California News Reporter

Costa Mesa, CA – Many women find themselves alone later in life; it’s no secret that women have longer life expectancies than men. Securing resources and planning your retirement are a key factor in continuing to live a happy life after leaving the working world, says Ilkay Sepulveda – and she’s committed to helping single women navigate those obstacles that, all too often, are unfamiliar and daunting once they’re left without a partner.

After accruing over 20years of experience in the financial services industry, Sepulveda (whose first name rhymes with “teal sky”) noticed a trend in her married clients’ late-life retirement planning patterns. After years of one partner holding the fiscal reins while the other took a passive role, the other (usually the woman, in Sepulveda’s experience) would suddenly be left without a partner…and without a clue as to how they should proceed with managing their financial resources.

“So, I felt like I was doing a lot of crisis management…taking over when the wife is now left with the investments and now, she has to make the decision all by herself,” says Sepulveda.

In 2017, she founded The Lady Advisor, her women-focused financial services firm, so she could center her career around educating and advising women about their fiscal resources in order to equip them with the knowledge to make sound decisions regarding their retirement after their partner was no longer there to manage it.

In the wake of a partner’s death, it can be difficult to focus on making unfamiliar decisions about the future, especially if those decisions require learning new and sometimes complex concepts regarding personal financial management. Fortunately, Sepulveda has four clear, simple steps that will set widowed or single women on the right path to making independent fiscal decisions.

1. Visualize & Plan Your Retired Life

The first step to planning one’s retirement is to do just that: create a general plan for what retired life will look like.

Everyone’s plan usually looks a little different: Do they want to travel? Do they want to spend time with their grandchildren? Do they want to settle down and write a memoir? All of the above? Visualizing the retired years will inform their decisions regarding monetary needs, so it’s an important first step.

After a person has a clear image of how they want to spend their retirement, the second half of planning becomes evaluating income and expenditures: Will the person receive Social Security benefits? A pension? Disability? How much are their taxes each year? Do they have any debts? Comparing a person’s income to any expenses will give them an idea of how they’ll distribute their resources after leaving the working world.

2. Establish an Emergency Fund

Once an inventory of income and expenditures has been taken, Sepulveda recommends building an emergency fund of 6 to 9 months’ living expenses.

The fund should be kept in a safe, secure account such as savings or a money market account; the account shouldn’t be affected by market conditions or be tied to any sort of withdrawal fees or penalties. After all, what would be the point of having an emergency fund if it’s not reliable or easy to access?

3. Account for Health & Long-term Care Costs

The importance of healthcare should be fairly obvious to anyone, especially as they grow older and past health issues can often become more complicated. However, the cost of long-term care can potentially be the biggest cost of a person’s retirement…and it’s sometimes a completely unforeseen one.

A common misconception regarding long-term care is that it’s solely synonymous with living in a nursing home; Sepulveda quashes this idea. Minor injuries can often necessitate retirees to hire caretakers for several weeks or even months, especially if they don’t have children nearby to help carry them through difficult times like these. Hiring caretakers like this can be expensive enough to cause serious financial setbacks to some.

According to research, 7 out of 10 people age 65 and older will require some type of long-term care service in their retirement years, making this a step that should be carefully considered.

4. Establish a Legacy Plan

The fourth most important step to successfully planning a person’s retirement is deciding how to divide the estate that they leave behind.

Passing on without a clear record of how a person would like their wealth distributed after they’re gone can leave families with difficult questions at best and strained or broken relationships at worst. Taking the time to document wishes can give the family peace of mind when possessions are passed down.

The Lady Advisor offers pre- and post-retirement planning services (as well as others, such as investment) and specializes in establishing safe, secure sources of retirement income for divorced, widowed, or single women.

Upon discussing what a person would like their services to achieve for them in a preliminary meeting, The Lady Advisor performs a diverse set of analyses, including analyses of the person’s retirement, income and expenses, investments, and potential long-term care considerations. Based on the unique analyses, they determine which offered services will benefit the person’s retirement the most and put together “The Roadmap”: a comprehensive plan designed to bring them from where they are to where they desire to be in their pre- or post-retired life. After establishing the plan, they’ll meet at least once a quarter in order to ensure progress toward fiscal success is continuous.

So what makes The Lady Advisor different from other financial planners?

“…the way that we work, it’s more of a partnership…” says Sepulveda. With many financial planners, clients can receive great financial advice but mediocre customer service; The Lady Advisor takes a client-centered approach, leading their service with education and explanation of their clients’ retirement plans in order to not only give them financial freedom, but peace of mind as well.

“…we feel like our client is part of our family.” 

Anyone who’d like to explore how they can achieve financial stability through retirement planning with The Lady Advisor can visit https://theladyadvisor.com/.

Media Contact
Company Name: The Lady Advisor
Contact Person: Ilkay Sepulveda
Email: Send Email
Phone: 714-371-4356
Address:600 Anton Blvd., Ste. 1100
City: Costa Mesa
State: CA
Country: United States
Website: https://theladyadvisor.com/