How Financial Clarity is the Foundation for Life Decisions
What if the biggest financial mistake you'll ever make isn't choosing the wrong investment … it's avoiding having the investment conversation altogether? Elke Rubach left traditional law practice to create a wealth advisory firm built on a radical idea: that financial planning fails when it ignores the human beings behind the numbers. Her approach of radical financial clarity emerged from the personal tragedy her family experienced when her father's death revealed how financially unprepared her family really was.
At the heart of Elke’s approach is a simple but uncomfortable truth: avoiding money conversations is still a decision. Financial lives, like homes, require regular maintenance. Wills, insurance, taxes, investments, and goals can’t run properly on autopilot. And when a crisis happens (divorce, illness, or death), your resilience increases when you’re prepared.
Whether you're contemplating staying in a marriage or leaving, financial clarity reveals the real "price of freedom." Wealth decreases when you prolong a conflict. But it increases when you’re informed and clear about your financial reality and willing to make decisions based on that knowledge.
If you’re ready to replace anxiety with agency - whether you’re partnered, single, or rebuilding - this conversation gives you a blueprint to start.
Show Notes
About Elke
Elke M. Rubach is the Founder and Principal of Rubach Wealth Holistic Family Advisors™, a Toronto-based firm helping successful families achieve clarity, control, and confidence in their financial lives. A former lawyer, Elke brings a sharp legal mind and a deep sense of empathy to her work, integrating wealth planning, tax strategy, and legacy design through a human lens. She is the host of the Get Your House in Order podcast, where she explores money, leadership, and purpose with thought leaders and change-makers. Passionate about giving back, Elke is also a dedicated philanthropist, co-chairing Fashion Heals for SickKids and championing causes that build stronger, more intentional communities.
Connect with Elke
You can connect with Elke on LinkedIn at Elke E Rubach and follow Elke on Instagram at Elke Rubach, Rubach Wealth and X at Rubach Wealth. For more information on working with Elke, visit her website at Rubach Wealth.
Key Takeaways From This Episode with Elke
- Elke Rubach transitioned from practicing law to building a human-centered wealth advisory firm after recognizing that traditional financial advice often overlooks clients’ values, goals, and decision-making ownership.
- Most financial breakdowns stem not from bad advice, but from poor communication, rushed decisions, and clients not being asked why they want what they want.
- Personal history shaped the firm’s mission. The death of Elke’s father exposed a lack of financial preparedness in her family, creating unnecessary stress and becoming the catalyst for her focus on proactive, transparent family planning.
- “Get your house in order” is both literal and financial: Just as a home needs maintenance, financial lives require regular review of wills, insurance, taxes, investments, and goals—not a “set it and forget it” approach.
- Financial knowledge is empowerment, not control. One spouse can handle finances, but both must understand them; lack of knowledge creates vulnerability in divorce, death, or crisis.
- Women are capable but often excluded from financial conversations. The issue isn’t ability—it’s access and repetition.
- Avoiding money conversations is still a decision. Choosing not to engage financially carries consequences, and inaction can be as risky as poor action.
- Divorce and conflict shrink the “financial cake”. Prolonged legal battles don’t create wealth—they destroy it, often at the expense of children and long-term family harmony.
- Planning must account for real life, not assumptions. Estate plans, insurance, business succession, and inheritance discussions fail when families assume instead of communicate.
- Every choice has a price—including staying stuck. Whether staying in a marriage or leaving, financial clarity determines the “price of freedom,” and informed decisions minimize regret.
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Transcript
How Financial Clarity is the Foundation for Life Decisions
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
financial literacy, legacy planning, women's financial independence
SPEAKERS
Karen Covy, Elke Rubach
Karen Covy: 0:10
Hello, and welcome to Off the Fence, a podcast where we deconstruct difficult decision making so we can discover what keeps us stuck, and more importantly, how we can get unstuck and start making even tough decisions with confidence. I'm your host, Karen Covy, a former divorce lawyer, mediator, and arbitrator, turned coach, author, and entrepreneur. And now without further ado, let's get on with the show.
With me today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Elke Rubach. Elke is the founder and principal of Rubach Wealth Holistic Family Advisors, a Toronto-based firm helping successful families achieve clarity, control, and confidence in their financial lives. A former lawyer, Elke brings a sharp legal mind and a deep sense of empathy to her work, integrating wealth planning, tax strategy, and legacy design through a human lens. She's the host of Get Your House in Order podcast, where she explores money, leadership, and purpose with thought leaders and change makers. Passionate about giving back, Elke is also a dedicated philanthropist, co-chairing Fashion Heels for Sick Kids and championing causes that build stronger, more intentional communities. Elke, welcome to the show.
Elke Rubach: 1:30
Hi, Karen. So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Karen Covy: 1:33
Oh, I'm thrilled to have you here too, as one former lawyer to another. Um, let's, if you don't mind, let's start there. You were a lawyer and now you don't practice. So can you take us through the journey of what got you to be a family at family wealth advisor?
Elke Rubach: 1:51
So, I was born in Mexico, and you know, as everything, you have your original plan, and I'm gonna be a lawyer, and I'm gonna be a partner, and I'm gonna, all these stories that you have your ideas, but then the universe kicks in and says, no, you're not. Uh normally lawyers in Mexico do finish the degree, they work for a bit, then they do a master's in the US, then they work in New York for US, they kind of firm, and then they go back to Mexico to partnership track. Uh, at the time, I got a scholarship in London at the London School of Economics, and the British government gave me another scholarship, so I was profiting from my studies. And I did my master's in England. After that, I wasn't ready to go to the US. I wanted to stay in Europe, and uh I started working at a Canadian law firm in London. Long story short, I came to Canada for a year, and that's 23 years ago. Uh and first I came to the Canadian office from of the firm, stayed there for probably four years, if I'm not mistaken. Then I moved to one of the big banks, and that's where the line, the light came up, and like boom, and I said, Okay, we're done with law, we're done with uh that track. I needed a more human approach to what I was doing, and I saw the opportunity in holistic planning for families.
Karen Covy: 3:20
Okay, because please excuse my ignorance and prejudice. I'll own that, but like I don't think of banking as being very human, right? I think of it as guys in stuffed shirts and you know, just taking your money and doing what profits for them, but not what profits for you. So, how did you, what light went on? What did you realize at that point that was human?
Elke Rubach: 3:45
Well, yeah, yes and no and maybe. So, it can be cold, it can be numbers driven. In a way, it should be numbers driven because you make informed decisions based on your numbers. But it doesn't have to be transactional. So, when I worked at the bank, my job was to be the bridge between clients and advisors, making sure that their investment advice was A, compliant, and B, sound. And it usually was a case. I mean, I there were a few stragglers there here and there, but it was a case. But what I saw was that the main problem was that people missed or advisors who focused on the best advice they could provide missed asking the client, what is it that you want to do? Why are you trying to do this? As opposed to, you know, you should buy this and this should buy profit-driven, you know, performance-driven. So, when clients came to me and raised issues, it was usually a problem with communication, uh going too fast, uh, following advice without actually owning the decision-making process. So that's when I said, you know, there's a huge market for this. Like people need to be informed, and particularly people who are making a lot of money and accumulating wealth, but also accumulating a lot of noise. Rest assured, when I started, people thought I had hit my head and I had gone absolutely crazy. Because when you tell people finances can be human and wealth building can be human, they look at you like you just landed from a different planet. Uh fast track it to 2017. So, I've been in the business pretty much to the day, almost like plus a week, uh, 13 years. And what came to light quickly was that I would people would say, What is it that you do for? And I would tell, you know, I look I do a lot of things. So, I did a branding exercise, and it came out very, very quickly that the driver behind the firm is really the product of my story. And when it hit me, you know what's the expression? The blinding of the obvious. Uh when we were kids, children, uh we lived a normal life, you know, middle class, uh upper class, yeah, middle class in Mexico. It's a little bit hard to define that one. But, you know, private school, a couple of homes, dad works, mom works, kids go to school, normal, right? And when I was 14 or so, uh, my dad died. And I guess my dad thought that my mom had it, my mom thought that my dad had it, and reality was that nobody had it. And my mom was at home with four kids, and then she had to start working and figuring herself out. And of course, I mean, when you have two houses, there's not a mad rush, but we had to sell the first house, then we sold the second house, and then I was like, oh boy, so how are you gonna do this? Uh, and so this this was unnecessary stress that if parents had been, and listen, years of therapy, all forgiven. I know that people do what they have with what they can and they mean well, but there is a better way. And it doesn't matter how affluent you are, there's a level of financial planning you owe to someone, and at the very minimum to yourself. So that was the real aha moment for the firm where we said, well, that's if people are willing to listen, we can help. And we don't need to come up with funky strategies or structures that nobody understands. We need to normalize the money conversation. We need to make sure that yes, you accumulate. So that's kind of goes without saying, but that you also protect and that you also communicate with the family what's going on. And you don't have assumptions, and then when things don't work out, then everybody fights. And so from that perspective, it we're not here to change family dynamics. If there's a breadwinner and there's a fan yeah, homemaker, that's fine. But people need to know what's going on. In your world, you've probably seen that the nastiest divorces uh happen when one of the sides has no idea what's going on. Vulnerability, I don't trust you anymore, this is broken. Whereas when both know more or less what's going on, it's a lot friendlier. It doesn't have to be you know, divorce. It can be death, it can be whatever. It's healthy.
Karen Covy: 8:49
You know, and I couldn't agree with you more. And I think it's healthy, even in a marriage that's perfectly fine, a family that's you know staying intact, there doesn't have to be a crisis. It's always good, just as a human, to take responsibility, I think, for your finances, to know what you have, what you owe, where's the money coming and going from? Um, and even though I understand in marriage, it's divide and conquer, like paying the bills goes that that responsibility goes to one spouse, the other spouse does something else, that's fine. But knowledge is different than the doing of it, right? One person can pay the bills, but that doesn't mean the other person has no idea where the money is. So, how do you empower people? And probably it in my experience, it this traditional, but it's usually the woman who doesn't have the financial knowledge. It's the man that does. How do you empower women to start taking control of their own financial life before they hit that crisis point?
Elke Rubach: 9:52
Well, you start from the beginning. I tell people there are no dumb questions. We want to meet with a couple. Uh, and we explain, like I tell my story. And we explain to, and that's I agree with you, generally speaking, it's the woman who's home dealing with which I think that's a lot more work, uh, with the family stuff. It doesn't mean you don't know how to do it. It's you just haven't done it before. And the first time you do it, you have the money conversation, you understand what things are. You might, you know, remember 10%. But the second time you have the same conversation, you'll go to 40. And then the third time, it'll probably jump to 85. And then the fourth time, it's just second nature, right? I wasn't born knowing what I know, but I learned it. I do it over and over again, I do it for other people, and so on. It's not that you can't, you just need to want to. And I always say, I'm not here to change the family dynamic. This is what could happen. You do you. I'm an advisor, not a convincer. But if this were to happen, people need to understand the consequences of their decisions and not acting, not getting involved is a decision. And I mean, to not to go too long, but you're also setting the example for your children. Don't perpetuate that. Like if you wouldn't like your daughter to be blindsided by a divorce, show her how to be knowledgeable. And it again, having the right structures, things that your advisors can explain to you, things that your advisors can collaborate, building and maintaining. It's not just set and forget. And that includes a will, uh, you know, powers of attorney goes without saying, uh, tax plan, uh, asset allocation, diversification, philanthropy, and obviously the insurance planning side of things, because sometimes people think they have insurance, but what they have doesn't quite work.
Karen Covy: 11:55
Yeah, I can see that, you know, and it the thing is these things, these life transitions hit you when you're not expecting them. No one gets married expecting to be divorced. No one gets married expecting to be widowed, right? And yet I've seen that I had an experience with a person, a guy that I worked with who should, he was the CEO of a company. He should have known better, right? You would think, and his wife, just like your parents, his wife figured he had it all figured out. And one day, unexpectedly, he dropped dead of a heart attack, only for her to discover that he was the primary bridewinner. He brought in a good buck, and now all of that had stopped. And oh, by the way, he never did get the life insurance they talked about. And she was stuck having to manage the house and the kids and the everything with no money.
Elke Rubach: 12:50
Absolutely. And I would say insurance is like the lazy solution, just it doesn't have to turn you into a millionaire, but enough cash flow to deal with issues, like get rid of problems quickly while you get your feet back on the ground and you have your family under control and you don't have to panic decide and all those things.
Karen Covy: 13:13
Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, I like your podcast is called Get Your House in Order. That's your brand. Um, it kind of I can see how it ties in, but I don't want to assume anything. Can you tell me, like, what does get your house in order mean to you?
Elke Rubach: 13:29
I'm a big fan of analogies. Literally, is you I can assume that people like to live in an organized, clean house without clutter, uh, something that I think can allows you to access things easily, not hoarding things, uh, where you can host people with pride and warmth, uh, where you can teach your kids the importance of discipline and communication, and where you come home and it feels like home. So, from a financial point of view, you can be working hard, but if you're just accumulating stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff without knowing how do you spend your money? Where is it going? You know you're living within your means because you make enough, but are you gonna run out of money? Do you have your number? Do you know what your number is? When do you have to stop working? What happens if you stop working now? Well, what about your kids? What happens if they're in private school, public school? What happens? Our special needs, addictions, all those things, all those things that could be disruptive of having your house in order. So it can include again, it's a will, it's insurance, it's tax, it's asset allocation, diversification, not just investing for a rate of return, but go short-term, mid-term, long-term, low risk, medium risk, high risk. Understand what you're doing and make sure it's tax efficient, not just following your, you know, your buddy's advice from the golf club that tells you, oh, this stock is great. In the overall scheme of things, you're taking crazy risks. The return is high, but after taxes, you had it in the wrong account. Was it worth it? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the case.
Karen Covy: 15:20
Yeah. And, you know, as you were talking, I keep thinking of in the world of divorce, which is where I work with people, I see the same kinds of things. It's like people to get their house in order, to have some sort of plan in place makes a huge difference. And in your in your instance, you're talking about a financial plan. In mine, it's like the financial plan once something is hit the fan, but if you already had a plan going forward, now you've got more to work with, and you can say, okay, um, dividing up assets in this way makes more sense. And the tax structure is so important. I mean, I don't know about you if you've got the horror stories, but when people get divorced and they make they don't think about the tax consequences of a particular asset division. And so at the end of the day, they think they're gonna have X amount of dollars to spend, but it's really X minus 40% because they screwed up the taxes.
Elke Rubach: 16:29
And minus the legal fees and accounting fees to fix it, because now can we fix it? Or so it an ongoing conversation, and we have planned for people who are actually planning on splitting up, and then we say, Well, you want the house, but you can't afford it.
Karen Covy:
Oh, that's a hard conversation.
Elke Rubach:
Or maybe while the kids are little, you keep the house and there's some cost sharing.
Karen Covy: 16:57
Right. Or maybe you come up with a different um a different approach, right? So maybe it's you keep the house for X number of years, and then when this child gets to high school or college or whatever the cutoff date is, then you have to sell the house and then or buy your spouse out, you know, take a pick. Um, but that's when you're making the plan. Um what about? I don't know how it is where you're at, but sometimes keeping the house right now, interest rates have gone up like crazy in the US. Has that is that also true in Canada where you're at?
Elke Rubach: 17:39
Not only are the interest rates are higher, the currency is lower, and the cost of living is completely out of whack here.
Karen Covy: 17:48
Oh my.
Elke Rubach:
Oh yeah. So it's a big problem.
Karen Covy:
Yeah. So that I mean, and that's a problem for people to look at. I always think that they've got to take a look at their finances first, even when they're making a decision about divorce, because sometimes um that decision might have to wait. It's not that you're not going to get divorced, but maybe you can't afford it today. Maybe you need to go out and get a different job or bring in some more money or save something or get this expense taken care of before you'll have the cash flow and the asset base to divorce without ending up eating ramen noodles for the rest of your life.
Elke Rubach: 18:29
Or cat food. I mean, something I talk about a lot is when it comes to a family's net worth, let's think of it as a cake. The cake is only so big. Okay, fighting legally is not going to grow the cake, it's only going to shrink the cake by professional fees. So if both partners are aware of what's going on, then the splitting of the cake might be imperfect, but as close to the middle as possible, minus a little sliver for whatever legal fees are, right? If you are absolutely in the blind, and in the worst case, he's the one initiating the split up, you are naturally going to lawyer up, and the lawyers are gonna quill their team of professionals, and they're gonna look after your interest. The cake is gonna shrink. I know people who've been fighting for eight years, ten years, they're just as married, and the legal fees are just gobsmacking.
Karen Covy: 19:48
Yeah. Yeah, I have known many couples who it's not uncommon to spend half million, million a year fighting. Is here's the other thing. When you have that kind of money, it's easy to let your emotions get out of control and you're like, well, I'll just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you lawyer up, and the other one lawyers up, and you keep lawyering and lawyering and lawyering, and nobody's looking at this as a business decision. How much is it costing you?
Elke Rubach: 20:20
And what are you getting? I would argue that there's someone looking at it. And those are the kids.
Karen Covy: 20:29
Yeah. Because here's the other thing: the kids are the ones that are going to suffer. It's their lifestyle, it's their college fund, it's their, you know, here we're going to give you money to put a down payment on a house. Like all of that gets gone. It's a legal fees.
Elke Rubach:
And nobody wins. Nobody wins.
Karen Covy:
No, I agree. Um, but let's talk about, let's switch over to more of an empowerment um conversation. You've built a strong voice for women's financial independence. What can you tell me some of the myths or limiting beliefs that keep women from building wealth, accumulating wealth, becoming wealthy in every sense of the word?
Elke Rubach: 21:16
I mean, the good news is that I'm seeing less and less of that. And women are trying and they're reaching out, and they're more prepared to giving it a shot, right? And when they see the content we put out and we talk about it, like it doesn't have to be rocket science. We're not going to solve your financial situation in 24 hours. You didn't get to where you are in 24 hours. We cannot solve it in 24 hours. So there are no dumb questions. Guys ask the exact same questions, but without saying this is a dumb question. Um everybody has generally speaking the same needs for estate, tax insurance, asset allocation, philanthropy. Uh it let's start slow. Give them reassurance that I was not born knowing what I know. I learned it, right? Everyone can learn it. If there's a will, there's a way. I have come across, and recently I was at a friend's house, and uh there was this woman that I was just I don't know if I was just impressed or in shock or in what. And like she has a plan. She doesn't know who she banks with, she doesn't know where the money is, she doesn't know anything. She just knows that when she needs money, she goes to a drawer. I'm like that magical drawer. And it's authentic. She says, I don't need to know because if there's a problem, I call my friend and she's gonna sort it out for me. I I'm in awe. I hope her plan works. Like, I really hope, and clearly her husband supports it and it works for them. From my personal bias, I'm like, I would be petrified, horrified. I did tell her, I'm like don't know how you function. I would not be able to wake up in the morning and have my coffee like that. It works for her, she's happy. I wish her the best of luck possible and him the health of a saint, if you want. But that's a risk. That's high risk.
Karen Covy: 23:41
Yeah, that's I agree. Because, you know, what if the friend can't sort it out? What if you don't? Here's the problem, and what a lot of people in divorce face, the spouse, the non-moneyed spouse, the one who doesn't know where things are, you can't start sorting things out. You can't start dividing them up or making informed decisions when you don't even know what's there. And whether it's divorce, whether it's death, if one spouse has all the knowledge and the other one doesn't, in the in the context of divorce, the spouse who's in the know can hide things. In the context of death, they're not telling you, like for sure, they are not coming back from the beyond and saying, look in this drawer for the insurance policy, right? So if you don't know it's there, you can't ever cash it in because you don't even know you have it.
Elke Rubach: 24:31
And back to the concept of getting your house in order. Anyone who owns or lives in a house, you know that every now and then you have to paint the wall. You have to fix the, I don't know, the plumbing or change the washing machine. Same thing happens with your financial life. You need to look at your will again, figure out your accounts. Where are the accounts? Did you close some? Did you add some? Do you have an investment account? Are your kids of age? You need to review your will. Do you have to change your powers of attorney? Like when my kids were little, I had this set up where my sister would take them if both parents passed. But now my kids are of age, one of them, and my sister's not going to take them. So I had to look at my will. And obviously, some of the clauses don't apply, but still, it's best to refresh the house and a little bit of paint. Same thing with financial plans and getting your house in order. What are your goals? Where do you want to go? What are you doing with your money? What when do you start taking money off the table? What's the tax-efficient way to do that? When do you talk to your kids about potential inheritances and what you would do? And let's not get started with business succession because some parents assume the kid is going to take over, and the kid wants nothing to do with that, or the kid really wants it, and the parents didn't even ask, and then they sold the business. So imagine all that happens, right?
Karen Covy: 26:01
Yeah, that could cause a lot of resentment. I mean, you're talking years of therapy for that one.
Elke Rubach: 26:09
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And it's just it's not that hard. Again, when people want it and when we meet with families, you know, the beauty about what we do is that every case is different. So you're never bored. There's always something. But a general request from families is we want harmony in the family. We want the kids talking to each other. And I said the only way to do so is if we come you really bring the money conversation to the table at the right level, at the right time, little by little, but even from when they're little, right? You know, credit cards are not magic bonds, they need to get paid. Uh utilities and expenses at home and the cost of activities. And you want a horse. Well, let me tell you what a horse heat costs, right? It's not just having a horse, it's not like buying a fish. But some families just assume that the kid won't understand. I'm like, if you explain, they will.
Karen Covy: 27:10
Yeah. And I think what you're pointing to, what I'm hearing, is it starts with conversations and conversations, open and honest conversations that need to be happening on an ongoing basis. And that's true. I think it's especially important when there's not a crisis and everybody can think clearly. It's not like your brain is flooded with stress hormones because somebody died or somebody wants a divorce or something bad happened. You're having the conversations and to your point, normalizing them. Yeah.
Elke Rubach: 27:45
And two analogies that come to mind. It's when if they could do these conversations on their own, they would have done it already, right? That's what we're here for. We can enable those conversations. There is an process, there are ways of doing it, there are ways of not doing it, right? You don't drop it in the middle of the there's a way, right? We are incredibly careful with confidentiality because we go really, really deep. And that's where the first analogy comes in. I tell people assume that you're arriving at the emergency department of the hospital, the nurse is gonna ask you questions. And you better make sure that you tell everything to the nurse. Right? Where it hurts, did you do drugs? Uh is this something that happened before? Where does it hurt? Family history, how did you get here? Can somebody pick? Like, I mean because if you just say it hurts here, they might send you home with an aspirin, lots of liquid, and have a nice good night. Or if you tell me I can't tell you, well, I might send you to the wrong surgeon. So you have to be honest, open, and not I don't know if it's demonize or complicate the conversation. Just be honest. Listen, this is what's hurting. This is what and then you're gonna end up with the right surgeon. Or you might not even need a surgeon. You might think that you're having a heart attack, but in reality, it was a really heavy episode of a panic attack. Right? Everything is possible. Let's explore the options before we send you under, right? But people need to slow down and people need to own their decisions, and people need to recognize that it takes a village, the same way it takes a village to raise a family with your overall keeping your house and or getting your house in order, you need a village. Same for the house. The plumber doesn't do painting, the painting doesn't do uh carpentry, et cetera, et cetera. So don't try to do it yourself because you don't have time for that.
Karen Covy: 30:00
Right. And you don't have the expertise for that. I mean, what people need to hear and understand is that, you know, this is what you do. You do it all day, every day. So of course you're going to be more knowledgeable and better at it than they are because they're doing other things. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I think there's a lot of shame associated with money and financial decisions. Do you find that?
Elke Rubach: 30:27
There is a lot of shame, but shame has never advanced the cause. So you can be as ashamed as you want. You need to get on it, like really get on top of it, because otherwise we don't know when, but things will happen.
Karen Covy: 30:40
Yeah. So, all right, we've talked about the person who isn't informed and maybe thinks that's okay and how that's really not okay. But what about the flip side of that? The person, and again, I'm just going to go with a traditional split here. But let's say it's the woman who doesn't have the financial knowledge and goes to her husband and says, Hey, honey, can you show me where things are? Can you show me what we've got? And she keeps getting put off, put off. Well, you know, we'll do it next week or next month, or I'm really busy right now, or no. And the bottom line is one spouse is not being honest and open with the other one and doesn't want to be. What do you do when that happens? Because I know you have to see it too.
Elke Rubach: 31:24
Well, that's why I'm a big fan of prenups. When you're friends, that's when you set up the prenup, right? And you and you can change it later on. Those things can change, you know. Then, you know, now the prenup changes because now you had kids. Okay, who's gonna look after the kids? Who's gonna stay home? Are we working? Who's like how are you splitting this, right? Tasks and money. Everything can be changed while you're friends, and when you talk about it. And if you can't talk about money when you're friends, I don't know when you're gonna talk about it. It's like shareholders. You set up a venture, you're excited about it, you have your shareholders' agreement, right? Why can't you do it at home? If the family's at a point where she's suspicious and he's hiding things, I think the train may have left. And now, if he's authentically busy and uh can't get to the conversation, there's always a weekend. You can set a date, you know, six weeks at in advance and say, please, this is important. If something were to happen to you, explain where the anxiety, where the fear comes from. Because if it's I fear that you're hiding things, we have a big problem. Well, that's a different story. If it's I wouldn't know where to find things if something happened to you, or family, da-da-da. He would have to be an absolute bad person not to devote two hours of his weekend to talk about where things are.
Karen Covy: 32:53
Yeah, yeah, I agree completely. And I think um it's telling of the relationship, and I think that's the real reason why people don't want to have that conversation. They don't want to push the envelope because on some level, they already know that one spouse isn't being honest, isn't being open, there are things being hidden. And if you push the if you push them to tell you what's going on, you're going to see what you don't want to see, that they won't do it, and that your marriage is not what you thought it was, and that maybe you need to do something about it.
Elke Rubach: 33:33
Uh yeah, I've seen I've seen both. I've seen the oh boy, what's going on here? To there was nothing to worry about. I was just busy, and you're right.
Karen Covy: 33:48
Yep. And either one, honestly, I mean, not that one is okay, but you want to know where you stand, right? Um, so I know you talk about the price of freedom. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means to you when you talk about the price of freedom?
Elke Rubach: 34:10
Um I mean, it's not a secret that some people can stay in marriages because of the fear of not being financially viable or solvent, right? Digging your head in the sand is not gonna make you financially viable. And at some point, some people decide that for financial reasons they're not gonna split up because they either they don't want to cut the check to the other person, or the other person doesn't want to go out there and figure out their financial life. Everybody will make their own bed and then you have to sleep in it. Having the conversations, normalizing the uh the ongoing what do we have, what are our things, and so on, will pretty much guaranteed minimize the need for a divorce, normally speaking. However, if people choose to stay for financial reasons, there's a massive price to pay there. So that's what I call the price of freedom. Whether you stay or you go, every decision has a price, and you need to figure out whether you're willing to pay for it.
Karen Covy: 35:31
I love that. I yeah. And I would also say to people that like in our society, the values of society are you're supposed to marry for love and stay married for love and blah, blah, blah. But people have been marrying for money for centuries, for millennia, right? Since the beginning of time, I suspect. And that's okay. If that's what you want to do, own it and just be honest about it. Like you said, you know what you're getting, you're making your own bed. It's not that it's not a thing to be judged, but it is a thing to be acknowledged so that when something happens, and something always happens in life, whether it's death or divorce or some unexpected illness, or you never know what it's going to be, that you know, okay, this was part of the deal. This is what I signed on for. And then you don't get so angry and upset at the other person because you chose it.
Elke Rubach: 36:29
Yeah. And that's why I say I'm an advisor. I show the different, like, if you don't do anything, this is what it looks like. If you do this, this is what it looks like. Like all the assumptions can be modeled, and then you make a decision based on numbers. But a decision based on I don't want to know, or I don't want to pay, or I like each their own. I make recommendations, I like I analyze the numbers and say this is this is this, and then you decide. And if they decide not to do anything, they can't tell me that they like we're all adults, right? And the kind of people we work with they know.
Karen Covy: 37:17
Yeah, yeah, they know. So, Elke, this has been a wonderful discussion, and I think an important one for so many people to hear, no matter whether you're married or divorced or still single or thinking about marriage, you know, doesn't make any difference. There have been so many nuggets of wisdom here. I really appreciate your coming. Thank you so much.
Elke Rubach: 37:40
My pleasure, and thanks for bringing this to your audience, because it's really important and it's not that complicated.
Karen Covy: 37:47
I couldn't have said it better. That's a beautiful way to wrap this up. And for those of you who are watching and those of you who are listening, if you enjoyed today's episode, if you want to find Elke where can people find you? What's the best place?
Elke Rubach: 38:01
Oh, it's very easy. Uh, my I'm always on LinkedIn, so it's E-L-K-E-R-U-B-A-C-H. There's me, and I think it's white top. Um, then uh online my email is [email protected]. So Elke at rubachwealth.com. And uh and social media everywhere, YouTube and LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook as well. And uh and the then the website is www.rubachwealth.com, so r-u-b-a-c-h w e-a-l-t-h.com. And uh we’re all seriously a call away. It’s a conversation.
Karen Covy: 38:49
That is so awesome. Thank you again. And for those of you who are watching or listening, if you enjoyed today's episode, if you'd like to see and hear more episodes just like this, do me a big favor. Give us a thumbs up, like, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube station, and I look forward to talking with you again next time.
