Anonymous wrote:Look into Dave Ramsey and his Financial Peace University. He deals a lot with debt, which doesn't sound like an issue for you, but I think you'd find it educational in terms of budgeting, emergency funds, insurance and buying a house.

If you don't have debt, don't bother with Dave Ramsay. He is not the one to turn to for investing advice. Bogleheads, as mentioned above, will be much more useful to you.

Do not get sucked into too much house. The last thing you want is to have too much house when your kids leave home; you're getting a late start to retirement investing (no judgment, I was too), and you need to think not just about your needs now but your needs in 20 and 30 years. A big house will not be on that list, and every sale means getting hit on fees.

The PPs have good advice. Since you were a SAHM who wasn't involved in finances, in the long term, you do need to educate yourself, particularly about saving for retirement. Dave Ramsey's class is a great start.

In the short term, allocating the 300K across the emergency fund and retirement is essential. I would do what the PP said -- put about $50K (6 months expenses) into an emergency fund and the rest (about $250K) into retirement. The advisor can help you determine how to structure the retirement money (and yes, start with an IRA, and build future IRA contributions into your budget to max it each year).

Since you don't have a 401K, talk to the advisor about how to use mutual funds for retirement. If you have your own business, even something small on the side, you might be able to set up a self-employed retirement account, like a SEP IRA.

Make sure to see a fee-only financial advisor. You don't want to pay someone to manage your money as you will lose a lot for that privilege (often 1% of your assets).

Who's paying for private school? That's a huge expense. If the dad is, that's fine, but I don't think that's something you can afford right now. If you have a lot of expensive possessions that you took away from the former home, and don't need them, sell them. You are in a different reality now, and you can't live like you used to in a 8K square foot home.

I also agree that a 500K house or townhouse is about right -- you want to go as low as you can on housing because it's a fixed cost and difficult to reduce once you've bought. Sharing bedrooms won't kill your kids, and townhouses are less maintenance for you.

My biggest advice for the long term is to put your retirement first before spending on your kids. Don't spoil them with things because they are hurting from the divorce -- things aren't going to make them feel better. I know that's hard, but your kids can borrow for education if necessary, but you can't borrow for retirement. You don't want to be a financial burden to them when they are middle aged with kids of their own and you are elderly. Do your best to aggressively to make up for lost time with retirement.

OP, I don't have a ton of been-there, done-that financial advice for you (other than to tell you to IGNORE the person who suggested you sink your whole $300K in a house. That person is smoking crack. There is no way that five in a small house is "debilitating" -- our parents and grandparents had that many and more in small houses, and survived just fine.)

I just wanted to let you know there's someone out here pulling for you. It sounds like you've been through a really tough time. Someone like Dave Ramsey or even Suze Orman might be good to start with, just to ground yourself in the basics. That way, when you speak to the financial planner, you'll already be grounded in the vocabulary of financial planning. I just would hate to see you get in a situation that doesn't quite meet your needs because you and your financial planner weren't on the same page.