Choosing a financial advisor after you lose your spouse.

There's a card on the kitchen counter.

A neighbor pressed it into your hand at the funeral.

Someone from church knows a guy.

The bank keeps leaving messages about the accounts.

And a month or two in, a very warm stranger calls — a stranger who is very, very interested in your retirement savings.

Picture a woman — let's call her Marion.

Her husband Dale died in the spring, and now it's summer, and the cards keep arriving.

She's moved them twice — from the counter to the drawer and back again.

She's not sure who to call back.

That's where I want to begin today.

With Marion at the counter, looking at a small pile of names she never asked for.

This is A Considerate Retirement.

I'm Josh Mangoubi, and I spend my days helping people think clearly about money in the second half of life.

Today is for Marion, and for anyone standing where she's standing — trying to figure out how to choose someone to help with the money after losing a husband or a wife.

And how to tell the people who are on your side from the people who are only selling.

Here's the first thing, and it's the one that matters most.

You do not have to call any of them back yet.

Almost nothing has to be decided this month.

The decisions that feel the most urgent — sell the house, move closer to the kids, pay off the mortgage, buy whatever that warm stranger is recommending — those are mostly the ones that are hardest to undo.

And almost none of them has a real deadline.

The people worth trusting are often the first to tell you that.

Anyone who needs an answer from you this week is telling you something about themselves.

So how do you tell them apart?

When you're ready — and it's completely fine if that's many months from now — two plain questions answer most of the others.

Is this person a fiduciary?

And how are they paid?

Let me take those one at a time, because they're simpler than they sound.

A fiduciary is legally required to put your interest first.

At all times. In everything they do for you.

Not everyone who uses the word "advisor" is held to that standard all of the time.

So it's fair — and it's telling — to ask someone to confirm, in writing, that they'll be your fiduciary in every part of the relationship.

The second question is how they're paid.

And that one matters more than it looks, because it's where the quiet conflicts live.

Here's a picture for it.

Imagine you walk into a store to buy a mattress.

The salesperson standing there earns more if you buy the expensive one.

He might be a lovely man. He might genuinely think it's a great mattress.

But he makes more when you spend more, and you can feel that leaning on the conversation.

Now imagine you pay someone who doesn't sell mattresses at all.

You pay her for her advice, out of your own pocket, and she earns nothing from the mattress you choose.

She has no reason to steer you.

That's the difference between an advisor paid by commission and a fee-only advisor.

A fee-only advisor is paid only by you.

They earn nothing from selling you a product, so no recommendation pays them more than another.

And watch for a word that sounds almost the same but isn't — "fee-based."

Fee-based can mix your fee with commissions.

One little syllable, a very different arrangement.

The takeaway is this: how someone gets paid tells you which way they'll lean before they ever open their mouth.

Now let's go back to Marion.

Because underneath these questions is something the questions don't quite say out loud.

For forty years, Dale handled the investments.

Marion paid the household bills, ran the calendar, kept everyone fed — and let him have that corner of the map.

That was their deal, and it worked.

So now she's not just choosing an advisor.

She's being asked to trust a stranger with the one part of the marriage Dale always carried.

That's why the warm phone calls land the way they do.

A confident voice, a firm handshake in the tone, someone saying "don't worry, I've got this" — that can feel like relief when you're exhausted and grieving.

And that exact feeling is what a good salesperson is trained to give you.

So here's the harder, kinder truth.

You are not looking for the person with the best pitch.

You're looking for the person who is willing to wait with you until you're ready.

The person who will tell you the truth about money even when it's not the truth you were hoping for.

For Marion, the right advisor isn't the one who makes the fear go away fastest.

It's the one who sits with the fear, and doesn't rush her past it.

The takeaway: relief is not the same thing as trust — and the people selling the hardest often lead with relief.

So what do you actually do?

A few things worth considering, none of them heavy.

First, there's a very short list of things that genuinely can't wait — and it's smaller than it feels.

Think of these as housekeeping, not life decisions.

Order ten or fifteen certified copies of the death certificate, because almost everyone you contact will ask for one.

Tell Social Security, and ask about survivor benefits.

There's also a small one-time death benefit of two hundred fifty-five dollars.

And here's a detail people miss — you generally can't do the survivor part online.

You call, or you go in.

Keep the income and the bills flowing without a gap.

Retitle the accounts and the house you held jointly, and update the beneficiaries on your own accounts — that last one is easy to forget and quietly important.

And note anything with a true deadline, like the final joint tax return.

For that retitling, that's work for an estate attorney; for the tax questions, a C-P-A; and for the survivor benefits, your local Social Security office.

A good advisor walks that list with you without rushing.

And they're careful to separate the few things that are truly time-sensitive from the many that only feel that way.

Second, when you're ready to meet someone, bring a handful of plain questions.

Are you a fiduciary one hundred percent of the time, and will you put that in writing?

How, exactly, are you paid — may I see your fee schedule?

May I see your Form C-R-S?

That's just a short, plain-language summary of how a firm works, what it charges, and where its conflicts lie.

Do you ever earn a commission on anything you'd recommend to me?

And — what would you tell me not to rush into right now?

The answers matter.

And so does whether the person is comfortable being asked at all.

Third — notice what a good advisor brings up before you ask.

Because there's a short list of money problems that come specifically with losing a spouse, and a capable person raises them without being prompted.

Now, this next part gets technical. Stay with me.

You do not need to master any of it today. You only need to notice whether the advisor knows it matters.

There's the widow's penalty — the higher tax you often pay once you have to file alone.

There's survivor Social Security — where you can sometimes take one benefit first and let your own grow until age seventy before you switch.

But claiming before your full retirement age can reduce a benefit for life.

So the right order depends on your ages, and on which check is larger.

When you inherit investments, they're generally valued for taxes at what they were worth the day your spouse died — not what the two of you originally paid.

For something like a brokerage account in his name, that can erase the tax on years of growth.

It may make the account far cheaper to sell than you feared.

Though that doesn't apply to a retirement account like an I-R-A, where what comes out is still taxed.

And the house has a clock.

For about two years after the death, you can still sell and keep the full tax break a couple gets — up to five hundred thousand dollars of gain — before it drops to two hundred fifty thousand.

That's a lot. Marion doesn't need to memorize it.

She only needs to know that a careful advisor will slow it down and walk it with her.

And if someone never raises any of this? That silence is worth noticing too.

One more thing, and it costs nothing.

You can look anyone up before you ever sit down with them.

The S-E-C has a free adviser search.

FINRA has one too — it's called BrokerCheck.

They'll show you a firm's registration, how it's paid, its conflicts, and any history of trouble.

I'd want you to check me exactly the way you'd check anyone else.

The takeaway: you don't need to be an expert to vet someone — you just need two questions, and the patience to notice who gets uncomfortable.

Your Considerate Step this week is small, and it doesn't require you to decide a single thing.

Take an index card.

Write two lines on it.

"Are you a fiduciary one hundred percent of the time, and will you put that in writing?"

And, "How, exactly, are you paid?"

Then set the card by the phone — near that pile of business cards — and leave it there.

You don't have to call anyone.

When the day comes that you're ready, those two questions will already be waiting for you, doing most of the work.

Picture Marion again, a few months on.

The card is still by the phone. The warm stranger stopped calling when she didn't call back.

And when she finally does sit down with someone, it's on her clock — with two questions in her hand, and no one rushing her toward a decision.

That's the whole idea today.

The right helper after a loss isn't the one who makes the fear disappear the fastest.

It's the one who's willing to wait with you, and tell you the truth even when it isn't the truth you wanted.

At a considerate retirement dot com, you'll also find The loneliness no one plans for — because the quiet Marion faces once the callers move on isn't only about money.

And if the day comes when you want to ask us those same two questions, not one moment before, you can find a time to talk there too — and check us the same way you'd check anyone whose card lands on your counter.

One quick, important note.

I'm the founder of Considerate Capital, a registered investment adviser, and this show is educational and general — not personal financial, tax, or legal advice, and not a recommendation for your situation.

Marion and Dale are a hypothetical composite, not real clients.

Nothing here is a promise of results.

For advice about your own life, talk with professionals who know the details — an estate attorney for the retitling, a C-P-A for the taxes.

I'm Josh Mangoubi.

Until next time — write the two questions on a card, set it by the phone, and let it wait as long as you need to.