From Louise Barnett’s interview on Booknotes:

“[Custer] left her [his wife] nothing but debts. This was quite shocking. He had speculated in railroad stocks shortly before his death and incurred considerable losses, over $8,000, which at the time was a very large amount of money, particularly for someone on a lieutenant colonel's salary. And, of course, he did not expect to not to live to repay this. But Libby was left with that debt, which she had known nothing about until his assets were totaled up. So she started out with that burden. However, when she died, she left an estate of over $125,000, which in the 1930s was obviously a considerable amount of money. She was quite lucky in being on the lecture circuit and then making careful investments.“