The average age of widowhood in America today is just 56!

At the time I discovered this statistic, my mom was 54 (she’ll kill me when this gets out). So I ran back and told her, "Look, Mom, I know you and Dad won’t ever get divorced, but did you know the average age of widowhood is 56? Even worse, one out of every four widows goes through any death benefits left by her husband in only two months! Eighty percent of widows now living in poverty were not poor before their husbands died. You know what my mom said? "Your father has a lot of insurance." Sheesh! She still wasn’t sold that she should worry about all this money stuff!

When I shared this same statistic in one of my "Women and Money" investment classes, a women named Sarah stood up in tears. She said, "David, everything you’re saying is true. I’m 57, and my husband was a successful lawyer who owned his own practice. He passed away six months ago and now I’m almost bankrupt." I asked her, "Sarah, how could this be?" Well, it seemed that Sarah’s husband wrote living trusts and wills for a living, but he had never bothered to do one for himself!

The entire group was aghast. You mean a lawyer who wrote wills for a living didn’t have a will himself? But when I asked the class, "How many of you have a will?" less than half the room could answer in the affirmative. And when I asked further, "How many of you have reviewed your will in the last five years?" fewer than 10% raised their hands. So maybe Sarah’s story wasn’t surprising after all.

Then I asked Sarah, "If your husband was so successful, why are you almost broke?" She said that when he died they were living in a $2 million home with a mortgage of $1.5 million. With no income to support the massive mortgage after her husband’s death, she was forced to put her home up for sale. Unfortunately, this was at a time when the California real estate market was badly depressed, and there were no buyers to take the home (with its expensive mortgage) off her hands. To make matters worse, not only had her husband neglected to make a will, he had never taken out life insurance. To top it all off, he had even used their home as collateral on loans for his law practice—which was now out of business, because his partners had elected to start a new practice without the obligation of her husband’s debts! Sarah was in a world of hurt, all because she had put her financial future in the hands of her husband, and he had not prepared for the unforeseen.

I would like to tell you Sarah is an isolated case, but she’s not. There are "Sarahs" on large and small scales everywhere you look. Maybe you personally don’t have a million-dollar home to lose—but would losing your $75,000 home be any different? To each of us our home is our castle. Is yours protected no matter what happens to you or your spouse?

Whether you want to make massive changes or simply want to check in and see if you are doing the right things to have a financially abundant future, I promise you that my book, Smart Women Finish Rich: 7 Steps to Achieving Financial Security and Funding Your Dreams, will give you the tools you need to take your financial life to the next level.

• The average age of widowhood in America today is just 56. One out of every four widows will go through her husband’s death benefits in only two months. Eighty percent of widows now living in poverty were not poor before their husbands died.

• If a woman is 65 today, she can expect to live another twenty years. However, she has an 85% chance of spending those twenty years below the poverty line. Most women have an annual income of less than $7,000 a year when they retire; the average Social Security check for women in 1995 was only $635 a month.

• Due to divorce, widowhood and changing lifestyle patterns, at some point in their lives nine out ten women will be forced to take control of their own finances.

This article is excerpted from David Bach’s Smart Women Finish Rich: 7 Steps to Achieving Financial Security and Funding Your Dreams book (Broadway Books). David is one of the country’s leading financial advisors and educators. A senior vice president of a major New York brokerage firm, Bach is a partner of The Bach Group in Orinda, CA, which manages more than $600 million for individual investors. Visit Bach’s website at www.finishrich.com or call him toll free at 877-ASK-BACH.