Things to do TODAY:
- Get life insurance if at all possible.
- Have a will written regardless of your age or health issues. This would include power of attorney and medical power of attorney. This will save all sorts of fights and legal money and hours.
- Write down all account numbers, businesses, user names, passwords in a SAFE location. Give your spouse/partner the information AND provide the location of this information to your heirs. This may mean locking them in a personal safe, bank safety deposit box, or putting them in a software program that holds all passwords. Wherever you store them, make sure heirs know the combination, key, etc. My mom left Kelly and me detailed notes about everything—and what a difference this made!
- Be honest about your finances. Secrets will come back to bite you. They will be discovered at some point. Leave no regrets. When Mom died, her biggest regret for us after her death was that Kelly and I would have to clean her refrigerator. This is the goal!
- For all of you who use bill pay and paperless billing, consider printing out one page from each account with the account number and contact information for it. When my dad died, my mom had all the paper files and all the returned checks. Now, it is often the case where there are no files at all. (For me, we had just changed pest control companies. I had no idea what company did our pest control. Imagine how much fun it was to call around to ask.)
- Use the same computer for most of your billing. Make sure applicable people can access this computer. This will prevent companies not recognizing the computer the first time for log-in.
- Think through the 2-tier authentication process. Perhaps think of using a cell phone of one person and an email of another. (For me, Anthony had his computer and his phone with him for the weeks he was missing. I could not authenticate anything.)
- Avoid the temptation to use PayPal or ApplePay for all your bills. Yes, there are many reasons to use these. However, on the bank statements, they will just show up as PayPal with no explanation of what the bill is really paying for. This will leave confusion for those who follow you.
- Have all your major utilities in both names. Utility companies are awful about talking to you if you are not on the account, and trying to change a utility to another company can be more difficult than almost anything else. For me, this meant me crying in the Spectrum office because the mortgage information I had was not the original mortgage paperwork, so they would not believe I lived at the address despite the tax bills in my name, my driver’s license, house insurance paperwork, etc.
- Joint bank accounts are important, or make arrangements so there is a beneficiary if you have a single account. If you have significant debt, talk to your attorney how this will affect those who are left behind. Just because one dies, his/her personal debt may or may not die with him.
- Make sure life insurance policies are easily accessible—-and known to all applicable people. The same is true for retirement and investments. It is vital to consider your beneficiaries and actually name them.
- De-clutter on a regular basis. Cleaning a house after a death is one of the most awful things I have had to do TWICE.
- Discuss basic wishes for plans after death. If you don’t, your heirs will be bombarded with others who will try to impose their desires on them.
- Since we all know death can bring out the worst in people, think of ways to diminish the conflict. If you know one piece of personal property means a lot to several people, don’t make them fight it out after you go.
- Let others know how you feel about them–in notes you leave in a safe/safety deposit box, or in your daily words. Your heirs will cherish these.
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