Nobody likes thinking about the end, or picking a guardian to raise your children, or having to pick which of your children would best at managing your money in your absence. But the thing about estate planning is, if you don’t do it, you lose your say in how things are handled when you pass away or if you are incapacitated and unable to speak on your own behalf. Without a will, your estate may end up in court, divvied up based on a judge’s decision—not your own.

It sounds great! Retiring with your spouse at the same time would mean you could travel together, take up some hobbies together, have more time to spend as a couple. And how long has it been? Often, by the time we are nearing retirement we have only recently said goodbyes to our youngest child. Which means that over the last 20 or more years, spouses have seen little of each other as day-to-day obligations eat up alone time. It is for these reasons that simultaneous retirement has its appeal. But it is important, especially for women, to know where the pitfalls lie.

We all know the classic saying, “Time is Money”, right? We also know that time and money are the two things we often wish we had more of. The key to time management and overall life quality will always be finding that balance between what you have to do, what you want to do, and how to afford it all. Outsourcing some of your daily tasks may be a more efficient use of resources than taking the valuable time to do it all yourself. Sure, we could all learn to change our oil or fix a leaky toilet, but by paying a professional to handle these tasks, we free ourselves up to focus on more important tasks, like our work, which in the long run may make us more money rather than lose it. This is called "Opportunity Cost"-- the next highest valued alternative use of a resource.[i]  An example: If you make $100 an hour at your job and it takes you 3 hours to do a deep clean of your house, that’s essentially costing you $300 to clean your house. If you can have a service clean it for $150 in 3 hours, you’re actually saving money outsourcing the labor.

Do you have any non-qualified stock options (NSOs) granted to you by your employer?  NSOs are a common equity compensation feature provided to management-level employees as part of a compensation package. They give you the opportunity to potentially profit from the price increase in your employer’s stock.  An employee stock option gives you the right to purchase a specific number of shares of your company’s stock at a specific price – the grant or strike price – within a specific time period.  The grant price is typically the market value of the stock at the time your company granted you the options. Here are some of the essential things you ought to know about your NSOs.

Recently I heard a story from a 67-year old woman who had gotten divorced after twenty years of marriage. She had raised her daughter at home while she was younger and she didn't get much at all from the divorce. She is now collecting about $900 per month from Social Security income and working part-time to get by while sharing an apartment with others. She is fearful about her financial future because she has never managed money before and it's hard for her to find a job at her age. This month, I also heard another story about a woman who confided to her granddaughter in college that she had stayed in an abusive marriage for many years because she didn't have any control of money. Later, this woman's death resulted from falling down the stairs and was later confirmed not to be an accident. In fact, her abusive husband pushed her down the stairs. Staying because of money had literally cost her her life.