Widowed people need specialized financial help during uncertain times

When people are grieving the loss of a loved one, practical matters are often left by the wayside, including finances. In 2017, Chris Bentley, who at the time had a financial advisory and wealth management practice with Ameriprise Financial in the Twin Cities, was invited to a breakfast gathering of widows. As he heard their stories of financial struggles following the death of a spouse, it became clear to that widowed people needed dedicated professional financial services.

In 2018, Bentley founded Wings for Widows, a nonprofit offering financial coaching and education to help widowed people navigate their finances. Widows accounted for 30% of all women 65 and older in 2021, according to the Administration for Community Living, which includes the Administration on Aging. And there were more than three times as many widows (9.1 million) as widowers (2.7 million) aged 65 and older. Bentley says 800,000 people a year are widowed in the U.S., and many don’t know the laws regarding finances, or receive bad advice, or don’t have any guidance at all.

“The whole idea was to provide professional advice and resources to all widowed people in the U.S.,” Bentley said about Wings for Widows. “Initially, it was just in Minnesota, but then COVID–19 came along and suddenly meeting with everyone in person wasn’t possible. That’s when I wrote our first guidebook for widows, which is essentially a roadmap for our clients and the coaches working with them.”

“Now we have coaches all over the country working with thousands of widowed people a year and we offer free resources on our website,” he said.

We recently talked with Bentley, 69, about the financial challenges widowed people face. Here are highlights (edited for length and clarity) from our conversation.

“The first question I get is, ‘Will I be OK?’ And what they mean by that is, ‘Do I have any money? Am I going to be able to pay my bills?’

“The first thing we do as an organization, and what most advisers should do, is identify what income has been lost, any new sources of income, and what needs to be turned on — if any other sources or income are available. And then ask, ‘What are your expenses? Do they need to be cut?’

“On average, the income loss is around 48 percent. That’s pretty significant. If you or I lost 48 percent of our income today, we would be concerned. And we haven’t lost anybody, right? That’s a big concern.”

“I speak around the country to financial advisers on how to work better, more efficiently and more sensitively with a client. The big difference working with widowed folks is that they bring this overwhelming grief, fear and uncertainty of the future with them, and all conversations change when that’s a significant element. You can’t rattle on for an hour about asset allocation and investments.

“You get them for 20 minutes, if they can stay attuned for that long. … They are experiencing widow fog. It’s a real psychological phenomenon.

“We do a lot of hand-holding. We meet with folks in short durations, and have very candid and pointed conversations around one or two topic areas really focusing on what’s most important. It’s baby steps before bigger steps. In that first six to nine months of loss, it’s a very different person you’re working with than a typical client for those reasons.”

“One of the things we tell people is you must open your mail every day. Sort it into stacks — what you can take care of, and what you don’t understand or can’t take care of. One of the biggest mistakes is not getting organized right off the bat. We tell them we have 10 things that you need to do in the first 30 days, and one of them is get organized. Because you’re going to receive all kinds of letters and all kinds of information, and you need to be able to file those. You need to be able to grab that folder when you’re talking to this retailer or to this creditor and know where everything is when you have those conversations.”

“A huge piece is inviting family members to get involved — people who love you. Have a support network. It could be friends, it could be your best friend, it could be co-workers. We encourage folks to not do this alone. This journey was never meant for you to do alone.”

“Nobody talks about the inevitable. We spend weeks, months, hundreds of hours planning a wedding. We don’t spend time talking about the bigger event, which is dying, and what you’re going to leave your spouse with.

“If folks would just get a guide or download one for free and have conversations about questions like, ‘What if I wasn’t here? What if we didn’t have life insurance? How are you going to live? What’s your income going to look like?’ oh my gosh, folks would be in such better shape. Often the wake-up call happens when they take care of their parents, who didn’t do that either, and they’re stuck with all this mess. They want us to help get them ready so they don’t leave it to their kids to deal with.”