I was part of the 1% — here's how everything changed when my husband left.
At our first meeting, my divorce lawyer looked across his large desk, fixed his gaze on my swollen, weeping eyes, and said,"The hardest thing for women like you to understand is that your life as you know it is over."
When my husband broke his news out of the blue one day in 2012, we were living in a 5,000-square-foot home on three acres in the country. We had settled there less than a year earlier, after returning from roughly six years in Asia, where we lived a lavish expatriate lifestyle. As a result, I was not at all prepared for what lay ahead after my husband walked out. I went into survival mode and got a temporary job, but at the same time I refused to curb my spending or change our lifestyle one iota.Looking back now, I wish I had battened down the hatches the moment my lawyer explained that my life was going to change.
Beyond that, I was furious at my husband and at the situation in which he had put the children and me, and I was adamant that we would go on living as before. I was particularly insistent that we remain in our home, which my husband had chosen. As adamant that I had been that we keep our home, I became equally resolute that we should sell it. That spring my children and I fell in love with a 1900-square-foot house on a third of an acre in town, and I was nearly giddy at the thought that I would no longer need to pay someone to plow the driveway in the winter or mow the lawn in the summer.
Now, five years into my new existence, living on a budget is second nature. Not only have I become a pretty good grocery shopper, but I've challenged myself to spend as little as possible on home maintenance, so when something breaks I Google how to fix it. So far I've learned how to bleed the furnace, fix my dryer and install a thermostat.
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