Hello, and welcome. Pull up a chair.

I was married for thirty-two years. I raised three children, kept a house, chaired more bake sales than I can count, and could make a pound cake in my sleep. What I could not have done in March of 1997 was tell you how much was in our retirement account, which bank held the mortgage, or where the deed to my own house was kept.

That March, my husband told me he was leaving, and on a Tuesday afternoon he did. His reasons are his own to tell, and he isn't telling them here. My mother raised me better than to air them, and my children read this page. Our divorce was final in June of 1998. I was fifty-five years old.

I'm fifty-six now. I work at a florist's shop four days a week. I rent a little apartment with a balcony, where I feed a pair of cardinals who have decided I'm acceptable. I have three grown children, Glenda, Monty and Vivian, and two grandchildren, Mariah and Nicholas, both seven and both entirely perfect. I am, against all my expectations, fine. Better than fine, most days.

But I learned more about money in that one year than in the thirty-two before it, and I would have much preferred a correspondence course. So this page is the course. It's for women, mostly, though not only, who find themselves on their own late in life after years of keeping a home. I hope it saves you a little of what it cost me.

What I Wish I'd Known

Pauline's Papers-and-Money Checklist
Print this page, take it to the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and start at the top.
Then take it to your lawyer.

From Pauline Starr's page on GeoCities.us. General information only, not legal or tax advice.

A Few Words About the Rest of It

I won't pretend the money was the hardest part. The hardest part was the dinner table set for one, and the Sunday afternoons, and the first Christmas, when the children did their very best to be in three places at once and I told them to stop it and just come for dessert. The hardest part was being, at fifty-five, a person I had never been: a woman alone, with her own name on her own lease.

But I'll tell you something I didn't expect. Once the papers were signed and the shaking stopped, I found I rather liked her. She's a good deal braver than I thought. She knows what's in her checkbook to the penny. She had her first paycheck in thirty-three years at fifty-five and took it out to lunch.

My Saturdays Now

	Up at six without an alarm, because thirty-two years of habit doesn't care that I'm free.
	Black-oil sunflower seed in the feeder on the balcony rail. The cardinals come at a quarter to seven: he in his red suit and she in her brown one with that orange bill, always together, always him first. I take my coffee out and we look at each other. They're the most faithful couple I know.
	In wedding season, a half day at the shop, making bridesmaids' bouquets. I'm told I have a gift for them, which my children find very funny under the circumstances. I find it funny too.
	The farmers' market, for tomatoes and peaches while they last, and whatever's in a bucket by the cash box.
	Every other Saturday, Mariah and Nicholas, who think my apartment is a hotel and my balcony is a zoo.
	A library book, a pimento cheese sandwich, and a nap if I want one. Nobody asks me what's for supper.
	Bed when I please, on whichever side of the bed I please. I have tried them both. I like the middle.

If you're at the beginning of all this, sitting at your own kitchen table at midnight, I want you to know that I was there too, and that it does not stay midnight. Write to me if you like. I answer every letter, though some of them take me a few evenings.

-- Pauline