Embark on an empowering journey with us as we reflect on a year brimming with invaluable insights for financial prosperity post-divorce. Your co-hosts, Jacki Roessler and Melissa Fradenburg—certified divorce financial analysts—extend our deepest thanks for helping us reach new heights in the podcast universe. This episode is a celebration and synthesis of our most impactful discussions, including a revisit to our top five episodes. Whether you're seeking to reignite your career after time away from the workforce or deciphering the complexities of hidden assets during a high-stakes divorce, our year-end wrap-up is tailored to highlight the wisdom and strategies that resonated most with our audience in 2023.
This episode isn't just a look back; it's a roadmap for what's ahead. Stay tuned in 2024!
To read about how Pearl Planning and Jacki Roessler, CDFA can help you though your divorce or schedule an initial complimentary consult, CLICK HERE
TO Listen to our Top 5 Episodes of 2023, Click the Links Below
Links are being provided for information purposes only. We do not suggest that listening to this podcast will make you wealthy. Pearl Planning is not affiliated with and does not endorse the opinions or services of Brian Cohen or his affiliates. The information herein is general and educational in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Tax laws and regulations are complex and subject to change, which can materially impact investment results. Pearl Planning cannot guarantee that the information herein is accurate, complete, or timely. Pearl Planning makes no warranties with regard to such information or results obtained by its use and disclaims any liability arising out of your use of, or any tax or legal position taken in reliance on, such information. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation. Please note, changes in tax laws or regulations may occur at any time and could substantially impact your situation. Pearl Planning financial advisors do not render advice on tax or legal matters. You should discuss any tax or legal matters with the appropriate professional.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Wealthy After Divorce podcast. Jackie Ressler, a divorce financial planner with almost 25 years experience, and myself, melissa Freidenberg, financial advisor with Pearl Planning. We are both certified divorce financial analysts and your co-hosts.
Speaker 2:
If you're thinking about divorce or in the process of divorce, this is a time for you to take a deep breath and give yourself permission to gain clarity on the financial decision they're facing, while the term wealth typically refers to money and possessions.
Speaker 1:
We know that truly being wealthy means a whole lot more Together with our guests on this podcast. We will help you live wealthy after divorce.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Wealthy After Divorce podcast. This is Jackie Ressler and I am very happy to share our first ever year end wrap up episode with you. If you're like me, maybe you were excited to receive your year end wrap up from Spotify. I love music and I was really excited to see my year end wrap up. When I watched it, I was shocked to see that my number one artist and the artist that I got messages from were included. Artists like Taylor Swift and Elton John, who I like, but basically I do not listen to them all the time. My children reminded me that we listen to music in the power lot and it was actually their favorite songs that came up on my list. So the company that we publish our podcast through Buzzsprout. They also provided something very similar to Spotify in terms of a year end wrap up.
Speaker 2:
I opened up the app and I was reminded to go and take a look at the wrap up, and I found a few things that I thought were really interesting. First and foremost and we are very appreciative for our audience and that all of our followers we were in the top 50% of all Buzzsprout podcasts for 2023. The other thing that I noticed was that we had a list of the top five episodes for 2023. So I thought a great way for us to wrap up this very successful season is for us to go through a brief conversation about why we think these top episodes were the most popular in 2023, as well as give you a brief example of some of the episodes that we have in store for you for 2024. I'm going to link in the show notes for this episode a link to all five of these top most popular episodes in 2023. So any listener has easy access to them. Number five, I'm very excited to say, was how to find a job after being a stay at home mom. That episode is near and dear to my heart because I love Judy Richmond.
Speaker 2:
She is the director of a wonderful program locally here in Michigan that is designed to help women who have been out of the workforce get back on their feet. This particular program is free of charge and there are no requirements for the program. There are no income requirements. You don't have to be affiliated with any particular group. It's open to anyone that applies and is committed to going through the program and seriously looking for a job. I hope that for all of our listeners, wherever they are in the country, and I know that we have listeners all over the country and in some other countries. I hope that the message of this episode is that there are resources available to you, even if you haven't thought of them. If you are overwhelmed at the idea of getting back into the workforce, look for a program similar to this in your area. Obviously, you can look on the internet. You might wanna look through a church or religious group that you're affiliated with and see if they know of any programs that you can even hire a career coach individually to give you some direction on what your next step might be.
Speaker 2:
Our fourth most popular episode this year was uncovering hidden assets and divorce. This is a topic there tends to be. In my practice, I find that I might have 10 or 15 cases in a row that all are around the same issue and then the following year might be something different. Hidden assets and doing accounting type work to go back and audit through account statements to determine spending that one party might not have been aware of has been a very common thread amongst many of my cases this year, so it's not a surprise to me that this was a popular topic. This was an episode that Melissa Freidenberg, my co-host, taped with a forensic accountant who does a lot of work on high net worth divorce cases, and it's been something that we've incorporated quite a bit into our practice at pro planning this year in terms of doing some limited scope work, even with clients, where that's the only part of our engagement is. We're doing a deep dive into going back through old account statements to notice and detail out transfers between assets. There's a lot of moving around nowadays between Venmo and Zell and bank account transfers. Large amounts of money go back and forth and sometimes it's hard to make sense of that. When you hire a professional like our firm to come in and help with that, it becomes clear maybe that there was money that was dissipated or, in some states, what they referred to as marital waste has occurred and that could be very powerful in building an argument for why some of those assets should be included back into the marital estate even if they're gone. So again, this is a topic that we are gonna be covering again in greater detail coming up in 2024. We have some great episodes around this topic already on tap.
Speaker 2:
Our third most popular episode of 2023 was one of our mini bite episodes. We're gonna be doing a lot of mini bites coming up in 2024. Those are shorter topics with they get right down into the nitty gritty of the information that we wanna get across. They're mostly educational and they are things that you can listen to very quickly. Our number three episode this year again was the things to do right now post divorce mini bite, and I'm very happy that that was a popular topic this year. That has been a long time in the making. For me, it's been an article that I've been working on for quite a while things to do now, things to do soon and things to do later, after the divorce is done. There are so many things that come up when the divorce is done and financial things, things that have to do with estate planning changes, account changes, account transfers, tax issues, changing your name there again. The list can go on and on, and it's really difficult to know when you're just fresh out of your divorce what are the things that I have to do right now. And give me a list of those, and that's what this episode was all about. So if you are post divorce now and you have been divorced, let's say, within the last few months, this is the episode that I highly recommend that you go back to and listen and see if you can pick up some things, and it's probably worth going back and listening to it again several months after your divorce, maybe even six months after, to make sure that everything on this little mini bite has been taken care of.
Speaker 2:
Number two Again not a surprise to me. I knew right after we taped this episode that this was a very important episode, maybe the most important one that we had taped to that point. This was a candid conversation with a former divorced client of mine where we went we took a deep dive again into a sensitive topic. We talked with my former client, diane, who had been one year post-divorce. We looked back at the things that she felt went really well and the things that were challenging for her during that process. We talked about what things she might recommend to somebody who was just starting the process in terms of what to look for in a lawyer, how to communicate with your lawyer, what she had learned about the divorce process as a whole and how to heal from it. But again, I'm thrilled that that was our number two episode of the year because I know it was difficult for my client to talk about those things, but she really wanted to share with our audience the lessons that she learned so that that could be shared exponentially.
Speaker 2:
Our number one episode of 2023 was surviving divorce for stay-at-home moms. That, again, is not a surprise to me. That episode really resonated with a lot of people, a lot of people that are in a state of fear. I do believe that that's why many people out there that are listening do stay tuned and listen to our episodes. That fear of what do I do next can be so overwhelming and so powerful that it can prevent you from moving forward after the divorce. The fact that this episode was our most popular of 2023, that shows me that our listeners really want those tools to be able to move forward when they've been in a completely different life stage, to move from being a stay-at-home parent to being. Whether that's going to be, what is your new life going to look like and how do you navigate that transition. Of course, we just barely touched the surface of that topic with that episode.
Speaker 2:
In terms of episodes that we have recorded already for 2024 and episodes that we plan to record, we are going to be covering a lot more in-depth topics. We noticed that the financial topics are obviously very popular, but some of our most popular episodes, which maybe didn't hit the top five this past year but overall as far as what is the most popular, are the ones that we've done with lawyers talking about some very specific legal topics Just coming year, in 2024,. Stay tuned we are going to be doing many more lawyer interviews with some of our special guests. We might have a repeat guest, but we also plan to interview a judge this year about what you can expect if your case does go to trial and what judges look for. We also have planned an episode on pre-nups and what to include, what not to include, and I know that that has been something that has been requested multiple times for us to have an episode on that topic, so that will be a lot of fun to tape.
Speaker 2:
We've already taped topics with mental health professionals. We are going to be covering loan assumptions for a mortgage after divorce, which another hot topic that has come up for me that's been a popular, consistent theme In my cases for 2023 is whether or not my clients can count on having one party assume the marital home mortgage. We are also going to be talking about a topic that I think is very exciting. It's restricted stock units and stock options and divorce. We have a fantastic lawyer and financial expert in divorce who is out of New York and this is one of her specialty areas, so that's going to be great for our audience.
Speaker 2:
I absolutely want to thank everyone listening for all of the time that you have shared with us this year. My co-host, melissa Freidenberg, and I thank you for your support and your reviews. If you like this episode and episodes like it, we hope that you will stay tuned in 2024 and follow us, share with friends and family and, if you get a chance to write a review for us on Apple Podcast, that is a way for us to reach many more listeners like you.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to the Wealthy After Divorce Podcast. You can find more information on Melissa Freidenberg and Jackie Ressler on our website, wwwpearlplancom, as well as on our podcast website, wwwwealthyafterdivorcecom.