Mary Ellen wasn’t ready for retirement and neither are a lot of others, but here’s what you do . . . .

Mary Ellen’s husband scaled down his small law practice and then asked Mary Ellen, his wife of 20 years, for a divorce.

My first apartment when I retired in Mismolya, Mexico, seven miles outside of Puerto Vallarta $400 a Month.

His alimony payments to Mary Ellen were less than $200 per month.

She stopped work to be a full-time wife who planned the social events for the small law firm. She enjoyed her life and didn’t have a clue that her husband was planning to leave the marriage.

I was Mary Ellen’s sister’s tax professional.

My client asked me to help her sister to make sense of a small social security payment each month and less than $200 in alimony payments and $300 from a long-term investment she and her husband shared together.

In total her monthly income was slightly over $2100 a month.

We all were living in the San Francisco Bay Area where rents and the prices of real estate were increasing rapidly.

I had informed my tax clients that I would be moving to Mexico for my retirement, because it was no way I could overlook the sea on my monthly retirement in San Francisco.

My client wanted me to talk to her sister about managing a higher quality lifestyle, after the home she and her husband shared was…