Suze Orman’s Sober Advice to Anyone Who’s Lost Their Spouse
Two weeks after her husband died unexpectedly at age 52, a 54-year-old widow who had been married for 27 years sat down to write an email to financial guru Suze Orman. She signed it “Broken Heart.” The woman has two…
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Two weeks after her husband died unexpectedly at age 52, a 54-year-old widow who had been married for 27 years sat down to write an email to financial guru Suze Orman. She signed it “Broken Heart.” The woman had two college-age children and suddenly found herself responsible for her late husband’s 401(k), IRA, and life insurance proceeds. Her questions were urgent and practical: keep the retirement accounts as-is or move them, invest the insurance money now, and whether to hire a financial advisor immediately.
“I am sorry, my mind is everywhere,” she wrote. “To write this email is difficult. I feel so much guilt to deal with his money that he can’t spend anymore.”
Orman read the email on a recent Women & Money podcast episode, and her answer was unambiguous: do nothing right away. “Two weeks ago. And she’s writing about the money,” Orman said. Her rule for the first days after a death or divorce is simple: “You are to do absolutely nothing other than keep it safe and sound after experiencing the loss of a loved one.”
A grieving brain is not a planning brain. Decisions made in the first weeks after a death tend to be large, permanent, and tied to products that carry surrender charges, tax consequences, or fraud risk. A 401(k) rolled into the wrong annuity can lock up funds for years. Life insurance proceeds placed into a variable product can lose principal. A hastily sold home cannot be unsold. The cost of waiting six months in a high-yield savings account or Treasury bills is a few months of foregone returns. The cost of acting in week two can be the entire payout.
Orman has seen this play out across decades of client work. “Most of the time when I was actually seeing clients and something like this happened, even 6 months afterwards, they would come in, I would tell them what to do, and then 3 weeks later they’d come back and go, ‘What did you say?'”
Reframing the guilt
The widow mentioned guilt about touching money her husband could no longer enjoy. Orman turned that framing around. “You feel so bad because he can’t spend his money anymore,” she said. “Do you know how bad he would feel if he knew you wasted it and did something silly with it? Take care of your children, take care of yourself, and just keep everything safe and sound for now.”
On the question of timing, Orman was blunt: “Biggest mistake people make, when they suffer the loss of somebody, they think they have to deal with the money right away. And that’s when they do things that are so horrific I can’t even tell you.” Her recommended waiting period is 6 months to a year, or even two years if needed.
Her concern is grounded in a well-documented pattern. FINRA’s December 2025 investor insight warned that scammers frequently focus on people who are “emotionally or financially vulnerable,” with red flags including high-pressure sales pitches and promises of risk-free returns. The timing is deliberate: those pitches arrive exactly when a grieving person is least equipped to evaluate them. The threat has grown sharper. The FBI reported that Americans aged 60 and older suffered $7.7 billion in internet and cyber-enabled crime losses in 2025, a 59% jump from the prior year. A rising share of those schemes now involve AI tools that scan published obituaries to identify recently widowed targets, then impersonate officials or financial representatives to drain savings before family members realize what is happening.
Orman illustrated the risk with a story from her client years. A former client received a $1 million life insurance payout. The insurance agent “right after the husband died, shows up at her house and says, ‘I have a check here for you,'” Orman recalled. “‘Just sign it on the back and I’ll deposit it for you and everything will be okay.’ She signed it.” The agent took the money, and they never could get it back.
What to do in the first year
Orman carved out one narrow exception to her wait-and-hold rule: paying off a mortgage is acceptable if the widow is certain she is staying in the home. On hiring a financial advisor in the immediate aftermath of a loss, she was firm. “I would advise you please don’t, because who knows what they’re going to tell you to do. And I want to make sure that you don’t do anything that could be a mistake. I don’t want you to have any regrets.”
One part of the picture that often surprises people is how much flexibility a surviving spouse actually has with an inherited IRA. Under IRS rules, a surviving spouse qualifies as an “eligible designated beneficiary,” which means the strict 10-year distribution rule imposed on most non-spouse heirs does not apply. A surviving spouse can roll the inherited IRA into her own account and treat it as her own, with required minimum distributions beginning at her own applicable RMD age. Under the SECURE 2.0 Act, that age is 73 for those born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 for those born in 1960 or later. Alternatively, she can keep the account as a separate inherited IRA, which allows penalty-free withdrawals before age 59 and a half if she needs income sooner. Those options take time to evaluate correctly, which is precisely why rushing in week two carries such a steep cost.
For anyone who has lost a spouse, or who is helping someone who has, here is a practical action list:
- Move life insurance proceeds and any liquid inheritance into FDIC-insured savings or short-term Treasury bills. The goal is preservation of principal, not yield.
- Leave the deceased’s 401(k) and IRA exactly where they are for now. Surviving spouses are eligible designated beneficiaries under IRS rules, meaning no 10-year forced distribution deadline applies to them.
- Do not sign anything an insurance agent, advisor, or relative hands you in the first weeks. Endorsing a check on the back can transfer the funds entirely.
- Pay off the mortgage only if you are certain you are staying in the home for years. Otherwise, wait.
- After 6 months or a year has passed, revisit your inherited assets and research the options carefully. If you decide to hire a financial advisor, take time to vet that person before handing over any paperwork.
Editor’s note: This update added the FBI’s 2025 elder fraud figure of $7.7 billion in losses among Americans 60 and older (up 59% from 2024), incorporated the growing threat of AI-powered scammers using obituaries to target recently widowed individuals, and corrected the inherited IRA RMD age to reflect the SECURE 2.0 Act distinction: age 73 for those born 1951 to 1959 and age 75 for those born in 1960 or later.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Carl Sullivan has been a Flywheel Publishing contributor since 2020, focusing mostly on personal finance, investing and technology. He started his journalism career covering mutual funds, banking and financial regulation in Washington.Carl is a contributing editor at Financial Advisor Magazine and previously served as managing editor at Financial Planning Magazine. He is a long-time manager of editorial teams covering a variety of topics including news, business and politics. He’s currently the North America Managing Editor for Flipboard and worked previously for Microsoft News and Newsweek.Carl loves exploring the world and lived in India for several years. Today, he resides in New York City’s Queens borough, where you can hear hundreds of different languages just by riding the subway.
