Phil Sussman for The New York TimesKathleen Rehl, a financial planner in Land O’ Lakes, Fla., is herself a widow and the author of “Moving Forward on Your Own.”

In this week’s Your Money column, I took the best shot I could in 1,400 words or so at helping widows avoid the financial pitfalls that so many of them fall into. They need not rush into making financial decisions, they should think hard about housing, they should not be a “purse” for anyone and they should be wary of blindly following financial orders left by their dead husbands.

But surely there is more to add here. If you and your spouse are still alive, one of the best things you can do is make sure that you both know exactly what you own and what you owe and how to find all the relevant account information. I heard horror stories this week of accountants and financial planners digging in attic boxes for information and begging financial services companies to reset account passwords that a widow did not know.

For those of you who have been through the loss of a spouse yourself or have helped a widow (or widower) through it, what financial advice and tactics did you find most helpful — and most problematic?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ca1ff6a793907db52d9e46981a330eb5