The Confidence Equation: Agency + Skills

Many clients I work with who have found themselves suddenly single — whether through divorce or the loss of a spouse — reach a point where the dust has settled and they are looking at a number. Or rather, so many numbers. Bank accounts. Retirement accounts. Investments. Social Security. Mortgages. Medical bills. They know they have money. They just aren’t quite sure how to manage it.

If you weren’t the Family Chief Financial Officer previously, you may feel out of your depths suddenly making high stakes financial decisions. Even if you were the Family CFO or shared that role with your spouse, now it is all on you without a decision or thought partner.

And even if you are financially capable, that can feel overwhelming.

You may look at an investment statement and wonder if you’re reading it correctly. You may hear someone talk about tax strategies or retirement income and feel as though everyone else understands something you missed. You may hesitate to ask questions because you’re worried you should already know the answers.

If that’s where you are, I want you to know something: feeling uncertain does not mean you are incapable.

It means you’re learning. And learning and doing is how your financial confidence is built.

We often think of confidence as something we need to have before we take action. We tell ourselves that once we feel more confident, we’ll open the account, make the appointment, review the paperwork, or finally start learning about investing.

But in my experience, confidence usually works in the opposite direction.

We take action, and then confidence follows.

Think about learning to drive. You didn’t become a confident driver by sitting in the passenger seat and waiting until you felt ready. You learned the rules, practiced in a safe environment, made a few mistakes, and gradually became more comfortable behind the wheel.

Managing your financial life is not exactly the same, of course. The stakes can be much higher, and financial decisions are often more complex. But the basic idea is similar: you build confidence through knowledge and experience.

That’s why I think of financial confidence as an equation:

You need both.

Agency is the belief that your decisions matter and that you have the ability to influence what happens next.

Skills are the knowledge and practical tools you build and grow in making those decisions.

You don’t have to know everything. You just need enough knowledge to take the next step—and the confidence to believe that you can learn what you don’t know yet.

Agency can be a difficult thing to find after a major loss.

So much of what happens during divorce or widowhood can feel outside your control. You may not have chosen the circumstances that brought you here. You may have had decisions made for you, or decisions that had to be made quickly because circumstances demanded it.

When life feels unpredictable, it’s natural to focus on what you can’t control. But rebuilding your financial life means slowly shifting your attention toward what you can influence.

You can’t control what the stock market does next year, or the rate of inflation or exactly how long you’ll live. You can’t predict every future health expense or know precisely what your family circumstances will look like ten years from now.

But you CAN learn what you own. You can understand what you spend. You can decide how much cash to keep available. You can review your investment strategy, make sure your beneficiaries are up to date, decide when and how to work with professionals.

You can ask questions.

You can choose what matters most to you.

Those may seem like small things, but they are not insignificant. Each decision is a reminder that you have a role in shaping what happens next.

Agency is built through action.

And sometimes, the first action is simply deciding that you are ready to become more involved in your own financial life.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when they feel overwhelmed is trying to tackle everything at once.

They want to understand every investment account, create a retirement plan, review their estate documents, figure out Social Security, reorganize their budget, and make sense of their taxes—all in the same week.

That’s a lot. Instead, I encourage you to start smaller. Choose one thing.

If you’ve never looked closely at your investment accounts, start by finding them and learning what they are. If you’re not sure what your monthly expenses are, spend a month simply observing where your money goes. If you don’t understand your retirement accounts, make an appointment with someone who can explain them in plain English. If you’ve been putting off reviewing your beneficiaries, pull out your account statements and see who is currently listed.

The goal isn’t to become an expert overnight. The goal is to become a little more informed than you were yesterday. Then do it again tomorrow. Over time, those small actions begin to add up.

Here’s a simple exercise that can help when everything feels overwhelming.

Take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns:

I Know

I Need to Learn

I Need Help With

Start filling in whatever comes to mind.

Under “I Know,” you might write:

• I know how much I earn.

• I know what my mortgage payment is.

• I know how much I have in my checking account.

Under “I Need to Learn,” you might write:

• I need to understand my retirement accounts.

• I need to learn how Social Security will work for me.

• I need to understand how my investments are allocated.

And under “I Need Help With,” you might write:

• I need help figuring out whether I can afford to retire.

• I need help understanding the tax implications of a decision.

• I need help deciding what to do with the house.

This exercise does something important: it turns a vague sense of financial overwhelm into a list of specific questions, which are much easier to answer than the general feeling of, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

You may discover that you actually know more than you thought. You may also discover that you don’t need to learn everything yourself. Some things simply belong in the “I Need Help With” column. That’s not a failure. That’s good planning.

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with being an adult who is suddenly learning something new. We think we should already know. We may feel embarrassed to ask basic questions or admit that we don’t understand something. But there is no shame in being a beginner.

You don’t need to know the difference between a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA before you meet with a financial planner. You don’t need to understand every line on your investment statement before asking someone to explain it. And you don’t need to know the right financial answer before you start asking the right financial questions.

In fact, one of the most valuable things you can learn is how to ask good questions.

• What are my options?

• What are the tradeoffs?

• What happens if I do nothing?

• What happens if I wait?

• What are the tax consequences?

• What risks should I be thinking about?

• What would you do differently if this were your money?

The right professional should welcome those questions.

Your job isn’t to impress your advisor. Your job is to learn and understand enough to make decisions you feel comfortable with.

When you’re rebuilding after a major life transition, it’s easy to focus on everything you haven’t figured out yet. That’s why I like the idea of keeping track of what you have accomplished.

You might keep a simple financial progress list on your phone or in a notebook. Each time you complete a task, write it down.

Reviewed my investment statements.

Found my insurance policies.

Created a spending plan.

Updated my beneficiaries.

Scheduled a meeting with my financial planner.

Located my estate planning documents.

Asked a question I was afraid to ask.

These may seem like small accomplishments, but they represent something much bigger. You are taking ownership of your financial life. And sometimes, when you’re in the middle of a difficult transition, progress is hard to see unless you make it visible.

There is a misconception that confidence means you aren’t afraid. I don’t think that’s true. Confidence doesn’t mean you have no questions, no uncertainty, or no fear. It means you trust yourself enough to keep moving forward even when you don’t have every answer.

You may still feel nervous when you make your first investment decision on your own. You may still feel overwhelmed when you sit down with an attorney or financial planner. You may still have moments when you wish someone else could simply tell you what to do.

That’s okay. The goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty. The goal is to become more comfortable navigating it.

Over time, you’ll learn that you can ask questions. You can gather information. You can weigh your options. You can make a decision—and if circumstances change, you can make a new decision.

That is financial confidence. Not certainty. Not perfection.

Agency and skills.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by your finances, I encourage you to make your next step very small. Take ten minutes and make your own “I Know, I Need to Learn, I Need Help With” list. Don’t worry about solving anything yet. Just get the questions out of your head and onto paper.

Then choose one item from the “I Need to Learn” column and one item from the “I Need Help With” column. Those are your next two steps.

You don’t have to become financially confident before you begin.

You become financially confident by beginning.

And remember the equation:

You may not have chosen the circumstances that brought you here. But you can choose to learn. You can choose to ask questions. You can choose to take the next step.And with each small action, you are building something that belongs entirely to you:

The confidence to know that you can handle what’s next. entirely to you:

The confidence to know that you can handle what’s next.