Comprehensive Checklist for the Newly Widowed

Have you ever searched online for guidance and resources on topics like death of a spouse checklist or what should a widow do in the first year? If you’re like most widows you’re in desparate need of a comprehensive checklist for the newly widowed to help you determine what specific things need to be done when your spouse dies.

When I was first widowed, no comprehensive checklists existed. Oh sure, I found 10-point checklists that listed basic things like, contact the funeral home and contact the Social Security administration. Some checklists even listed things like notify banks, credit card companies, and mortgage companies.

But these were just lists. Simple posts with simple checklists – but no substance.

I needed to know exactly what I was missing. I wanted guidance and detailed instructions on what to do after the death of a spouse. But nothing like what I was specifically looking for existed.

So I created it.

The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows is a comprehensive checklist for the newly widowed that provides the knowledge, tools, and emotional support you need to handle post-death tasks, manage finances, cope with grief, and ultimately find a path towards healing and rebuilding your life with confidence.

Through extensive research, consultations with experts, and personal experiences, I compiled a comprehensive collection of information on topics such as financial considerations, account management, taxes and insurance, and emotional well-being. The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows is a roadmap for widows to navigate the complexities of their new responsibilities with confidence and grace.

Key topics in this episode:

• Strategies to lessen the overwhelm and emotional stress from the sheer number of post-death tasks
• Addressing the burden of making important decisions alone
• Following a solid action plan to handle your new responsibilities

With a focus on staying productive and managing the daily minutiae of life and home management, even when life feels overwhelming, The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows is the ideal solution for widows looking to regain control and navigate this challenging time with ease.

Listen to the Full Episode

Links + Resources From This Episode

• The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows
• Are you searching for a community of widows offering emotional support, practical advice, and guidance on navigating widowhood? Join us in the Widow Squad membership.
• Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Episode Transcript

Melissa: Hey there, listeners. It’s Melissa, and I’m joined by Kim and Jen. Today’s episode of The Widow Squad podcast is close to our hearts. You know, how we always say take care of yourself? Well, today, we’ll talk about how you can do just that, especially when it comes to navigating the challenging tasks that come after a spouse’s death.

You know, we’ve all felt that overwhelming feeling, like facing a mountain of tasks, but the silver lining is you don’t have to climb it alone. And today, we’re going to shine a light on a resource that we genuinely believe will be your compass through the widow fog.

And to kick it off, we’d like to talk to Kim about the origin of The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows.

So Kim, can you tell us a bit about what motivated you to create this course?

What Should a Widow Do in the First Year?

Kim: Well, I was completely and utterly bewildered after I was first widowed.

Like most of us are because we’re trying to figure out how to do things now that our spouse has died. We have to deal with the grief and the shock and all the things after your spouse is gone. But you still have to deal with things in your everyday life, like handling your accounts or dealing with finances or all the stuff that comes on your shoulders now that you’re alone. And it’s really, really hard to do.

I know for myself, I was bewildered. I was overwhelmed. I had piles of paper on my desk. I had bills coming in the mail. I had all kinds of things going on. And I didn’t know what to do with all of it.

So, as I’m handling the “business” side of death, it occurred to me that other widows would probably struggle with this too. The thing is, I knew about our household finances. I knew where the passwords were. I knew what our investments were. I knew those things, and I still struggled. I knew how to do that stuff, and I had a hard time getting through some of this administrative paperwork and tasks that come with death.

I thought if I know what I’m doing but I still am struggling and having a hard time with it, how do widows handle this when they don’t know what they’re doing or don’t have any of the background information or don’t know where their accounts are?

As I’m going through changing accounts and canceling credit cards and doing all those things, I’m just keeping notes. I’m keeping notes in a folder, and I’m thinking to myself someday I’m going to help other widows do this too. I just didn’t know what that looked like, and I didn’t know how I was going to put that information out there. But I had a file folder. I kept a ton of notes. I put a bunch of copies of everything I was doing in it.

And little by little, I just started amassing this information that I eventually put into this product called The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows. It’s a comprehensive list of everything you need to do after your spouse dies. And I created it because nothing like it existed when I was first widowed. And I wanted to help other widows get through that overwhelm.

Melissa: Yeah. I mean, widow fog is legit. So, in Jen’s and my case, our husband’s died very suddenly. There was no prep, no nothing. And then you go to plan the funeral service and all that, and you get a checklist of things to do that’s not specific to widows, It’s just a general checklist of do this, do that, do this, and you’re like, this is it? Well, how am I gonna figure this all out? You know?

Kim: Well, you think it’s the 10 points that the funeral home handed you. You think those are the 10 things that you need to do. Until you get home and sit down and realize there’s like a million things you need to do. Not just 10.

Jen: Honestly, I don’t even think I got a pamphlet. I don’t know what they handed me. Maybe they did, and then I misplaced it and put that checklist somewhere. Who knows? I don’t even remember getting that. So, yeah, I was at a total loss for what to do.

What’s amazing about your story is that you had this thought there are other people in the world that are having an even harder time than I am right now. You know, I think that’s just amazing that you’re thinking of other people while you’re going through all this stuff that you’re going through it’s just it shows how kind-hearted and big-hearted that you are as a person. Like, thinking of other people at a time like that.

Kim: Well, what’s interesting too is I’m a fairly organized person. That’s how my brain works. I like to keep things in order and check things off lists. But even though I am a somewhat organized person, I was completely unorganized when it came to handling all these post death tasks. Right?

So, my normal course of action, the way I normally handle things, went right out the window, because I couldn’t wrap my head around everything that was happening. I couldn’t wrap my head around all these things that I had to do on top of grieving my husband’s death. I just thought to myself, this is insane. I mean, this is actually insane. The number of things that we have to do and the amount of things that we have to take care of.

When the funeral home tells you to order, like, 10 to 20 copies of the death certificate and you’re thinking to yourself, well, that’s silly. Because they’re not free, right? Death certificates cost money. So, they usually recommend 10 to 20 copies and you’re like, well, that’s silly that I would have to have that many copies. But you totally need that many copies because there’s that many places that will ask you for an original copy of the death certificate.

Anyway, just going through all those things, I just felt really bad for other future widows who were going to be completely blindsided. Like you said, both of your husband’s deaths were not expected. You know, I knew my husband was going to die. I had some time to prepare. Although we’ve said a million times, there’s really no way to prepare for death. But I could kind of think in advance about what I’d have to do. But even what I thought I had to do was nowhere near what I actually had to do after he died.

That’s how this all came to be. And it took me several years to get to the point where I could create a product that was available for other people to get some use of.

Melissa: So, did you make any mistakes along the way? And after you corrected those mistakes were you thinking to yourself, I wish I had this information, or I wish I knew to do this or not do this. Was that part of the motivation, too?

Kim: My mistake was not being organized as organized as I wanted to be. That was mistake number one. I would contact a credit card company or a business to tell them about my husband’s death, but I wouldn’t make a copy for myself of that correspondence. I wouldn’t write on a checklist somewhere that that’s what I did. So, I ended up doing things more than once, repeating tasks that I probably didn’t need to repeat because I wasn’t keeping track of what I was completing.

So that was some of the impetus behind creating these checklists for the guide too. You have to know and be able to mark down when you’ve completed things and who you sent the correspondence to and when it was sent. And I didn’t do that. So, I had this file folder, which was great, but it was a mumbled, jumbled mess of papers. I wanted to make this easier for future widows to have a little bit more organization.

So my mistake was not being my normal organized self.

Jen, did you have any mistakes?

Jen: Oh my god. I don’t even know where to start with my mistakes. I just had no guidance, and I had no direction for what I was supposed to be doing at all. Like I said, maybe they gave me a checklist at the funeral home, but God knows where I put it.

What I did have was my brother-in-law, who was not familiar with loss and not familiar with this whole process, but he’s a brilliant businessman. He knows the paperwork. He knows the things that I should have been thinking about. As far as, like, you need to call this credit card company. You need to call this insurance company. This is what’s next on your list of things to do that he could think of.  

But, yes, organization. There was no organization. It was just like, oh well, if I have to call that credit card company, let me check on this other one because I can’t remember if I called them and, oh, wait, that credit card is linked to this bank. I have to talk to the bank about this.

It’s just this ripple effect of everything that’s involved. I mean, it’s weeks of these phone calls, sometimes leading into months of these phone calls. Like, we talk about that a lot of times in the Widow Squad. It feels like it’s never ending. Things come up, things that you hadn’t thought of, things that are in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows, right? Like health insurance things that are going to end in a few months.

Melissa, didn’t you have some situation like that?

Melissa: Yeah. That totally happened to me. So, Dave carried our health insurance benefits. I was working at the time too, but his health insurance was way more robust than what my company offered. And I wasn’t even thinking about anything because you’re planning a funeral service. You have people in town. In my case, I was moving.

I think I got this letter in the mail saying, oh, by the way, your health insurance expires on such-and-such a date. And I’m like, what am I gonna do? And so, of course, I called my HR. I mean, luckily, I had a job. I had a job where I could then sign up for our insurance benefits. But I’m also deciding, do I go with Kaiser? Do I go with whatever? And I don’t know about anybody else, but I am not clear-headed, you know, at that point. I’m probably not making the best decisions. I remember just checking a lot of boxes. Like okay, I guess this will be good enough and not really having any tool or anything to figure out what the best option is for me and my kids.

Kim: Well, that’s the key. We’re not clear-headed. There’s no way that you can be clear-headed and know exactly what you should do. It’s not possible because there’s so many things going on. And so many things are so confusing.

That’s why I tried to make this as simple as possible in a logical order with all the information in it you may or may not need. Some things won’t apply to you. I’ve got sections in here that don’t even apply to me but might apply to somebody else. So not everything is going to apply to you in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows. But at least it gives you a way to kind of check things off a list. It’s like the ultimate checklist. There are probably thousands of checklists floating around out there on the internet, but they’re not checklists specific to widows, right?

A Comprehensive Death of a Spouse Checklist

Jen: So, Kim, you’re talking about these different sections of The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows. Can you tell us some of the other ones that we haven’t kind of touched on? We talked about insurance a little bit.

Kim: Let’s just start at the beginning. There is a ton of information in here, so we’re not going to cover all that in the podcast today.

Before I start, though, there’s nothing in this guide about probate, okay? Probate varies from state to state and I’m not a lawyer. So, there’s no way that I could cover any of that in there. I don’t want to want to set the expectation that’s something you would find in here.

But what I did was take sections and create a checklist for each section and worksheets and templates and all kinds of stuff in there for each separate topic.

So, when you’re starting off, Section 1 is just called Getting Started. And that’s just giving you some ideas on how to use The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows. It has some grief support options available to you and grief camp information for your kids and things like that just to get started.

Section 2 goes into getting organized. So, this is where I recommend you gather some important documents. I have a list in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows of 40 + documents that you gather and find out where they are. Now that seems like a lot. But again, these are things you need to know when you’re canceling accounts or transferring beneficiary information or whatever, but it’s a checklist, right? It’s a list of 40 documents. You can go through it and determine what applies to you. You should probably look for these specific records or these certificates.

This section also goes into suggestions for creating a binder to organize all of this. I’m a big proponent of a 3-ring binder because you have to have all this information in one location. I tell you how to create the organization using a 3-ring binder, tabbed dividers, and pocket folders. You can use it to keep receipts and copies of documents in one place. It also has a place for you to put your checklist at the end of each section to make sure you’ve checked off all the things that I’m suggesting or recommending that you do.

In the Getting Organized section, for example, is a story about what happened to me several months after Mark died. As I’m creating the guide, like you said, Jen, things come up maybe one month, two months, six months, maybe sometimes a year after I’ve completed these tasks. But I kept taking notes. Even though some of these things happened to me, maybe one to two years after I was widowed, I added them because these are things that I didn’t know I had to do in the beginning.

One of those things was to change my home alarm system’s contact number. We had a home alarm system, and my husband’s phone number was the contact, right? So, if that alarm was tripped, the alarm company would call him. I didn’t think twice about my alarm system contact number because we used to trip the alarm occasionally with our sliding glass door and I would just call the alarm company, give them our PIN number and we were good to go.

Well, one day I left the kids at the neighbor’s house, and I had to go out and run some errands and for whatever reason, the boys decided to go home before I got home. In my mind, they were going to be at the neighbor’s house until I got back. Well, they went home early, and they tripped the alarm. So the alarm company is trying to call my husband, but they can’t get a hold of him because he’s dead and I canceled his phone.

The police are dispatched to my house. Now I know that the alarm was tripped because I get the push notification, so I call the alarm company and they’re like, “the police have already been dispatched.” So, I’m rushing home and when I get home, the door to my house is ajar and the police are inside with guns drawn. They thought it was like a murder or something. So anyway, I went inside and said, “It’s OK. The kids just tripped the alarm.” My heart is pounding out of my chest. My kids are crying because the police are in their house.

So, you guys, I mean, the moral of the story is if you have a home alarm system and your husband was the contact, you need to change that contact number. Well, I didn’t know that. This is in the guide. This is in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows.

Jen: I mean, you don’t deal with that on a daily basis. You’re not thinking about that. That’s not front of mind.

Melissa: No, that’s not on the checklist from the funeral home.

Kim: Right! So, if you’re so if you’re going through The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows and you get to that part, you’re like, oh my god, I have a home alarm system. I had better change that contact number. I still think back to that time, and it still gets my heart pounding again because I got a lecture from the police officer about changing the home alarm system contact number. Thank you. Got it. Message received. I’m aware now.

Melissa: Yeah. I’ve had a few other things on my mind.

Kim: So that’s in the guide, you guys. Some of these things that I put in there were also things that happened to me personally. I don’t ever want this to happen to anybody else because it was horrible.

So, more information in the Get Organized section talks about how to remove your name from the Direct Marketing Association or how to back up your data on your computer. Because if you’re doing things on your computer, and you’ve got files and documents and certificates and whatever, you need to back that up.

Jen: Oh, good. That’s a good one.

Kim: The next section talks about Social Security benefits, and that’s a big one for widows because there’s lots of questions and lots of confusion when it comes to Social Security.

A lot of this stuff you can find on the internet, you guys. I’m not creating anything new here in the guide, but the point is it’s here for you in a decipherable fashion. You don’t have to go out on the internet and search all these things. I’ve put it into a section for you in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows. 

What I did was create a worksheet for Social Security numbers that you need to know because there’s a difference between widow survivor benefits and your retirement benefits, for example. And there are different ways you can claim benefits at different ages, and that gets really complicated really fast. I’m not going to go into all of that here. But there’s a really good worksheet in the guide that helps you understand what those numbers are and that will give you a better indication of what benefits you should claim or benefits you should wait to claim.

Section 4 talks about assessing your cash flow. So obviously, you need to know what money you have coming in and what money you have going out. You need to know what your income sources are and what your expenses are. Maybe you know that maybe you don’t. But there is a whole section on figuring some of that stuff out. Lots of worksheets and templates in this section. Like a budgeting worksheet to help you to figure out what your income and expenses are in a written format because a lot of times you don’t know how much you’re spending until you see it written down. So, these worksheets give you an opportunity to do that.

I also talk about mortgage considerations. For example, I didn’t know this, and we didn’t have it, but there is something called Mortgage Protection Insurance, which is a rider on your mortgage. And if you were lucky enough to have that, it’s a death benefit that pays off your mortgage in full.

Jen: My friend had that. I don’t think she knew she had that either.

Kim: Right. You might not know you have it. So, you ask that question.

Jen: Yeah, her husband had set it up and her mortgage was paid. It’s incredible.

Kim: It is incredible! So I included that in the guide, even though I didn’t have it. But when I found out that was something that was available, I thought, well, that should be a question widows should be asking their mortgage company. Because you don’t know if you have it, or you don’t know if you don’t have it. So that’s in the cash flow section too.

I also came across a way for you to locate missing money.

Melissa: Yes. That’s my favorite section.

Kim: This is so fascinating, honestly. So, there are official databases in your state which house unclaimed property. You may have unclaimed property or money with either your name or your spouse’s name on it in that database. Didn’t know this existed. I checked it out. I don’t have any missing money, but you bet your ass I checked it.

Melissa: Well, even when you’re part of a bank or credit union or something, I get those things from the credit union saying, “oh, we’ve automatically enrolled you for a $1000 in life insurance.” A lot of credit unions automatically sign you up because you’re a member. Maybe you wouldn’t know about that. Maybe you wouldn’t think of talking to the credit union or the bank about that.

Kim: That’s another good point. So missing money is just like contacting your state to find out if there’s any missing or unclaimed money in their database for you.

Section 5 talks about other death benefits. And in that section, I also include, like you said, Melissa, instructions to contact professional organizations or even you’re the alumni office at school because sometimes they have additional death benefits are available to you.

The credit union is a good one because I belong to a credit union. And they offer life insurance and or accidental death and dismemberment policies. I have the accidental death and dismemberment policy because they give it to you for free. I didn’t buy any additional coverage. You can do that too. But you don’t know unless you ask the question.

So, in Section 5, there’s a list of professional organizations to contact. Like the National Education Association, because didn’t Dave have a policy with the teachers’ union?

Melissa: Yes. He was a teacher, and it was the local teachers’ union. And I didn’t know anything about it until it was just like, by the way, you have this benefit. Like, one of his teacher friends or whatever said, “oh, yeah. Did you know about this?” No. I didn’t.

Jen: Oh my gosh. Wow.

Melissa: You know, maybe it would have found its way to me. I don’t know, but it was it was there, and it was small, but it was like, that’s great. I wouldn’t have known about it.

Kim: You wouldn’t have known. And, again, sometimes your alumni, if your spouse was heavily involved in the alumni association at school, may have something. You just don’t know. I also include on how to contact all your spouse’s previous employers. There could be a 401(k) sitting out there that was never moved. There could be some other death benefit that you are not aware of.

You’re asking a lot of questions. They may or may not lead anywhere but ask because you just you never know. You never know what you could come up with.

There is a whole other section on account management. This is probably the biggest one because this goes over how to change beneficiary accounts and how to notify the credit card companies and the credit bureaus. There are a lot of time-consuming tasks in that section, so I include lots of lots of worksheets.

For example, in the beneficiary section, there’s information on why you shouldn’t name minor children as beneficiaries. And there are worksheets to fill out about each of your accounts and what percentage of your account goes to which beneficiary.

There are also letter templates like how to notify the credit bureau to put a “deceased do not issue credit flag” on your spouse’s account. I include very specific information on how to add that flag to the account.

Jen: That reminds me of a story of one of our members in the Widow Squad was talking about. Something happened to her a year after her husband passed away, and somebody tried to open up a credit card in his name. I think it might have been even longer than a year, but, yes, if she had had that flag on his account or on his credit, you know, then that wouldn’t have happened.

Kim: You don’t know how to do those things. The instructions in the guide are very specific. And then the letter template tells you exactly what to say.

Melissa: That’s nice too because you’re at a loss for words. You don’t know what to say. You don’t know. Like, I’m dealing with a big corporation and you’re trying to get your thoughts together. And so, it’s nice the words are there. You just put the address in, maybe tweak it a little and you’re done.

Kim: A lot of these templates and worksheets in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows are also fillable, which means you can fill them out on your computer. If you like to handwrite things, that’s fine. You can print them out and just sign your name, but there is also a way to do it directly on your computer. So that makes it a little bit easier for you as well.

There are also letter templates to notify the credit card companies of your spouse’s death. You can call the credit card companies, but I also recommend sending a certified letter in the mail because nine times out of 10 people don’t do what they say they’re gonna do. My suggestion is to follow up with a written letter and send it certified mail. There are instructions on how to do that as well.

And then put that copy in your binder because then you know this on this date, you sent this letter to this place. That’s more for your benefit in case they come back and say, well, we never received that, or you didn’t cancel those cards or whatever. I include instructions and templates or what to say to the credit card companies as well. And there are also worksheets for keeping track of your canceled credit cards. There’s a worksheet that has spaces for you to include when the account was open, when it was closed, and any notes you have about that specific company.

There are also instructions also on how to determine if you have any reward points on your credit cards before you close them. My husband had an American Express card for work. I took over running his business and thought I was taking over the American Express card because it was the name of his business, and I thought it would just change over to my name. We ended up having to close the account on his American Express. We reopened it in my name, but he had some membership benefits on that card that I didn’t know about. Those benefits closed with his account, which was kind of a shame.

So, I included in that section a reminder to ask about whether your credit cards have any cashback points or travel points. You have to determine all of that before you close these credit cards. So, there’s instructions in there on how to do that too.

Jen: That was another mistake of mine because now that I’m thinking about it. I just canceled credit cards. I didn’t even think about that. Mistake number 400 on my list. I probably left so much money on the table.

Kim: We don’t want you to do that, widows. We want you to get all the money that is coming to you.

So, again, this is on the checklist at the end of every section. Did you do this, this, and this? And there’s also a room on those checklists to add your own items, your own to do’s that aren’t included in here as well.

There’s another section on taxes and insurance. This also can be kind of big one for widows because, you know, we don’t always know everything that’s going on with our tax filings because people do our taxes for us. You might have a CPA. You might do your own on TurboTax or your husband did, so that can be confusing now that you’re a widow.

There are instructions in the guide on how to get your tax return prepared for free for qualifying taxpayers. So, this isn’t for everybody, but there are some people who could qualify to get that done for free. And then I also include what income documents to look for and what they mean when you’re getting ready for tax season.

You get lots of stuff in the mail, like 1099 INT forms or 1099 the DIV forms, and the INT forms are reports that tell what interest income you earned on your bank accounts and the DIV shows what dividends you earned on your stocks or mutual funds. They come to your house, and you’re like, what are these forms? I don’t know what they are. Well, if you get the 1099 at home, the IRS got a 1099 as well. So, they get the duplicate 1099. You have to report those on your tax filing because the IRS got a copy of it, too. So, your accountant will know this. But don’t you kind of want to know what they mean? There’s a whole section on what income documents to look for, what they mean, and how to keep track of them as well.

There are health insurance options to consider. A lot of people have COBRA options after their spouse dies because he was employed. COBRA is not always the best option. There are other options available. We won’t go into all those today, but there’s a whole section on that.

Also, home or auto insurance considerations. Insurance can be super confusing. My husband took care of the car insurance and the house insurance because we had it bundled together. A family friend was the insurance agent. And then that person died, and then his partner took over the insurance agency. So, we were still insured through that partner. And I didn’t pay the bill. My husband did. And so, once the insurance started coming in to me, I thought this seems kind of expensive to pay for auto and home every month. So, the first few months, I just paid it because it was just easier for me. I couldn’t deal with trying to figure it out, but it was really gnawing at me. Why is this so expensive? So, after a while, I sat down with my policy. I’m like, what’s going on? I don’t understand why this is so expensive. I called the insurance agent, and she couldn’t really explain it to me, which I thought was odd. I thought, what am I getting for this amount of money? I started just checking around. I started getting quotes from other insurance agencies, and lo-and-behold, my gosh, you guys. I cut my insurance by about 40%.

Melissa: Wow.

Kim: Yeah. It was like this huge amount of money, and I thought I can’t even believe that Mark was paying this. But again, it was a family friend. But I thought you’re not my family friend. You’re not my friend. I don’t need to stay with you.

Jen: Especially if they can’t explain the details. It’s tricky. It is. Because these things change sometimes yearly, right? So, like, you’ll get the next bill. And then, for whatever reason, your insurance has gone up. Maybe not a significant amount, but you kind of noticed it, like you said, and then you’re like, this doesn’t seem right. You go back and look at the policy, and something like the deductible is now lower. So now your monthly payments are higher. These detailed things that you don’t really pay attention to, or your husband did it, so you’re just gonna keep writing that check.

Kim: You’re just going to keep writing the check.

Jen: You have to look into it, and you have to understand it and know what questions to ask.

Kim: You could lose a lot of money. And I switched a couple times, to be honest. I mean, I’m not loyal to anybody because they’re not loyal to me. I’m just looking for the best coverage at the best price.

In that section of The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows, it goes over all these different kinds of insurance policies you have. And there is a bonus insurance review guide that I created with forms where you can write side-by-side quote information from each company. There is enough room for three quotes. So, if you’re calling three different agencies, you can see line by line what they cover and exactly what the costs are per agency to find the best price for you.

I also include all the questions to ask for auto insurance, for home insurance, for disability. I had to get a disability policy. Well, I didn’t have to. I chose to get a disability policy after Mark died because I was running the business. If I get sick, there is no one to take over running the business for me. So, I thought, well, I better get a disability policy. I did my research, looked around, found the best policy, asked the questions, all the things.

In the guide, I include all the questions you would have to ask if you’re going to get or renew a policy because this is all the stuff that I had to do. The questions and worksheets in that section are super, super helpful because it’s less overwhelming for you. You just have to fill in the forms.

The next section is social media. So that’s a big deal. Our digital footprint and digital legacy. It’s a new thing, but something we have to consider when your spouse dies. There are instructions on what to do with social media accounts.

And again, these are all over the internet, but in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows they’re condensed into one section, with all the instructions on how to handle any of the social media accounts, you know, like Google, for example, how to download data from Google. If you have a Google Gmail, for example, or a Google account, it’s connected to a lot of different places. So, you can’t just delete an email account. There is way more connected to Google than we probably realize on the surface. So, there are instructions on how to download the data for Google or how to memorialize a Facebook account. The section also includes worksheets to help you keep track of all the accounts that are social media related with usernames, password, and backup location.

This section goes over how to handle Instagram, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, PayPal, and Amazon. If your spouse had an Amazon Prime membership, for example, that was in his name, you have to switch that over. There could be credits in that account you don’t know about. Maybe an Amazon refund that you weren’t aware of. So, if you’re going to close those accounts or change them over into your name again, remember to ask if there’s any money hanging out in there.

There might be money hanging out in a PayPal account that you don’t know about, but if you go to close that, you want to make sure you ask those questions before you close it.

And then there’s a section included at the end on what to do with this stuff. We’ve had lots of episodes and discussions on what to do with his belongings, and that’s a complicated thing, but there are some suggestions in this section on where to donate his things, for example. Where to donate his clothes or what to do with his cell phone. There are some places you can donate phones. You may not know that. That’s included in the section as well. There are places you can donate his shoes or eyeglasses if you didn’t know. Lots and lots of information, things that we have to deal with. Things we have to try to get through, but hopefully with The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows, it makes it just a little bit easier.

A Self-Paced Course with Extra Bonuses

Melissa: And there’s an additional bonus in there because this can be really overwhelming. There could be thoughts running in your head around like I can’t do this. I don’t have enough energy. I don’t have the brainpower. All that. And you have in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows a Letting Go of Limiting Belief journal. You can kind of walk yourself through when you’re feeling like, I can’t do this. I just don’t want to do this. I’m never gonna get this done. There is this journal in there that you can use to kind of prop yourself up. You can have your own back. You can work through this journal. Can you go into a little bit more about that?

Kim: Well, again, these are things I experienced going through the process. So, I had all the thoughts in my head, you guys. Thoughts like, I can’t do this. This is too much. I’ll never get it all done. The piles on my desk were outrageous. I’m like, I’ll never get this done. And you want to just throw your hands up in the air. You want to be like, yeah, nope, can’t.

And other people can try to help you. They just really don’t know what to do. And sometimes their help isn’t helpful, to be honest. I mean, sometimes they give you the wrong information.

So, I created the Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs journal just to give you that extra push to get over those humps because you will have those thoughts in your head. We’ve all had them. Our brains like to tell us we can’t do something or that it’s too hard. And it’s not that you can’t do it. You obviously can, but you get to where you just don’t want to. You don’t want to. It becomes too much.

Part of the way to get through The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows is that it’s self-paced. Go through the sections that you need to go through or want to go through. It does not have to be done in chronological order. Not every section has to be completed. This is just information for you to use at your will based on what you need.

Like I said, there’s information on VA benefits. Well, my husband wasn’t a veteran, but many people have husbands who are veterans. And so there is information on how to get your VA benefits or to know where your payment information is or how to notify the Veterans Administration of your spouse’s death. Some of those didn’t apply to me, but I know they applied to other widows. So those are included as well.

The bonuses include the Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs journal, which you’ll probably need to use because we all need it to remind ourselves that we are capable. There’s another bonus of budget worksheets. There are lots of budget worksheets in The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows, but there’s also additional budget worksheets that were included as a bonus with all kinds of financial goals and, you know, net worth worksheets and just information to kind of wrap your head around what your income and expenses are.

And the other bonus that I talked a little about was The Ultimate Insurance Review for Widows. There are worksheets to help you get a better grip on all your insurance options and what the best course of action is for you when it comes to changing or reviewing those policies. Like you said, Jen, you really do need to review every year.

Jen: You do. Every year it changes. You have no idea why.

Kim: It changes. It does.

Jen: So, the other thing that I love about this is that the words that pop into my head are the overwhelm of what we’re dealing with and being motivated to make those calls and to get through it. And if you have this guide in front of you, there is structure. There’s an end in sight. Right? Here’s your checklist. Now this might take you a few days to get through this and call these insurance companies, but here’s your checklist. You got it done. You have these comparisons. Now you have this reference in front of you that you can go back to of the conversations that you had that you would not remember otherwise because you’re so crazy with widow fog and you can’t remember.

Here, you’re being organized. You’re going through the list. You’re getting things done, which that alone, that feeling of getting things done, and checking things off the list, is enough to get you motivated to take that next step, whatever that may be. It just takes so much energy with all the things that we have to deal with, and it’s hard to stay motivated and here is this tangible thing in front of you that is helping you get through this.

That’s another benefit to this whole thing, to The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows, is just to have this kind of end in sight, have your checklist, and be checking off those things to do. It just kind of makes you feel a little lighter every time you can put a little check mark next to something, you know.

Kim: I know we love our checklists.

One thing that’s highly, highly satisfying is when you’re organized and you’re keeping track of correspondence that you’ve sent, when you’ve sent it, and who you talked to, is when someone comes back to you and says, “we never got your information.” You’re like, “oh, no. No. I talked to Jan on March 3rd at 8:08 AM and this is what we discussed…” because you put it down in the section of your binder and you kept notes.

There is nothing more satisfying. Because half the time you’re looking around and you’re going, oh, wait a minute. I know I talked to somebody. This is what I did in the beginning. I know I talked to somebody, but I can’t remember who I talked to.

Well, guess what? When you’re writing it down and keeping track of it, that’s highly highly satisfying.

Jen: You’re like, no, you’re wrong.

Kim: You’re wrong. I’m right. Thank you. Move on. Next.

Melissa: And it builds confidence when you’re telling yourself, I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. This is overwhelming. And then you’re checking things off. You’re doing the things. And you can look back on that and think to yourself, wow, I did that. Look at what I accomplished. Look at the money I found. Look at everything. Look how I protected my family, you know, with insurance and our financial well-being. So, it’s amazing.

Kim: And interestingly, we were talking about the insurance, and I was saying that our home and auto bundle was with a family friend, right? So, I decided we were spending too much money. I switched my insurance. So, my in-laws, Mark’s parents, were with the same company. So, this is the craziest thing you guys, but it was almost like I gave them permission to switch to because I switched. I was like, yeah. I don’t have any allegiance. And so, they’re like, “You saved how much money?” So, they ended up switching their policy to the same guy that I went to.

Melissa: And they saved money. Right?

Kim: Of course, they saved money. They weren’t even checking their own policy every year to see if they could save money. But, anyway, they ended up switching too. I thought was kind of funny.

Melissa: So, who is this for? I’m 12 years out, and I feel like I could still use these. I am using some of these finding money options. You know, who is this for specifically? Do you think?

Kim: Well, that’s a good question because I specifically created it for the newer widow who was overwhelmed with all post death tasks. But like you said, there’s information in here that could be beneficial to anyone.

Most of these tasks are things you do probably within the first year. It’s really just getting through that avalanche of administrative tasks. The “business “side of death that we call it. So mostly for newer widows. But with all the worksheets and the templates and the checklists and the extra workbooks and things, those could all be valuable to widows more than a year or two out.

There are lots of budget worksheets in there. The insurance review itself, I mean, I love those worksheets in the insurance review because it just makes it so much easier to go through and check your policies every year. You’re not starting from scratch. You fill out the form and add it to your review. And then you can see it side by side. You’re like, oh, this company costs this much. This one’s saying this much, and you’ve got 3 side-by-side comparisons. You can see it visually. You’re not trying to keep it all in your brain. So, there are other things that could benefit you.

Most of this, just to be clear, is the immediate one- or two-year post death tasks that you need to complete.

Wrap Up

Melissa: So much experience, research, and care has been poured into creating The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows. You know, we’re hoping that it’ll bring you a bit of peace in the chaos. If you’ve ever felt the weight of uncertainty, consider this guide your new best friend. It’s created by widows, for widows.

And before we sign off, we always encourage our community to share their stories and insights. If you’ve taken The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows course or are thinking about it, let us know what you think. If our guide or this podcast helped you in any way, please leave us a review. Your feedback keeps us going.

So, take care of yourself, and we’ll chat soon. But remember to check out The Ultimate Survival Guide for Widows on our website, widowsquad.com. If you’re ready to feel more empowered and organized, now is the time.