want to do after settling a huge amount with a collection agency is to have VISA come back knocking at your door to collect the remainder. Or worse, you don’t want creditors to be able to garnish your wages for the remainder – which they’re legally entitled to do.

5) Last, but certainly not least, ask the collection agency or creditor if they will state in writing that you don’t owe any taxes on the difference between the original debt and the negotiated settlement amount. Sometimes they’re willing to do this and sometimes they’re not. However, if you are deemed insolvent by the IRS (i.e. you owe more money than you have) then you may be able to get out of paying taxes on the difference.

There are hundreds of telemarketers/e-mail spammers/billboards promoting debt consolidation sites. Sounds great right? Like the debt fairy might come and wipe away all your monthly payments into a consolidation as dense as a black hole. And we all know that black holes are really, really tiny. But the reality is that if your credit has already been damaged by a few late payments or a car re-possession, the interest rate you’re likely to get on these loans will be high. So high that while there may be a certain convenience to gathering all your payments together under one umbrella, in the long run you’ll end up paying quite a bit more than if you negotiated with your individual creditors.

Sounds impossible right? How can little old you negotiate with a behemoth like Visa? Well it turns out, you can. Remember the two lists I told you to write in the last post? For now, put the asset list away, we’ll deal with it later. Look at your debt list. Some of the members of that list are highly negotiable. Your mortgage? Not so much. Your rent? Maybe, but prob’ly not. But… and here’s the fun part… most of the rest of that list may well be amenable to renegotiation.

Most everyone who gives out money would like to see it returned, preferably with interest. If you’re defaulting on your credit cards or your Jet ski loan, the banks are big losers. While they can take the Jetski away, credit card companies don’t have any real tangible assets of yours to go after. And in any event, for both the credit card company and the Jet ski-loaner, taking possession of and selling your stuff costs them a lot of time, money and headache. Again, not in their corporate strategy.

One of your jobs was to write down the names of the companies who held your debt and if you haven’t already, add the little 1-800 number that’s listed on the back of your card.

Beware of the scammers.

Almost all of the debt consolidation ads you see on the internet, on Google, on Facebook, on the sidebar of your favorite news site like CNN.com, foxnews.com, etc. are scammy companies. Here’s what they usually do: They charge an upfront fee of $700 – $1000. They negotiate a settlement on your behalf with the credit card companies for about 50 cents on the dollar. Then they charge you another fee based upon a percentage of what you pay back. You can do this all on your own without them and their outrageous fees!

Now go to this website: http://www.nfcc.org/. This is the website for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, a non-profit agency that wants to help you have a more stable financial future. The website has dozens of articles and tools to help you organize your finances, behavior patterns to avoid and contact information for free or low-cost financial planning. They are not some skanky used car-salesman site. They have a special section on debt settlement alerts because it is such a popular field with scammers. Here is a link to a file in Microsoft Word format that offers information on debt settlement debt settlement questions.

Starting with your highest interest loan (most likely a credit card), call the 1-800 number, dial “0″ to talk to a person and tell them you want to discuss a payment plan with someone. Think they’ll be angry at your presumption? Oh hell, no. They’ll be overjoyed because it means they can transfer you from the bad debt column to the paying customer rolls.

You’ll have several different options: tell them you want a lower interest rate and threaten to use another card if they resist, tell them you want to set up a scheduled payment plan on your existing balance while freezing or curtailing new purchases in exchange for a lower interest rate or overall balance. Your bank may be able to set up an automatic withdrawal feature so this payment goes out every month before you can even change your mind. But don’t give away the farm – remember, you have what they want: your money. Figure out what the best plan is for you in the long run using the tools at the NFCC site and then don’t be afraid to tell them what you’re willing to offer. It’s worked for thousands and thousands of people before, it will work for you.

It’s been said that the best trauma surgeons have a slower pulse when shit hits the fan rather than the ultra-tachycardia that us mortals achieve when chaos begins. I’ve thought about that a lot lately when I watch the news and see job loss rates in the tens of thousands, month after month. And when I’ve seen the people I work with have to dip into savings accounts to pay off their monthly bills. No getting ahead, just lucky to tread water and stay afloat. I think of the unlucky ones out there whose debt is spiraling, transferring credit card balances to newer, temporarily interest free cards to hope to put off disaster for another month or two.

So what can you do? I mean besides binge drinking and kicking your pets.

The first thing you need to do is stop putting off meeting the disaster. Sit down, shake hands and stare at your financial situation in the face. Most everybody I know procrastinates or tries to ignore unpleasant work or thoughts (except the super-successful folks… gee I wonder if that means anything?). But even if you think you’re ignoring it, most of us carry around this nameless dread in the form of tension in your shoulders, or an upset stomach that is your sub-conscious’s way of saying, “hey!! this is a big deal buster!! We’re in trouble here!!” That tension does nothing to make your life better nor does it actually fix the problems. It just gives you an ulcer.

So sit and write everything down, even if you think you know the answers.

Make a list of all your assets

Bank account, equity in your home or car, possibly disposable “extras” like boats or 4-wheelers. Then open all those envelopes you’ve shoved to the bottom of some pile and write down all your debts – mortgage or rent, car payments, each of your credit card bills, school loans. Then next to each of these items, write down a contact telephone number and e-mail address. In my next post I’m gonna talk to you about what to do with all that information and how to get lower payments for your very own self.

There are literally hundreds of different companies that now have no (or very few) physical stores but instead use individual salespeople to sell their products to friends and co-workers. But to paraphrase George Orwell, not all companies are created equal. In addition to some really fabulous opportunities, there are also a lot of pyramid schemes whose main goal is to rip you off.

My first piece of advice is a repetition of what I said in my earlier post: make sure you like and enjoy the product(s) you are going to sell. Before you make any commitment, try the products out yourself. For one thing, it’ll give you something to talk about during your sales parties, but it will also allow you to weed out any companies that don’t really exist. What do I mean? There are enough scams out there that I would want to have an actual product in hand, tried out by me personally, before I committed any time or money. You don’t want to hand over money for a “start-up kit” or whatever other introductory offer they might have, then discover that their phone number has been disconnected and their website is now defunct, and your money is….. who knows?

A corollary of this is to be beware of anybody who is aggressively pushing you to be a sales rep for their company. Maybe they’re just happy, enthusiastic people, but maybe they’re trying to force you into a less than solid agreement. If the company is real and the product is solid, there shouldn’t be any kind of rush to have you sign a sales contract in a hurry. Let pushy company reps be a flashing red warning light. If you have any concerns, check out the company on the Direct Selling Association’s website www.dsa.org , which is kind of like a better business bureau for direct sales companies.

Once you’ve made your choice of type of product you want sell, you need to start researching which companies offer you the best compensation structure. Questions you will need answered include:

-what are initial start-up costs?

-what kind of training do you offer? Manuals? DVD? Live classes?

-are there minimum volumes I have to purchase at a time or monthly minimum sales I must make?

-do the reps get a discount on products for themselves?

-what is the sales commission structure?

-Does my commission increase if I reach certain sales goals?

-if I recruit other people to be salesmen, do I get a percentage of their sales?

-what is the contract termination policy? Can I quit at any time?

-what is the company policy towards selling their product online?

-what is a typical sales volume for someone in my size town/region?

A last question to ponder is whether you are a social butterfly or a wallflower extraordinaire? Are you comfortable hosting parties attended by a dozen strangers, or would you rather communicate with customers solely by e-mail? Different companies have very different requirements so if you freeze at the thought of meeting a bunch of new folks and sharing your expertise on the product, maybe you should stick to something on-line or telephone only.

My husband is good for a few things; taking out the trash, killing mosquitoes (actually the Mosquito Magnet does that, but he sets it up), taking out the trash, and taking out the trash.
But he is also good when it comes to financial stuff. A few years ago, he found out about this website called Intrade. As the resident financial guru at NursesPTO I wanted to tell you about it.
At Intrade they have set up a futures market (with real money) on real world events. Think you know who is going to be the next Supreme Court justice nominee? You can put money on it. Think that Osama Bin Laden will be captured by December 31, 2009? You can put money on it. Current events, politics, finance, entertainment, weather, you name it – there is probably a contract on it.
It works in this way: you purchase a contract and either leave your money in there until the contract expires, or sell it during the contract itself. For example, there is a contract on who will be the next Supreme Court Justice nominee; today one of the top ‘bets’ is Elena Kagan. You could buy the contract at the price of $39. The contract expires when the nominee is named by Presidnet Obama, so if Elena Kagan is selected the contract pays off at $100, and $61 is your profit. If she is not selected it ends at 0 and you lose your stake.
Another way to make money is to sell your stake as the odds go up. It’s all supply and demand. Let’s say you bought into that contract on Elena Kagan at $39. For whatever reason, more people start thinking she’s going to be the next nominee. There’s more buzz or speculation, she’s seen having breakfast at the White House, whatever. Well, the price of the contract might go up. So let’s say you bought at $39 today, and next week it goes to $60, $70, or $80. You might say to yourself, I am not confident in her winning for sure so I want to cash out now. You would sell your contract before it expires, and when someone buys it from you at the higher price, you pocket the profit.
Which leads me to Adam Lambert. My good bud, @nursewendy, was crushed that Adam lost American Idol. (She was crushed so far as I could tell. She hides her emotions rather well, unless she’s had 5 or 6 chocolate martinis.) She’s had a crush… uh… I mean admired his musical skills… for several months now. Looking at the chart below, we see that back in March she could have bought a contract on Adam to win Idol for $20. Then the night before the Idol winner was announced she could have sold it for around $70. She would have more than tripled her money and then not cared (as much) when he lost.
Ahh, the opportunity lost…

Check out Intrade. They’ve got some interesting stuff. And next time you’ve got an opinion, put your money where your mouth is!
(P.S. If I was so smart I would’ve bought a contract on Barack Obama to win the presidential election when he first announced his candidacy. It sold for 2. With his win, the contract closed at 100, meaning I would’ve made 50 times my initial investment. That’s a lot of shoes.)

This is the second and final post in the series on how to get a champagne diamond on a beer budget.

Yesterday we went over how to use the cut to influence the appearance of the carat weight.  (If you need to review yesterday’s post click here :How to buy a diamond – part 1 )

Let’s move on to two other “C’s”: color and clarity.

Color: If you are a GIA certified gemologist, I guarantee you will be able to tell a “D” near colorless diamond from across the room.  But for those of us mortals (some of whom may not even know what a “gia certified gemologist” is) compromising on color can get you a much bigger stone.  How?  If you are using your diamond as an investment and plan to keep it in a safe deposit box where it will never get chipped or scratched, then a D color stone is a wise choice.  But I’m assuming you’re reading this to buy a diamond you can wear and that will make that bitchy cheerleader from back in high school green with envy at your highschool reunion.  Diamonds that are called colorless are in the D-E-F range, while near colorless is G-H-I.  But what does that really mean?  When taken alone, that is, out of their setting and put on a piece of white paper, it is not too difficult to tell the difference between a D diamond and an I.  But in a setting and on your hand, it is far more difficult for the average person to tell any difference between the two, and almost impossible for an average person to tell the difference between an F and an I.  Starting at about J, you can start seeing a slight yellow cast to the diamond, but this can be somewhat masked by choosing a white gold setting instead of platinum.  The white gold has a slight yellow tint itself and is a softer color than the cold platinum and so melds with a slightly yellow diamond better, making it all appear more pristine.  And guess what?  For a one carat round diamond, the F stone will go for about $1000 more than the I, given the same quality of cut and clarity.  But if nobody but a jeweler can tell the difference, why spend the extra money?

Another trick is to purposely go into the “light yellow” stones.  Fancy yellow diamonds are highly prized and generally more expensive than their white counterparts.  They are usually described as “fancy yellow” “intense yellow” or “vivid yellow”.  But a very similar look can be achieved with a “light” yellow diamond in the W-X or Y-Z range of color, especially when the yellow color is played up by setting it in a bezel setting of yellow gold or by surrounding it with white diamonds to highlight the contrast. The 1.5 carat radiant center stone/2.28 total carat weight ring below wholesales for about $13,400 which sounds like a ton until you compare it to a 2.5 carat “fancy intense yellow” which would cost about $50,000 or a 2.5 carat F-G white diamond which would cost about $40,000.  So for half the cost- or less- you have a boulder of a stone.  Mount it with contrasting stones and you’ve got a ring that will look like it just stepped out of Cartier’s despite coming from some guy named Carter down the street

There is an additional quality to diamond color which doesn’t start with a “C” and doesn’t get much press called fluoresence.  Fluoresence is the tendency of some stones to put off a blue glow when exposed to UV light.  So what you may ask?  Well, sunlight and many fluorescent light-bulbs give off UV light.  Still asking so what?  Blue is a complimentary color to yellow (on a color wheel).  Yellowish stones that have strong fluoresence will look white or near colorless in sunlight and many types of indoor lighting.  So even a J or K colored stone, if it has strong fluoresence, will appear much more white in most circumstances.

The last place to compromise is clarity.  Clarity is graded by the size and amount of “inclusions” or blemishes.  These can range from tee-nine-sy little fissures to whomping hunks of black coal. A flawless diamond has none of these little flaws when viewed under a magnifying glass (called a jeweler’s loupe for those of you interested in such things).  Most diamonds are not flawless.  What you are likely to see in a store or online are stones ranging from VVS1 to SI1.  This means “very very slight” inclusion to “slightly included”.  At the low end are the I1, 2 and 3 clarity stones which have flaws that are visible to the naked eye.  But wait you may say, does that mean that VVS through SI1 clarity stones have flaws NOT visible to the naked eye! Yes, it does.  Under magnification, an SI1 stone will have flaws that are fairly easy to catch even by your average Joe/Joesephine.  But with a naked eye (and really, who walks around with a magnifying glass anyway?) many inclusions even in SI1-2 graded stones are very hard to see, again made especially true when mounted in a ring and sitting on your waving hand.  If the overall quality of the cut is good, then a 1 carat I color SI1 clarity one carat diamond will not look very different from an E color VVS1 clarity one carat diamond – but will cost about 50% as much. Which means you can get a  50% bigger stone for the same budget!

In the pictures above, the oval on the right is pictured at 20x magnification and is graded VS1. The round on the right is shown at 30x magnification and is graded SI1. Seen at a “normal” distance (i.e. from their eye to your hand), do you really think anybody without expert training can tell the difference? The “flaws” will just be seen as facets of the sparkle for the most part!

What’s important is to start looking at what kind of inclusions or flaws make up the clarity grade.  While one option would be to get really good at looking at diamond grade reports like a GIA certificate, another method would be to eyeball the stone in person.  If when you’re looking at it, you can’t see the feathers/clouds/fissures that are downgrading the stone’s official clarity, then who cares?  Unless it’s an investment to help put your kids through college, don’t waste money on upgrading to fix a problem you wouldn’t otherwise know existed (unless you were told).

If you’re buying a stone and want to spend the rest of your life impressing everybody at the dinner table about how much you know about diamond cutting and grading, then by all means obtain a D color, VVS1, round solitaire.  But if you want to make even a jaded country-club matron do a double take, go for a J color, SI1, oval stone in a mounting with lots of little surrounding diamonds.  For the identical price, you’ll wind up with something you’ll be proud to flash for many years to come.

If you’re looking for a great deal on loose stones, check out Mondera. That’s where my hubby got me my engagement ring

This post is for everyone out there who likes big rocks. Whether you’re shopping for an engagement ring or whether you just wanna buy yourself some big bling, the common denominator of most diamond admirers is size. Yes, the setting is important, yes the quality gets a lot of lip service, but big is what catches and holds the eye. Think about it: Pamela Anderson’s implants may be hard as rocks, but it doesn’t mean that men don’t drool and women don’t envy when they see her in a photo spread.

But big is by-and-large expensive (yeah, I know….duh). So how can you maximize your money when buying diamonds? Many people know that diamonds are graded primarily using the “four C’s”: carat, cut, clarity and color. The trick is to know which of these you can sacrifice in order to get something you’ll be proud to wear.

Let’s start with cut. Cut refers to the shape of a diamond usually round, oval, square, rectangular, marquise or occasionally heart shaped. But not all cuts are created equally in terms of their visual impact. For the exact same carat weight, ovals have a much bigger “face” or surface area, rounds are in the middle and emerald/rectangular cuts have the least surface area and are generally the deepest. What this means is that a 1 carat oval oven looks more like a 1.5 or even 2 carat round, whereas a 1 carat ascher or emerald cut can look more like a ½ or ¾ carat round.

Now there are relatively inexpensive ways to make a square/emerald cut look larger if that is what your heart is truly set on. The easiest way is with the setting. Mosaics settings (e.g. www.benbridge.com) use a small center stone and surround it with baguettes in an invisible setting which gives the illusion that the baguettes are merely a continuation of the “step” cuts of the center emerald or ascher cut. One of my favorite examples is this one by Sasha Primak:

The center stone is less than one carat, but when you look at the surface of the ring, it looks like a gigantic 3+ carat center stone with little round diamonds surrounding it. Retail cost is between $7500-10,000 which is a lot less than the $40,000 ring it looks like. Another example is this from the mosaics collection:

Another ring that looks like a 3+ carat diamond in a more “blingy” setting and retails around $4500 – again, about 1/10th of what the “real deal” would cost. The average cost of a single carat in a plain gold setting is about this much – but this ring is as big as a penny and sparkles a ton.  Which would you rather have?

For round or oval stones, there is no way to seamlessly make the stone appear bigger, but there are still some tricks you can use to deepen the impact. First, use only “white” metals such as platinum or white gold, then have the diamond set in a “bezel” setting where the stone is completely surrounded by the metal. Two examples:

By adding a few millimeters to the circumference of the stone with a closely matching color, you add surface area to the stone which makes it look bigger. When you then add smaller round stones beyond that, the visual impact is much more than the sum of the center stone alone, again for much MUCH less than upgrading to a diamond of comparable size.

Now one word of advice: never, I mean NEVER, compromise on the quality of whatever cut you choose.  If you educate yourself on the specifics of great features of whatever shape you’re interested in (for example at Pricescope )  then buy a stone whose specific measurements match those criteria as closely as possible.  A good cut – no matter what the shape- maximizes the sparkle and the rainbow reflections that make diamonds so unique.  A D color, flawless diamond that is not cut well will look like a 2 cent piece of dull quartz.

Tomorrow we will look at the other two “C”s: color and clarity.  You’ll want to check back because we tie it all together on how to get the best diamond on a budget.

Remember all the happy memories you thought you’d make when you got married?  The rocking chairs you were going to…uh.. rock when you were old and grey?  But then you could only get a job on nights – in the ER – and the stress and the never seeing each other broke all the happiness down and now you’re thinking d-i-v-o-r-c-e.  Happily, auntie Rachael has some sound advice for covering your ass..ets in this time of need.

A)   Make sure you have (even in the best of times) a record of all the important numbers in your financial life, to whit:

•  bank name and all account numbers
•  all credit cards and account numbers along with information on who is the primary account holder and who has a “secondary” card
•  all outstanding loans such as car, house, boat.  Whose name the loans are in -yours, his, both? what bank are they with?
•  copies of tax records last two years
•  names and number of all investment accounts (e.g. IRA, CD, stock and investment accounts)Keeping copies of these records easily accessible to all parties helps come to an equitable separation more easily, which leads me to my next point:

 B) The cost of divorce – haggling over every little thing may give you emotional catharsis, but you pay for your lawyers by the hour.  Don’t use this as very expensive psychotherapy.  Consider using a mediator to decide some contentious issues quickly; you’ll still need a lawyer, but instead of two lawyers butting heads for you and the ex, the mediator can come to a decision expeditiously then your lawyer can draw up the paperwork.  Fewer billable hours for your lawyer = more money in your pocket.

C) Untangle all jointly funded posessions: cars, house, credit cards.  Defaulted payments on the other party’s part can destroy your credit score – and if you don’t take their name off the accounts/loans, you are liable for the debt.  I had a patient whose husband ran up over $1500 in toll debt for his job – but the fastpay toll card was in her name and there’s no way to appeal that bill  

D) Don’t forget to change your tax deduction status after divorce – divorce will always put a crimp in your income, hopefully temporarily.  But if you have too much money taken out of your paycheck, that will only worsen. Also don’t forget to change your will. You’d never want to look down from heaven at an ex enjoying your sportscar ’cause you forgot to disinherit them.

E) Don’t go for the bling.  Leave his $20,000 stereo system with him and you take an asset that may not pack an emotional punch, but might grow with time like real estate, a stock portfolio or retirement plan.