As a financial planner, I’ve worked with quite a few widows over the years.  Studies show that seven out of eight women will outlive their husbands.  But, recently, I’ve met three widowers and I was completely astonished by what I found.  Below is the story of one of those widowers.  Interestingly, the other two stories are similar.

John was 39 years old.  He was a deacon in his church, had a beautiful bride that he had been married to for 15 years and two fantastic children.  He ran a small business that provided him with a very good income and allowed him to devote much of his time to serving others and spending time with his family.  Then, tragedy struck.  Jan's life was taken away by a drunk driver.  John's life and the lives of his children were turned upside down.  John had to deal with the loss of his bride of 15 years.  His children had to deal with the loss of their mother. 

John was (and still is) a great father.  However, he made a terrible mother.  John's bride was home every day when the kids came home.  John was running a business and couldn't be home by 3 pm when the kids arrived home from school.  It wasn't long before John began to realize that the children needed him to be there more often.  Without parental supervision, they made poor choices, and they began getting into trouble around the neighborhood.  Psychologists explained the children’s behavior as quite normal when faced with the loss of a parent.  He was faced with a very difficult decision; the way he saw it, he had three choices.  

1.  Keep working and run the risk of his children getting into things they shouldn't be.  John had always worked and figured he needed to provide financially for his children.

2.  Stop working to be there for his children. The only problem, albeit a very large one, was that this solution left his family with no income.

3.  The third solution seemed to provide the best of both worlds: he could run his business out of his home.  Unfortunately, he quickly found that this wasn't the perfect solution either.  It was difficult for John to run his business full-time and focus full-time on his troubled kids. Changing the location of where he did his business didn’t make any difference.

His decision was finally made clear after he checked his eldest daughter into a rehab center:  he had to stay home and fully focus on his grieving children.

Of course, John wanted to provide for his children financially, but he saw it was more important to provide for them emotionally and spiritually.  John learned too late that although you can’t buy your children’s emotional or spiritual security, you can buy their financial security.  Before her death, John’s bride wasn’t earning an income, so, at first glance her loss did not leave a large financial impact.  Because of their lack of preparedness, John had to use up most of his savings since he wasn’t earning an income.  Three years of living expenses wreaked havoc on his finances.  It took him three years to feel comfortable enough to go back into business.  John is one of the few people I know that had enough money saved to last him three years.  When I met John a few months back, it had been four years since he lost his bride.  His children have adjusted quite well, but the financial impact has been quite devastating.