Ep 116: Let’s Talk About Death

“You lose your keys — not your loved ones,” so says Laurie Burrows Grad, whose husband died a few years back and who put her feelings into a wonderful book, “The Joke’s Over, You Can Come Back Now: How This Widow Plowed Through Grief and Survived.” In a conversation filled with heart, insight and laughter, she gives us a window on widowhood, schools us on what to say — and what not to say — to our friends and family who are grieving, tells us why you should let your widowed friends pick up the tab every once in a while and gives us the 411 on what to do financially when someone dies. With more women outliving men — and women being more likely to fare worse financially as widows — this episode is important for everyone to hear. In Mailbag, Kelly and I answer your questions on aggressively saving for retirement (when it means taking on more credit card debt), diversifying your retirement savings between Traditional and Roth accounts and taking loans to pay off student loans. Then, stick around to up your privacy settings in Thrive. Did you know that if you have your privacy settings on “default,” Facebook lets marketers use your name in their Facebook ads, Amazon keeps recordings of all of your conversations with Alexa and Google saves a map of everywhere you go — and that’s just scratching the surface. We tell you how to go incognito.

Catch up on what you missed: