CHOOSE ADVISERS YOU CAN TRUST
Horrific events don’t always happen to someone else. Jennifer Caprile knows this all too vividly. In 2002, when she was only 27, her husband was killed in a car accident near their home in San Diego. In the terrible aftermath, Caprile received several million dollars from a life insurance policy and a lawsuit settlement. “Our life was about struggling to buy a home and moving forward,” she says. “All of a sudden I had a lot money and survivor’s guilt. I spent a long time being uncomfortable with the money.”
Caprile kept working as a flight attendant until 2006, though she no longer needed the income. “It gave me some stability.” She also had to come to terms with her bitter fortune. “I spent the first few years splurging, just to get rid of the money that I didn’t think I deserved. I’d unconsciously do things spur of the moment, like go to Hawaii.”
Women frequently go on spending sprees after being widowed or divorced. Reality takes time to sink in. Most advisers recommend waiting at least a year to make any serious financial decisions, including what to do about your home, assuming you can afford to wait.
In due course, Caprile met with several male financial planners to sort out an investment strategy. “I would tell them what was happening, and they’d say yeah, yeah, yeah, and you should invest in this and this mutual fund and you should be interested in these bonds. I felt like they were giving me a generic spiel. They weren’t listening.”
Eventually, the young widow found her way to Candace Bahr, a wealth manager who runs the Bahr Investment Group in the San Diego area and is also cofounder of the nonprofit Women’s Institute for Financial Education. “Candace listened for two hours, asking questions like how I saw myself in five or ten years,” says Caprile. “I felt like she was taking the time to recommend unique investment strategies rather than rolling me in with the rest of her clients.”
Still healing, Caprile, now in her mid-thirties, has resettled in Los Angeles and begun philanthropic work in Africa and Vietnam. She feels on top of her investments.
But her frustrating experience with advisers is a recurring complaint. “Women specifically have issues at major brokerage firms,” says Bahr. “A lot of what we need to do is listen. But many people in the industry are trained to give solutions as quickly as possible and go on to the next person.”