A client's husband once told her that if anything ever happened to him, her plan was simple: call Ken.
She looked at him and said, “I love you, but there has to be more to this than just ‘call Ken.’”
She was right. There has to be more to it than a phone number, because the first year after losing a spouse comes with decisions, some large and some small, that a person may never have had to make before. Right when those decisions start piling up, a lot of well-meaning people show up wanting to help, too: kids, friends, other professionals, etc.
Whose Vision Is It, Anyway?
Help usually comes filtered through someone else's perspective. Children mean well, but they often carry their own opinions about what a parent should do next, and those opinions can end up carrying more weight than what the parent actually wants. Professionals do it too, without meaning to. The question that rarely gets asked directly is what the widow or widower actually wants to do, not what someone else thinks is best for them.
Get the Simple Things Right First
Long before any bigger financial questions get addressed, the more basic ones matter most: are the bills getting paid, and does the survivor know where the money comes from and where it goes? One client, sharp and capable in every other part of her life, didn't know where her Social Security check was deposited, or which account a particular bill came out of. Her husband had handled it for years, so there was never a reason to think about it.
The car insurance bill comes due every August, and nobody tells you that in advance if it was never your job to know. Rebuilding that picture starts small, sometimes with nothing more than a family checkbook, so the numbers stop being a mystery.
Minimize Change
Once that picture exists, the instinct should be to leave it alone rather than rebuild it. There's already enough happening in someone's life without a financial overhaul on top of it.
We can't pay a client's bills directly, and wouldn't want to. What we can do is make sure the cash is there when bills come due, so nothing bounces, and nothing catches the survivor off guard, and the system that was already working keeps working.
Go Slow
There's no reason to upend a life in the first year just because others are eager for things to feel settled again. That applies to the big decisions too: selling the shore house, moving closer to a sibling, whatever choice everyone else suddenly has an opinion about.
The better starting points are smaller, more immediate questions. Can I still afford to keep the beach house? Can I still take the vacation we always took? These questions feel enormous the first time someone has to answer them, and far more manageable the second or third time.
When Grief Becomes Generosity
Consider a husband and wife who disagreed for years about funding their grandchildren's 529 plans. He didn't want to. He believed his own children should have to work for their kids' education the way he had. That was his position, and it held for as long as he was alive.
After he passed, his wife found she couldn't wait to start funding those accounts herself. Same family, same money, an entirely different outcome once the decision was hers alone.
Sometimes a shared vision is really a compromise, held for years out of love, and it only becomes visible once someone is finally the one making the decision.
Long-Term Care Is a Conversation About Whoever Is Left
This conversation is easiest to have early, typically in the mid-fifties. The usual objection comes up almost immediately: why buy insurance for something I could pay for myself?
You buy car insurance every year without expecting to use it, because you're hedging a risk, not betting on an outcome. Long-term care works the same way, except the stakes are higher and the timeline is longer.
But what happens to the person left behind? Good money gets spent caring for a spouse, and then that spouse passes, and the survivor is left with meaningfully less than they had. No one would deny their spouse that care in the moment. However, the extent of someone's flexibility in making that decision depends on what was planned years earlier.
Long-term care is not necessarily a fit for everyone, but we find many people experience a sense of sticker shock the first time they hear it and need time to weigh their options thoughtfully before assuming one decision over another.
One Thing Still to Come
Van Leeuwen & Company has spent the past year building something around all of this. It's called One Vision, and it's nearly ready. Message Ken directly so he can reach out as soon as it launches.
If you'd like to talk through how this could apply to your family, reach out at www.vanleeuwenco.com to schedule a complimentary consultation.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
Long-term care insurance products are subject to underwriting and are not offered through LPL Financial. Guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.
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