Some simple steps you can take to put your affairs in order, well before they need to be.
By Brad Beckstrom
It’s An Emergency.
Sounds like the title of every email I get asking for political contributions. No donations requested here. I’m talking about a real emergency, you just kicked the bucket, vanished in the Amazon, or no longer have a solid grasp on your first name.
Welcome to my eventual demise.
Don’t feel bad, it’s something that none of us get to avoid. We all know someone that left us too soon or someone still going strong in their 90s. We don’t get to choose. If you’re old enough maybe you’ve had to deal with the estate of a relative or family member in a nursing home.
However, something has changed. When my mom passed, most of her financial information could fit in a single file folder. Things have gotten a bit more complicated thanks to the cloud, online banking, investing, social media, smartphones.
“ Where did Brad stash those bitcoins? They must be around here somewhere.”
I can imagine just dealing with passwords for all these accounts, devices, would be a bit of a nightmare for anyone. I’ve been using a program called 1Password for about five years. There are about 1000 passwords and secure notes in the app. And where do I keep the password to the password manager? Well, I finally got around to setting up a family trust and organizing all this stuff.
Nobody enjoys writing about their own demise. Once I started working through it, I realized this was a pretty efficient way to organize your finances, imagining someone else having to figure it all out. What could I do to make this easier for them? I decided this would be a positive thing and started drafting a welcome letter, well, a “welcome to my demise” letter.
It’s not just those final moments of your life you need to think about. Many of us are living longer but those last several years can be pretty rough. You need to think about what would happen if your communication or your memory became very limited. I did this a bit backwards. About a year ago, we put together a revocable trust and will and now I’m just getting around to a welcome letter, that includes all the important details that may not be included, including where to find a copy. [Read more…] about Welcome to My Demise.