Writer Paulette Perhach had just broken up with her boyfriend, and she wasn’t exactly the picture of financial security.
“I had a little over $100 to my name, I owed my mom $1200, I owed my boyfriend $2000,” she tells Mashable. “It’s a terrible feeling to have to rely on someone else.”
But Perhach landed back on her feet, and turned her all-too-cautionary tale into an essay on Medium titled “A Story of a Fuck Off Fund,” which advised people to have a secret stash of cash should your relationship go south, you get into an uncomfortable situation at work, or you just need to make a clean break.
“If any man ever hit you, if anyone ever sexually harassed you, you’d tell him to fuck right off. You want to be, no, you will be the kind of woman who can tell anyone to fuck off if a fuck off is deserved, so naturally you start a Fuck Off Fund,” she wrote.
While ‘how to regain your financial independence after a bad break-up’ might not be the type of story you want to read on the supposedly most romantic day of the year, Perhach’s story is all-too-common for many people.
Perhaps you’re behind on your bills or riddled with student loan debt, so you decide it might be easy to rely on your partner for just a couple of months. Or maybe you get married and your partner takes control of your joint finances.
But if the relationship dies out, you’ll be left high and dry. You’ll need to find a way to get back on your feet — and build a strong financial foundation for the future.
“You need to love yourself enough to get out of that situation,” Perhach tells Mashable, “and make a plan to never put yourself in that situation again.”
Make a clean break
“As soon as the breakup happens, call the bank,” Erin Lowry, a personal finance expert and founder of the Broke Millennial, says.
Maybe your break-up won’t be a bad one, but it’s important to protect yourself from the possibility that your ex might drain your accounts. Take caution to change the passwords and account information on all of your accounts — even the ones that you aren’t sure your partner had access to.
It’s important to completely cut financial ties with your ex. Remove your partner’s name from any leases, your will, your life insurance policies, and any other accounts that protect your financial health.
If you had a joint bank account or any other joint possessions, you’ll need to figure out how to divide those assets fairly. If your former partner was abusive or you anticipate the discussions turning nasty, you should enlist a lawyer to represent your interests in these discussions.
If you can’t afford a lawyer, there are services to help you find a lawyer who will work for a low cost or for free, or there are a handful of nonprofits that will provide free or low-cost legal advice for victims of financial abuse, which occurs in 98% of abusive relationships when a partner attempts to control you through limiting your access to finances or running up debt in your name.
Re-assess your personal finance situation
Once you have all of your finances on hand, it’s important to do an honest assessment of what might be a damaging financial situation.
First, Lowry advises, you should pull a credit report, which you can do online for free once a year. It’s important to know what your credit score looks like — and to assure that your ex didn’t do anything to damage your credit score.
“If you don’t have a strong credit score, it’s important to immediately start the process of aggressively rebuilding it,” Lowry says.
And then you’ll need to look at all of the money you currently have in the bank, where all of the money that’s going out is going, and just how much debt you have that you’ll need to pay off.
“It starts about knowing what you have, and knowing what you owe,” Sophia Bera, a certified financial planner at Gen Y Planning, says. “If you want to increase your net worth, it’s important to know what’s in all of your accounts, find strategies to pay off debt.”
Then, you need to set financial goals, including how much you can spend each month, how long you’ll give yourself to pay off your debts, and how much you want to save each month. It’s essential that these goals are attainable based on your financial reality — not your financial fantasy.
Make it work
If you got yourself in a position where you needed to rely on someone else to make ends meet, it’s going to be a difficult climb to financial stability.
“I definitely got in my own bad situation. I always wanted to be fun and crazy and impulsive. And people like that can say ‘eh why not?’ and spend all their money. It’s something that I constantly struggle,” Perhach says. “You need to be cool with with being broke.”
“Our coffee table is a door that we put on top of two crates,” Perhach says. “It can be really freeing to just be yourself in your financial stage, and not living the life that everyone advertises you should be having.”
Accept your financial situation and find a way to make it better — and that often comes from downsizing. If you have a nice car, you might consider selling it and buying a used car. Cancel your Netflix account. Learn to cook and stop eating take out.
“Get yourself into a position that you’re not living outside of your means,” Lowry says. “That could mean uncomfortable decisions.”
It might be time to start looking for a better and high-paying gig. Or, you might want to land a side-gig, waitressing or freelancing. That extra money could help you cover costs — or you could funnel it all into a savings account if your day job covers your bills and other monthly costs.
At this stage in rebuilding, it’s important to be saving more than you’re spending: budget enough so you can cover your monthly costs, and then put 70% of what’s left over in savings and use the other 30% for some sort of fun fund.
A few months of living like a pauper will be worth it when you lay the groundwork for a palatial financial future.
Don’t do it alone — but don't rely on others
Your path to financial independence doesn’t need to be a solo journey. It’s OK to enlist the help of your family and friends.
For instance, if you can’t afford a new place right on the heels of your breakup, you might consider crashing at your friends’ or your parents’ place for a few weeks or months.
But it’s important that you don’t get yourself into another situation of financial dependence — so consider paying rent to your family or friends if you anticipate on staying longer than expected.
Perhach says she moved back into her parents, where she got three months free and then paid rent that was cheaper than the market rate.
“If you need to live with your parents to get a stronger start on life, it’s not that crazy of a thing to do,” she says. “It’s all about our egos, but it shouldn’t be.”
Also, enlist the help of your friends to keep you accountable. Share your financial goals and your budget with someone you trust, and schedule a weekly check in with them so they’ll know you’re doing your part to keep yourself financially healthy.
Protect yourself in the future
Once you get yourself in a strong financial position, make sure you make sure that your financial independence will last — even if you get in another relationship.
If you do decide to merge your finances with a new partner, make sure you’re taking precautions to protect yourself and your finances. That means educating yourself about financial matters, staying smart about your spending habits, involving yourself in all financial decisions your partner makes, and perhaps even drafting a prenuptial agreement to protect your assets.
Follow Perhach’s advice and start an “Fuck off” fund or security fund so you’ll always have savings should anything in your life abruptly change, and budget a certain amount each month to go into that fund.
That way, you won’t have to start from scratch if the relationship ends.
“It’s a terrible feeling to have to rely on someone else,” Perhach says. “And I think the popularity of the article shows how many people have gotten into similar situations. So many people have said to me: ‘I wished I had this.’
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