You Need Your Bank Statements For Your Divorce

If you are facing a divorce, you may be outright avoiding your finances. One of the most difficult aspects of divorce is confronting the money issues. Whether you work outside of the home or in it, going through a divorce will most likely be a big financial hit to you. So it's important to "know your money" before you agree to any settlement.

Let's Talk Bank Statements

Bank statements aren't exactly the most fun thing to look at or talk about. But they're incredibly important to your divorce. They have so much information about your family's finances, and you can't afford to ignore them.

Gathering all of your bank statements will be one of the most important steps to preparing for your divorce. You can't know more about your money unless you have the facts about the money. And your bank statements contain lots of facts about your family's money.

How to Gather Your Account Statements

You will need to gather all of your bank statements, along with your credit card statements and the statements for your retirement and investment accounts. To get started, make a list of all the accounts you can think of even if you don't have all of the information about them. Write down the name of the bank, whose name is on the account, the type of account it is, and the account number if you know it.

If you have online access to the accounts, you can begin downloading your statements. If your name is on the account, you are legally entitled to get the account statements. If you don't have online access and can't get it, then you can contact the bank directly and ask for the statements.

You need a minimum of one year of statements, but if you have access to more, it doesn't hurt to have them. You might need to know what has been happening with your money for the last few years. I recommend getting three to five years of statements.

My Best Organizing Tip

After you have gathered all of your accounts statements, you might feel more overwhelmed than when you started. Your next step will be organizing the statements, and once you have that done, you will probably feel less overwhelmed.

The best way to organize your bank and credit card statements is by separating them by account number and then putting each account number in order by date. Start with the oldest date firs and put the newer ones after that.

But my best tip to help you get your finances in order during your divorce is to enlist the help of a trusted friend or family member. Do you know someone who is good with numbers or has an accounting background? They might be the perfect person to help you get your documents together, and maybe they can also help you go through the statements to start understanding the transactions. Having a trusted person help you will make things go more quickly, and they can also be a bit of a support to you.

Need More Help?

I'm a fan of simple tools and processes to help you understand your money. That's why I created a new guide called PREPARE For Divorce. If you were my friend and we were sitting down for coffee this is the exact product I would want to give you to go through one of the most difficult experiences you may face in your life.

In this guide, I walk you through all the things you need to do at the beginning of your divorce process to get yourself familiar with your financial situations. The guide includes an ebook, video modules, worksheets, and checklists to show you exactly what the financial part of your divorce will look like, the financial documents you need to get through it, and how to get those documents and keep them organized.

Check out PREPARE for Divorce today.