Jeff’s Dead (Folder)
A recent loss in the family has forced me to rethink a few things, and revisit a good idea from the past.
It is the text message you never want to get. Recently, a beloved family member passed away peacefully in her sleep. This was very much unexpected. She was much too young, and I had to reread that message several times to believe what I was seeing. My Aunt P was a wonderful woman, who I will always remember for her easy-going laugh and smile. She had a gift for making us all feel loved within moments of seeing her, no matter how long it had been since we were last together. She was quick with a hug and she always called me Jeffy. She was so welcoming to my wife when we first starting dating, inviting her into the family with open arms. I will never forget that about her. I have no bad memories of Aunt P, only good ones.
Beyond the complex emotions of losing a loved one way too soon, this has also changed the way I think about some aspects of our financial lives. A couple of years back, a financial planner that I follow on social media talked about his “Ted’s Dead” folder. Ted is a planner who just wanted to make sure if something were to happen to him, everything his family would need to know was in one place. I thought this was a great idea, and I even got out a folder and wrote on the tab, “Jeff’s Dead.” But I never truly did anything about it…until now.
After Aunt P passed, we rallied as a family to try and help her family pick up the pieces. Aunt P was the money person at her house. She had her own system of doing things, whether it be online bill pays, electronic statements, utilities in her name, etc. We all have systems that work for us, but how easy is it for someone else to pick it up if we were gone? Since I am the financial person at our house, this exercise really made me think about what would happen if I were gone. This experience prompted me to take out that dusty old folder once again and start to fill it up. I thought of anything my wife or kids might need if I was not here tomorrow. Passwords for important accounts, that electric bill that only comes to my email address, life insurance information, all the financial account details. Grieving for a lost loved one is hard. My goal is to make it a little easier for everyone by leaving a trail to the things that would help them the most if I were not there to take care of it myself.
Along those same lines, we tend to be task-oriented creatures, and we try to get through life doing these complicated tasks one at a time. Once we check some of these boxes, we mentally classify them as done, glad that we do not have to think about that anymore. I am referring to things such as beneficiaries on accounts, life insurance policies, wills, trusts, etc. But the truth is, your life does not change much in a year. But it changes quite a bit over ten years. It changes exponentially over twenty years. Do not forget to update those beneficiaries, especially as your family changes. For example, we did not put our children as beneficiaries on our retirement accounts, as most of these accounts were set up when they were just little kids. They are not little anymore. It is time to revise our plan to include them as the emerging adults that they are. Do not forget to take out that will and review it. You may need to add some things or take some out. At one point it was “done,” but now that your life has changed, these documents should be revisited and change with you.
Finally, the last thing I took away from this terrible experience…as a planner, I do a lot of talking about saving. Saving for the future. Saving for a specific goal. Saving for retirement. What happens when that future need does not come to fruition? I need to do a better job of creating a healthy balance between saving and doing. Because after all, we can plan for the best case, and we can plan for the worst. However, the only thing we are guaranteed right now is today.
