Jillian’s Story
Meet Jillian
As independent financial advisers, we deliberately work with people going through life’s big transitions. One of the biggest is the loss of a treasured spouse.
This was the path Jillian was on when we first met her. She was 53 years old and eight months into the hardest chapter of her life. Her husband, Jacques, had died after a twelve-month illness.
Together, they had raised three adult children and built a life that Jillian assumed would carry on for decades to come. Jacques had always been the one to handle their finances—managing his business, their investments, the super fund, the properties, and even the monthly bills. Jillian focused on the home, her career as a librarian, and their children.
Now, with Jacques gone, the weight of those responsibilities had landed, heavily, on her shoulders. The word Jillian kept using to describe her situation was ‘overwhelmed’, and it was clear to us that this being fed by feeling very disorganised and very critical of herself for being where she was.
More than once she admitted:
“I’m terrified of running out of money. And just as terrified of getting it wrong.”
Which is a very common combination for widows starting again. These feelings are even louder when you’ve had little involvement in financial decision-making.
And they’re exactly the fears that we, when working in close partnership with lawyers and accountants, can help to ease.
Step 1: Exploration
When Jillian came to see us, we didn’t begin with spreadsheets or balance sheets.
We began with space.
Our Exploration Meeting gave her permission to set down the heavy load she was carrying—at least for an hour.
She talked. We listened. It was clear, by the speed of her words and her amplified gestures, that Jillian was deeply stressed and seriously overwhelmed.
Her worries spilled out:
Would she have to sell her home?
Could she still afford the holidays she and Jacques had always promised themselves?
What would retirement look like now that everything had changed?
We asked questions, not to interrogate, but to gently uncover what mattered most to her. We normalised the confusion she felt. It’s not unusual to be lost after a partner’s death. In fact, it’s expected. And confronting the brutal reality that life doesn’t just stop in the worst time of your life - bills need to be paid, groceries still need to be bought
By the end of that meeting, Jillian’s words slowed. Her shoulders dropped. For the first time since Jacques’ passing, she wasn’t alone in carrying the burden.
Mapping the Landscape: Discovery
Once Jillian had reviewed and accepted our Advice and Service Proposal, we moved on to our Discovery Process.
Even when they’ve been the executor and been through a fair bit of it already , this stage can be intimidating for clients—it often means digging through drawers, files, and inboxes that feel like ghosts of the person they’ve lost. But we don’t leave people to do it alone.
With Jillian, we sat beside her, sometimes literally, as we gathered data. When she couldn’t face making calls, we made them on her behalf—with her permission and alongside her other professionals.
We mapped out everything:
Jacque’sbusiness affairs, including the family trust.
The self-managed super fund.
Two properties and their associated loans.
A share portfolio scattered across different platforms.
Multiple bank accounts, insurance policies, and estate matters waiting for resolution.
We worked with her accountant to unravel the tax accounts, review the business structure, and consider the future of the family trust.
Her lawyer guided us through the estate planning documents and probate issues.
Jacques’ property manager weighed in on the potential sale of an investment property.
For Jillian, the mess was beginning to take shape. For the first time in months, the fog lifted just enough for her to see where the ground lay.
From Chaos to Clarity: Strategy
With the data gathered, it was time to create a roadmap.
We didn’t hand Jillian a dense report full of financial jargon. Instead, we prepared a mind map, a simple explanatory video, and then had a sit-down meeting to walk her through the strategy.
This was about more than numbers. It was about clarity.
She could finally see:
Which assets were working for her and which were weighing her down.
How her cash flow could be structured to give her breathing space.
Where tax landmines might appear—and how to sidestep them.
What retirement could look like, not in abstract terms, but in a concrete timeline.
Jillian told us she was starting to feel - a little - more in control of things.
The Plan in Action: Advice
If you’ve worked with another financial adviser before, you’d be familiar with this stage - it’s where the rubber hits the road, the Statement of Advice, the product recommendations. To be frank, while it’s crucial, we feel that most of the work has been done by the time we’re writing up what’s effectively a (very long) letter of advice.
But, strategy is one thing. Action is another. Over several months, here’s what we recommended and implemented for Jillian:
Property:
Sold one investment property to reduce complexity, release equity and minimise the time Jillian will have to spend dealing with the myriad issues that kept coming up with that property.
Superannuation:
Wound up the self-managed super fund and transferred her balance to her existing account with a large industry fund.
In the process, rebalanced the superannuation portfolio—moving from an 80% property weighting to a more appropriate 50/50 balanced approach.
Reduced her annual super fees by $8,000.
Cash Management:
We rearranged her accounts so she knew exactly what was available and when:
Everyday account – six months of living expenses.
Savings (1) – another six months’ buffer.
Savings (2) – holidays and lump sums, budgeted 12 months in advance.
Two term deposits, laddered at six and twelve months.
Investments:
Invested the insurance proceeds in a combination of super contributions, a personal investment account, and putting money aside to help with their four grandchildren’s education expenses.
Honoured Jacques’ wishes by making a charitable donation to his preferred cause.
Made a contribution to a charitable group close to her heart, who provided an immense amount of support through her loss - First Light Widowed Association.
Reviewed her existing share portfolio, liquidated holdings where appropriate, offset gains and losses to minimise tax, and redeployed into low-cost index funds on a modern, low-fee platform.
Estate Planning & Tax:
Updated her documents and organised everything into a Green Box for her children.
Worked with her accountant to resolve outstanding estate tax accounts.
Reviewed the family trust to determine whether it remained useful.
Planned the best use of the beneficiary loan account to manage looming tax issues.
Retirement Planning:
Mapped out a realistic, empowering plan:
Continue working until 60, with a transition to part-time at 58.
Confidence that retirement at 60 is affordable.
Supporting the Children:
Jillian initially wanted to give financial help to her three adult children. Together we explored options—lump sums, regular income payments, or doing nothing for now.
We modelled the impact each choice would have on her retirement.
In the end, Jillian saw that significant gifts now would jeopardise her own security.
She chose to preserve family wealth for their eventual inheritance—a decision she made not out of fear, but out of strength and clarity.
Insurance:
Cancelled her own insurance, saving $4,000 a year. It was no longer needed.
Tangible Outcomes
By the end of the process, Jillian could see the numbers clearly. Together with her professional team, we had:
Reduced superannuation fees by $8,000 a year.
Shifted her portfolio from high risk to balanced.
Saved $4,000 annually by cancelling insurance.
Increased cash interest earnings by $12,000 a year.
Liquidated $400,000 of shares for a taxable gain carefully managed at $35,000.
These are measurable, concrete results that her accountant, lawyer, and future self could all point to with confidence.
Intangible Outcomes
But the numbers, while important, tell only part of the story. For Jillian, the bigger shift was intangible:
She no longer carried the weight of an SMSF or an extra property she didn’t want.
The family trust, once a source of confusion, now had a clear two-year exit plan.
She had a roadmap for retirement—and the confidence to follow it.
Her day-to-day cashflow was clear, with money segmented and labelled for specific purposes.
Jacques’ legacy lived on through a meaningful charitable gift.
She was able to sleep through the night again, free of the anxiety that had haunted her.
Her children noticed the change in her mood, her appearance, her energy.
In short: she had peace of mind.
The Real Value
When Jillian walked into our office eight months after Jacques passing, she was frightened and adrift. Today, she is secure, organised, and—for the first time in years—optimistic.
The tangible benefits are impressive: reduced fees, improved returns, simplified structures. But the intangible benefits are priceless: sleep, confidence, clarity, and the freedom to live her next chapter on her own terms.
That is the real value of advice in bereavement. And that is why the work we do, together with our colleagues across law and accounting, makes such a profound difference.
We Get It
As you probably know, stories like Jillian’s are common. Behind the spreadsheets and strategy are real people—people who are grieving, frightened, and carrying responsibilities they never asked for.
Often people know what they should do, but are so deep in the thick of it that they can’t work out where to start. And that’s just our clients!
For the professionals we love working with, their plates are so full just taking people through the steps of the process. Corraling the paperwork clients have invariably lost is time-consuming enough; helping them plan out the next 2, 5, 10, 20 years is a step too far.
Which is why we’ve decided to highlight Jillian’s story in this month’s post - that planning is exactly what we love to do! And we believe that we do it in a way that encourages collaboration with the other professionals on our clients team, and in a way that helps the people we work with feel more confident about their future.