Bogleheads® Chapter Series – Documenting Financial Information for Surviving Spouse / Executor

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome to the Bogleheads Chapter Series.

00:00:06.840 | This episode was hosted by the Pre and Early Retirement

00:00:09.720 | Life Stage Chapter and recorded April 6th, 2022.

00:00:14.120 | The topic was Documenting Financial Information

00:00:16.880 | for Surviving Spouse or Executor.

00:00:19.080 | Bogleheads are investors who follow John Bogle's philosophy

00:00:22.820 | for attaining financial independence.

00:00:25.260 | This recording is for informational purposes only

00:00:27.560 | and should not be construed as personalized investment

00:00:30.040 | advice.

00:00:30.880 | - This meeting is for informational purposes only,

00:00:34.680 | should not be construed as personalized investing advice.

00:00:37.880 | And it's also not legal advice.

00:00:40.040 | And we're not telling you,

00:00:41.880 | oh, you should do something this way.

00:00:43.320 | We're just presenting you with a pretty long list of things

00:00:46.720 | that you should go back, consider.

00:00:48.600 | This is gonna take, it's a lot of things to consider.

00:00:50.680 | It's gonna take you a while.

00:00:52.320 | Think about how you wanna do this.

00:00:54.040 | How do you wanna document this for your,

00:00:57.440 | so what this meeting is,

00:00:58.860 | it's a lot of times in the Bogleheads world,

00:01:01.520 | especially there's one partner, spouse, person,

00:01:05.360 | in particular that handles a lot of the finances,

00:01:07.880 | not all the time.

00:01:08.800 | Sometimes one person handles investing,

00:01:10.320 | one person handles bill paying.

00:01:12.080 | Sometimes one person handles everything.

00:01:14.200 | So you wanna make sure if you were to unfortunately

00:01:17.360 | pass away, you wanna make sure that the surviving spouse

00:01:23.220 | knows where to find accounts, all your assets,

00:01:27.740 | and we're gonna go over all this passwords,

00:01:29.300 | things like that, important documents in your house.

00:01:32.860 | So basically what this presentation is, discussion is,

00:01:36.700 | is what you can do ahead of time

00:01:39.760 | to make things easier for your surviving spouse.

00:01:42.300 | And when I say that, it's also gonna apply in situations

00:01:45.460 | where you become incapacitated and you, a power of attorney,

00:01:49.740 | it's also useful in that situation

00:01:51.220 | where the power of attorney is gonna take over.

00:01:53.540 | And to a certain extent, when you're the last spouse to die

00:01:56.620 | and your executor has to take over,

00:01:58.620 | but it's mostly geared towards the surviving spouse

00:02:01.940 | or power of attorney.

00:02:03.100 | So we're not gonna tell you,

00:02:05.900 | this is how you should do something.

00:02:06.940 | We're gonna present some options

00:02:08.300 | and you're gonna go back, do your own research,

00:02:11.140 | think about it, make your own decisions.

00:02:13.580 | And also we wanna be a little bit, oh, sorry, careful to,

00:02:19.740 | especially with things like passwords,

00:02:22.140 | if you're not the surviving spouse,

00:02:24.380 | you wanna be real careful

00:02:25.900 | about when you're gonna use that information to log in.

00:02:28.820 | You don't wanna go start making transactions.

00:02:30.980 | You wanna, we're gonna say,

00:02:32.940 | take care and consult an estate attorney

00:02:34.980 | before taking any kind of action like that.

00:02:37.700 | And then also this is by no means a complete list

00:02:40.220 | of what needs to be done after death.

00:02:41.860 | Although we are gonna mention a lot of things,

00:02:44.140 | it's mostly, like I said before,

00:02:45.540 | to prepare in advance before you die

00:02:49.820 | to make things easier for your spouse.

00:02:51.340 | So it's not really like a complete list

00:02:52.940 | of everything that the spouses should be doing

00:02:54.820 | after your death.

00:02:55.820 | Okay.

00:02:58.340 | Okay, so the first thing is things you can do now

00:03:02.340 | to make things easier later.

00:03:03.860 | So the main thing you wanna make sure

00:03:05.660 | all your estate planning documents are in order,

00:03:07.700 | that includes your will, your power of attorney.

00:03:10.660 | There's a medical, there's a financial, medical directives.

00:03:14.820 | There's probably seven or 10 different documents.

00:03:18.060 | And if you visit an estate planning attorney,

00:03:20.020 | they will have a whole packet of documents

00:03:22.100 | for you to fill out.

00:03:25.100 | And you wanna make sure all of your accounts

00:03:27.260 | are titled the way you want,

00:03:28.940 | and that will work in conjunction with your will.

00:03:31.220 | And if you have a trust set up,

00:03:32.780 | you may have to read title things in the name of the trust,

00:03:35.500 | and you just wanna check all of your accounts,

00:03:37.180 | including your 401ks, your bank accounts,

00:03:40.420 | your insurance, all that kind of thing.

00:03:43.900 | And then also check all your beneficiary areas,

00:03:46.740 | as well as the contingent beneficiaries.

00:03:49.660 | Everywhere you have an account

00:03:50.660 | that has a transfer on death, payable on death,

00:03:53.500 | bank accounts, brokerage accounts, insurance policies,

00:03:55.980 | you wanna check all of those.

00:03:58.860 | The other thing you can do is you can simplify

00:04:00.700 | and consolidate accounts when possible.

00:04:02.380 | I know I need to do that.

00:04:03.660 | Somehow my husband and I both ended up

00:04:05.420 | with like literally three or four different Roth IRAs

00:04:08.380 | here and there, and there's no reason why

00:04:10.500 | they can't be kind of consolidated.

00:04:13.660 | That'll just eliminate or reduce

00:04:15.580 | the number of actual accounts,

00:04:16.820 | which will just make things a lot easier.

00:04:18.780 | A large part of this discussion is gonna be,

00:04:22.500 | we're gonna call it a book or a binder,

00:04:24.500 | and I'm just gonna start calling it the book.

00:04:26.860 | And it's gonna have a lot of documentation

00:04:29.060 | that you're gonna leave for your surviving spouse,

00:04:32.140 | and we're gonna, that's what the rest of the discussion

00:04:34.380 | is gonna be about.

00:04:35.700 | And then also, once you create this book,

00:04:37.700 | you wanna kind of go over it with your spouse,

00:04:40.380 | let them know where is the book, what's in the book,

00:04:42.980 | and then should you pass away,

00:04:45.740 | they'll immediately know, oh, I need to go to the book,

00:04:47.620 | and it's gonna have a lot of information

00:04:49.900 | that's gonna be very helpful.

00:04:51.340 | One other thing I've heard people suggest

00:04:55.060 | is if you've been managing your own investments

00:04:58.420 | and you think your spouse is the type

00:05:00.780 | that probably is not gonna wanna,

00:05:03.020 | either not gonna want to,

00:05:04.260 | or not have any interest in managing,

00:05:06.420 | you may want to leave the name

00:05:08.460 | of a trusted friend or relative,

00:05:09.860 | or some people actually pre-select a financial advisor,

00:05:13.820 | even if you don't already have one now,

00:05:15.420 | they're gonna say, okay,

00:05:16.940 | if you decide you want a financial advisor,

00:05:19.140 | I recommend this person make a list of two or three

00:05:22.700 | that you would recommend, of course,

00:05:24.660 | that are low fee and fiduciary and whatever you choose.

00:05:29.100 | One thing that I've heard of

00:05:31.420 | is you should establish separate credit cards

00:05:33.820 | in each spouse's name alone.

00:05:35.140 | It used to be you could have a joint account.

00:05:37.900 | I hear that they're going away from that,

00:05:39.540 | and you can have a primary person on the account

00:05:42.940 | and an authorized user,

00:05:44.340 | but I've heard of situations where when a person dies,

00:05:47.500 | those credit cards are just gonna get shut down,

00:05:49.180 | even if you're an authorized user,

00:05:50.780 | and you could be left with no credit cards.

00:05:52.300 | So that's definitely something you wanna think about

00:05:55.740 | is establishing at least one,

00:05:58.100 | preferably, Clark Howard always says

00:06:01.180 | you should have two or three accounts,

00:06:02.580 | which is true 'cause my accounts are constantly,

00:06:04.740 | oh, we detected some fraud.

00:06:06.980 | We're gonna shut this down.

00:06:07.940 | You don't wanna be left without a card.

00:06:09.220 | So ideally, each spouse should have two in there,

00:06:12.940 | which is kind of a pain 'cause to keep them active,

00:06:15.300 | you gotta do some charges,

00:06:16.700 | and then you gotta pay for credit card.

00:06:18.500 | That's what I do, pay for credit card bills every month,

00:06:20.620 | but in the end, that's gonna work out, I think.

00:06:23.340 | You wanna make sure there's gonna be some cash available

00:06:27.020 | to pay for immediate expenses, particularly funeral bills.

00:06:33.260 | If there's a house, obviously,

00:06:36.100 | household bills, that kind of thing.

00:06:37.620 | And there's several different ways to do that.

00:06:39.980 | Obviously, if it's a joint account,

00:06:41.260 | it's not gonna be a problem,

00:06:42.500 | but if it's not a joint account,

00:06:44.380 | you could consider leaving life insurance to somebody,

00:06:47.660 | adding somebody as a cosigner,

00:06:50.460 | putting somebody right away as a transfer on death,

00:06:53.180 | payable on death, and those bypass probate

00:06:55.540 | immediately go to that person.

00:06:57.260 | Of course, you have to trust that person

00:06:59.500 | to be able to use that money to pay your bills.

00:07:02.340 | There's an issue about the safe deposit box.

00:07:04.780 | I worked as a probate paralegal for a while,

00:07:09.380 | and we had cases where the person's will,

00:07:11.620 | either they thought there was a will,

00:07:12.900 | or there was a will in the safe deposit box,

00:07:14.580 | but nobody had the key,

00:07:15.420 | so you actually have to get a court order

00:07:18.180 | to drill open the box or whatever.

00:07:19.980 | Even if you had the key,

00:07:20.820 | you had to get a court order to open the box,

00:07:22.980 | if the person's name,

00:07:23.940 | if nobody else's name was on the box,

00:07:25.580 | so you wanna consider making sure your spouse is on there.

00:07:29.060 | And we actually put my adult daughter on ours

00:07:31.540 | to just make things easier later on.

00:07:34.500 | Of course, you always wanna declutter

00:07:38.060 | your paperwork in your house,

00:07:39.300 | 'cause if not, somebody's gonna have to do that

00:07:41.260 | after you're gone.

00:07:42.620 | Consider purchasing cemetery plots and headstones.

00:07:45.140 | My parents went as far as purchased their own headstones.

00:07:47.460 | They had everything engraved except the date.

00:07:49.100 | It's installed, it's ready to go,

00:07:50.820 | and they're still doing great,

00:07:52.380 | but they wanna make things easier,

00:07:54.660 | so they had that done ahead of time.

00:07:56.460 | If you have an HSA, especially with the large balance,

00:07:59.780 | you wanna consider whether or not you wanna leave a balance

00:08:03.660 | or you wanna start spending that down

00:08:06.260 | as you get, you never know what's gonna happen,

00:08:10.460 | but you wanna consider what's gonna happen with your HSA.

00:08:13.460 | And then you wanna review the book that you make.

00:08:15.980 | You wanna review it annually and update as needed.

00:08:19.740 | So does anybody have any kind of comments

00:08:22.140 | on what they did to handle any of this kind of,

00:08:24.780 | what you can be doing now to make things easier later?

00:08:27.780 | Just feel free to, oh, Jim,

00:08:30.060 | I forgot to do your little Zoom tips,

00:08:32.500 | but hopefully people know how to click

00:08:34.380 | on the raised hand icon to raise their hand.

00:08:37.380 | Go ahead, Lady Geek.

00:08:38.660 | - Yeah, okay, a couple of things.

00:08:40.620 | First, save your chat on the Zoom thing.

00:08:43.020 | I will be saving it and posting it in an anonymized version

00:08:45.900 | with nobody's names in it once tomorrow or next day

00:08:50.420 | to make that available.

00:08:51.700 | One thing, let me back up a little bit

00:08:55.660 | and give a bigger picture here.

00:08:57.180 | We're talking about power of attorney.

00:08:59.700 | Power of attorney only exists while that person is alive.

00:09:03.780 | Once that person passes,

00:09:05.380 | all power of attorneys cease

00:09:07.020 | to have any authority whatsoever.

00:09:09.620 | It becomes part of the decedent's estate.

00:09:12.420 | So when people are clear about power of attorney,

00:09:14.580 | be very sure you understand that fact that POA just stops.

00:09:19.420 | You have no authority after the person dies

00:09:22.460 | with that document.

00:09:23.820 | A couple of minor things is that

00:09:26.220 | if you want power of attorney for a bank,

00:09:28.260 | all you need to do is take that person with you

00:09:31.660 | into the bank, say,

00:09:32.540 | "I'm gonna give this person power of attorney."

00:09:34.860 | They'll sign a form and have a small discussion.

00:09:37.700 | Five minutes later, you have POA on that account.

00:09:39.900 | That is a very big thing.

00:09:41.180 | It's a very big financial help to have POA

00:09:45.340 | when the person starts to get near death

00:09:47.780 | and becomes unable to have cognitive understanding

00:09:52.700 | of things going on.

00:09:53.540 | You can step in as POA with the bank immediately.

00:09:57.060 | In fact, I'm doing that while I have POA.

00:10:00.740 | In fact, POA is good before they pass

00:10:04.220 | because they say there's that big area

00:10:06.260 | where they're not quite passed away.

00:10:08.460 | They're on their way.

00:10:09.380 | They have a medical condition

00:10:10.860 | and you need that power of attorney while they're alive.

00:10:13.620 | I'm actually doing that for my mom right now

00:10:15.540 | because she has some issues

00:10:17.820 | and I just signed a legal contract on her behalf

00:10:22.180 | to have an aide be with her in her assisted living.

00:10:25.620 | That needs to be a legal contract.

00:10:27.180 | They need access to the bank account to do ACH transfer.

00:10:30.220 | So welcome to that.

00:10:31.620 | But I did all of that under POA, fully legal.

00:10:34.900 | Also upon death,

00:10:40.180 | as soon as you take everything to the funeral director,

00:10:44.620 | the funeral director is required

00:10:46.980 | to notify social security of the death.

00:10:49.380 | This is for fraud prevention.

00:10:52.580 | So once the funeral director files a form,

00:10:55.820 | every financial institution is notified.

00:10:58.980 | So if they decide, if they notice that,

00:11:01.820 | they will lock that account.

00:11:03.500 | Usually what you do is you call in and say,

00:11:05.100 | "Hey, somebody died and they want the copy

00:11:08.340 | "of their death certificate."

00:11:10.580 | But in the meantime, they already know.

00:11:12.980 | So you might as well be forthcoming about it

00:11:16.260 | and do whatever you need to do

00:11:17.540 | before you get to the funeral director.

00:11:19.380 | The funeral director gets it.

00:11:20.820 | Let's see.

00:11:23.580 | Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention

00:11:25.060 | is if you're gonna do websites,

00:11:27.740 | FidSafe.com, I'll put the link in the chat.

00:11:31.020 | Because people who designate as trusted people,

00:11:34.900 | they have to know where the documents are

00:11:36.420 | before the person passes.

00:11:38.540 | FidSafe.com, I know a lot of some people do that.

00:11:41.740 | I'm kind of delinquent on signing up myself.

00:11:44.980 | It's run by Fidelity,

00:11:46.100 | but you do not have to have a Fidelity account.

00:11:48.220 | It is designed for beneficiaries

00:11:50.980 | to be active after the person passes.

00:11:53.180 | So you put everything you want up in that site,

00:11:55.300 | it will be securely stored online with them.

00:11:59.300 | So I think I've covered enough.

00:12:01.820 | They say, "Oh, consider purchasing

00:12:03.260 | "cemetery plots and headstones."

00:12:05.180 | Bear in mind, the funeral director,

00:12:06.300 | if you pay a price and the price increases,

00:12:08.380 | I hear that they can charge for the difference.

00:12:10.900 | So, okay, I'll stop on that.

00:12:13.660 | - Okay, Joe, go ahead.

00:12:15.700 | You've got your hand raised, Joe?

00:12:17.500 | - Oh, sorry, took me a second to unmute.

00:12:23.340 | - Oh, okay.

00:12:24.340 | - Lots of great ideas.

00:12:26.620 | What I do, one tool that really worked for me

00:12:31.020 | is Quicken, not Quicken, no, Willmaker.

00:12:34.260 | Has a great form for recording all this kind of information

00:12:39.260 | and things that you would not have thought about,

00:12:45.620 | like your Amazon library, if you're a Kindle reader.

00:12:50.260 | So I found that alone worth the price of Willmaker.

00:12:55.260 | And I use that quite a bit.

00:13:00.020 | The other thing that I do is I do more electronic forms

00:13:06.260 | rather than a binder.

00:13:08.140 | Because a binder is not as safe or secure.

00:13:13.060 | But I do make sure that my wife is able to access the,

00:13:18.060 | it's on my computer, it's on thumb drives.

00:13:22.540 | You can take an image that's encrypted in AES 1024

00:13:28.420 | and leave it in a Dropbox.

00:13:30.940 | So my daughter has access to that as well.

00:13:35.860 | And that's updated at least once a year.

00:13:39.420 | So I find doing it electronically a lot more efficient,

00:13:44.420 | especially because my book would be probably 300 pages.

00:13:48.340 | And I had a weird thing happen.

00:13:54.820 | I was perusing YouTube and there was a little video

00:13:59.740 | on how to break into the safe that we bought.

00:14:03.140 | So those of you who have like a Sentry safe

00:14:05.140 | or buy one from Home Depot or Costco,

00:14:09.900 | one of the lower end safes,

00:14:11.500 | it's really good for fireproof,

00:14:13.020 | but he was able to break it in one and a half seconds.

00:14:16.820 | And it's pretty amazing how easy the safes are to break in.

00:14:22.900 | Given that book is your whole finances,

00:14:28.100 | I didn't feel comfortable just having it all printed out.

00:14:33.740 | So that's my little bit.

00:14:35.140 | - Right.

00:14:36.660 | Yeah, I think it's totally up to everybody

00:14:38.580 | how they wanna do it.

00:14:39.420 | And it's also based on like,

00:14:40.340 | I don't think my mom would be able to figure out how to,

00:14:43.860 | like she'll type an email and I'll call my dad,

00:14:46.900 | would you send the email?

00:14:48.220 | I don't think, but anyway,

00:14:50.940 | so it's all dependent on how comfortable you feel.

00:14:53.180 | And like you said, yeah,

00:14:54.020 | you don't want to put it right out in open

00:14:55.820 | where a robber burglar would come in like,

00:14:58.020 | oh, there's their, so it's all up to you

00:15:01.620 | and how you think Miriam, go ahead.

00:15:04.580 | What do you have to add?

00:15:06.700 | - Yes.

00:15:07.540 | One thing about the power of attorney

00:15:09.700 | that many have found that the banks will not accept,

00:15:14.300 | many banks will not accept a regular power of attorney

00:15:17.820 | that is drafted by an attorney.

00:15:20.140 | And even if it's notarized and signed,

00:15:22.780 | and I think that Vanguard does not,

00:15:24.940 | they want you to use their own power of attorney forms.

00:15:29.180 | And with Vanguard, the form is the full agent authority form

00:15:34.180 | and you can also have limited agent.

00:15:37.940 | But if you have that with Vanguard

00:15:39.940 | or the similar with Fidelity and the other bank,

00:15:43.580 | your other investing companies,

00:15:46.380 | then you can just, it's easier to get in at that time.

00:15:49.700 | It's not, you don't have to deal with them

00:15:51.940 | not accepting the power of attorney.

00:15:54.220 | And I know that in Florida now they have a clause

00:15:57.820 | that is put into the power of attorney form that says,

00:16:01.300 | banks, if you don't accept this,

00:16:02.860 | then we're going to get really mad

00:16:04.820 | and you're going to pay the price.

00:16:06.660 | But whether this really works or not,

00:16:09.700 | and who wants to take the chance,

00:16:12.060 | just go to the bank

00:16:15.260 | and get your own power of attorney with the bank.

00:16:17.660 | - Okay, very good.

00:16:19.540 | Thank you, Miriam.

00:16:20.980 | Keith, go ahead.

00:16:21.820 | - Yes, good evening, everyone.

00:16:24.260 | I was just, had recently gone through this with my mother

00:16:29.260 | and a lot of great information on here.

00:16:32.500 | Maybe just a couple of things

00:16:33.820 | that I would want to emphasize based on our experience

00:16:38.340 | is bring, if you're going to bring somebody in,

00:16:40.740 | whether it's a child or a trusted friend,

00:16:44.340 | bring them in early,

00:16:45.740 | at least so they know where everything is at,

00:16:49.020 | whether it's in a safe, whether it's online,

00:16:52.420 | whether it's printed out and saved somewhere.

00:16:55.620 | So they're aware of where things are.

00:16:58.380 | My parents passed away about four years apart,

00:17:02.780 | but mentally their progression or regression

00:17:07.780 | happened at different paces.

00:17:10.100 | And so, one spouse, one half might think,

00:17:15.060 | I'll give all the information to the other,

00:17:17.500 | to my spouse and they'll be able to take care of it

00:17:20.180 | when they go.

00:17:21.020 | And then a few years later,

00:17:22.340 | it turns out that that other spouse might be

00:17:24.580 | progressing with something

00:17:28.020 | where their mental sharpness is going away

00:17:30.220 | and starts to forget things.

00:17:31.580 | So I would suggest starting earlier rather than later.

00:17:35.700 | Based on our experience,

00:17:37.380 | my brother and I are both redoing our estate plans.

00:17:40.860 | We're putting together the binder with documentation

00:17:45.060 | and where things are at, account numbers,

00:17:48.220 | passwords, 800 numbers, things like that.

00:17:53.100 | Because when my father did it with us

00:17:55.660 | and then he passed shortly after,

00:17:57.780 | then we had about four years where we were

00:18:00.780 | in charge of our mother's financial affairs.

00:18:03.020 | And if our father had not reviewed those things with us,

00:18:06.340 | we would not know where things are at.

00:18:08.500 | We would not have been able to find,

00:18:10.220 | whether it's tax returns,

00:18:12.220 | other information that we needed,

00:18:14.060 | insurance policies that we needed to include

00:18:17.540 | with the claim form.

00:18:19.660 | So I would suggest doing earlier rather than later.

00:18:23.300 | And you can always update it as you go,

00:18:25.340 | if something changes,

00:18:27.220 | but do it while you're younger and sharper, if you can,

00:18:31.020 | so that it's as accurate as possible.

00:18:33.260 | And then just go in maybe once a year and update it.

00:18:36.620 | And I will also say on the cemetery plots,

00:18:39.180 | my parents were both planners.

00:18:41.820 | They literally bought their headstones

00:18:44.540 | and their headstone and their plot,

00:18:46.940 | probably close to 30 years ago and they prepaid it.

00:18:50.100 | So when I walked in to do this with the cemetery,

00:18:54.620 | he looked at me and he said,

00:18:58.620 | "Wow," he goes, "Your parents were really smart.

00:19:00.980 | "It would probably be three times what they paid

00:19:04.100 | "if you had to pay today's prices."

00:19:06.260 | And that's a significant sum

00:19:08.900 | that we did not have to pay out from the estate.

00:19:11.460 | So it is a smart thing to think about that ahead of time.

00:19:15.380 | Some people don't like to do that,

00:19:17.500 | but if you're thinking about who you're giving the money to

00:19:20.540 | and what you're giving and how much,

00:19:22.620 | it's smart to prepay ahead of time

00:19:25.460 | so that they don't have to worry about that.

00:19:28.620 | And if there's a significant increase in price,

00:19:31.620 | it's already been locked in.

00:19:33.500 | Thank you.

00:19:34.540 | - Very good, thank you, Keith.

00:19:35.660 | Henry, go ahead.

00:19:36.540 | - Yeah, so it's really important for anybody

00:19:41.820 | who moves from one state to another

00:19:46.220 | that the laws with all of these estate planning documents

00:19:51.220 | are really state-specific.

00:19:54.420 | And in terms of how many witnesses you need,

00:19:58.220 | how it has to be notarized,

00:20:00.700 | if there are certain magic phrases

00:20:02.780 | that the state wants to be in there

00:20:04.900 | to have it be honored when the time comes.

00:20:10.260 | And even if there are ways to kind of do workarounds,

00:20:14.300 | you don't want to be having to mess with this

00:20:16.500 | in circumstances where the documents

00:20:19.500 | are actually being applied.

00:20:20.740 | So it's something that you may have all your documents

00:20:25.300 | and you're all set and you may figure,

00:20:26.620 | well, everything's good,

00:20:27.700 | whether we're in the state where it was done

00:20:30.740 | or where you're moving to,

00:20:32.180 | but it's just something you want to check out.

00:20:34.900 | - Thank you, Henry.

00:20:37.500 | Jim, go ahead.

00:20:39.140 | - I just wanted to say something that Keith mentioned.

00:20:42.140 | Besides the planning of that cemetery plots

00:20:45.340 | or whatever the issues are,

00:20:46.900 | I think it relieves the family of anguish

00:20:50.100 | of what mom would have wanted

00:20:51.860 | or what dad would have wanted or whatever,

00:20:53.980 | and it may even save a family fight.

00:20:56.100 | So anyway, that's all I'm gonna say.

00:20:57.980 | - Right, right.

00:20:58.820 | Okay, we're gonna go to the next slide.

00:21:02.540 | Oh, there it is.

00:21:03.740 | Okay, so this is all talking about the book,

00:21:05.780 | whether it be a paper book or online,

00:21:09.100 | or it could be both.

00:21:09.940 | Like, what I do is I type it online,

00:21:11.940 | I mean, on my computer,

00:21:13.100 | and then I print it out and put it in the file cabinet

00:21:15.340 | with the little color sticky.

00:21:17.140 | Okay, so I'm just gonna let you know ahead of time

00:21:19.460 | what the different categories are gonna be.

00:21:21.980 | Location of, you know,

00:21:23.260 | sometimes you need the original document

00:21:25.900 | or you need to know where it is

00:21:27.460 | as far as a document or a key.

00:21:28.780 | So we have a list of those.

00:21:30.180 | Kind of a discussion on passwords, codes,

00:21:33.020 | which can go a lot of different ways.

00:21:35.500 | What to do first in the, you know,

00:21:37.620 | what your spouse should,

00:21:38.500 | or your surviving spouse should do first

00:21:39.980 | in the event of death.

00:21:41.180 | Content, you want to list all the contact info

00:21:42.660 | for professionals.

00:21:43.700 | Of course, a big category is listing

00:21:46.580 | all your investment financial accounts,

00:21:48.740 | your insurance information.

00:21:50.100 | Another big category is paying,

00:21:51.740 | you want to make sure all the bills get paid,

00:21:54.100 | tax returns, and then some kind of household

00:21:56.300 | and miscellaneous.

00:21:57.380 | So we're gonna go ahead and just start on those.

00:22:00.220 | So that's basically your table of contents for your,

00:22:02.660 | or suggested table of contents for books.

00:22:05.300 | Okay, so like I said, this is not,

00:22:07.660 | you don't necessarily put the original documents

00:22:09.860 | in the book.

00:22:10.700 | You can, or you just say, you know,

00:22:12.780 | where they are.

00:22:13.820 | Like, here's where my passport is.

00:22:16.620 | Here's where my social security card is.

00:22:19.460 | So of course you want,

00:22:22.180 | very important is all your state planning documents.

00:22:25.220 | And in Texas, we have something called

00:22:28.020 | a memorandum of wishes that is referenced by the will.

00:22:32.260 | And what that is,

00:22:33.100 | it's a list of something that could,

00:22:35.660 | like all your little, your dishes, your silverware,

00:22:38.380 | your kind of sentimental items

00:22:39.940 | that might not be of huge value.

00:22:41.660 | And that, you don't want to put that right in the will

00:22:44.340 | 'cause that could change pretty often.

00:22:45.780 | You don't want to be changing your will very often.

00:22:47.660 | So you want to put, if you have something like that,

00:22:50.500 | you want to keep that with your original will.

00:22:54.020 | And there's different trains of thought

00:22:59.940 | on where you should keep your will.

00:23:01.540 | My boss, I said I was a paralegal

00:23:03.820 | for an estate planning attorney.

00:23:04.780 | He said, put it in a plastic bag and put it in your freezer

00:23:09.260 | because that's the last thing

00:23:10.420 | that's going to get burned in a fire.

00:23:12.700 | Or put it in a safe.

00:23:14.180 | You can, some people put it in their safe deposit box,

00:23:16.420 | but then there's the issue of getting into it.

00:23:19.180 | Once you pass, you might be able to get into it.

00:23:21.820 | So there's, you know,

00:23:22.660 | there's kind of different trains of thought

00:23:23.660 | on where you should store your original will,

00:23:25.340 | but wherever you do,

00:23:26.620 | let somebody know, document in this book where it is.

00:23:31.420 | Of course, copies of any trust, if you have those,

00:23:33.780 | you know, where your passports are,

00:23:35.140 | where your original social security cards,

00:23:36.660 | original birth certificates, marriage certificates,

00:23:39.620 | divorce decrees, your original Medicare,

00:23:42.100 | medical insurance cards.

00:23:43.780 | Very important, your safe deposit box keys,

00:23:46.140 | because of course, if you lose those,

00:23:47.380 | they have to like drill it out.

00:23:48.940 | Or so I've heard, it's kind of a big hassle.

00:23:51.540 | And now lately, last couple of times I went,

00:23:54.500 | they have a pin.

00:23:55.420 | You have to have a pin number

00:23:56.380 | to go with your safe deposit box.

00:23:59.940 | The actual original vehicle titles are helpful to have.

00:24:03.180 | They can always get replacements,

00:24:04.220 | but it's helpful to have the originals.

00:24:06.260 | If you have extra car keys,

00:24:07.740 | nowadays the car keys cost literally, what?

00:24:09.740 | $200 to have a keypad made or whatever.

00:24:13.380 | So you want to note the extras of those.

00:24:16.740 | House, garage, car, garage keys, mailbox keys.

00:24:20.220 | And some people still have paper savings bonds.

00:24:22.940 | If those are not, you know,

00:24:25.660 | you may have a safe deposit box,

00:24:27.020 | or you may just have them store away.

00:24:28.500 | You definitely want to document where those are.

00:24:31.060 | So this is kind of a list of originals of something,

00:24:36.060 | or little keys that need to be kept track of.

00:24:38.420 | Does anybody have anything that they can add to that?

00:24:42.380 | Henry, is your hand up from last time,

00:24:43.740 | or do you have something for this?

00:24:45.460 | Jim, go ahead.

00:24:47.780 | - That has something.

00:24:50.420 | - Sorry, I'll take my hand down, sorry.

00:24:53.780 | - Okay, I'm sorry, I don't know your name.

00:24:54.780 | PJ.

00:24:55.620 | - P-A-T.

00:24:57.660 | - Okay, go ahead.

00:24:59.220 | - There's an electronic binder of this stuff

00:25:04.460 | that you can get from online.

00:25:07.060 | I posted it in the chat where the website is.

00:25:10.300 | - Great.

00:25:12.260 | - And it's like $25 or so,

00:25:16.060 | but it goes through a lot of these things,

00:25:18.300 | gives you guidance and whatnot to store,

00:25:21.300 | and it lets your successors know what you want it to do.

00:25:26.300 | - Great, thank you for that suggestion.

00:25:29.140 | Joel?

00:25:31.020 | - Yeah, just all the originals

00:25:35.380 | that you were talking about are great.

00:25:37.980 | My only thought would be make sure you can scan

00:25:41.620 | as much of it as you can.

00:25:43.220 | - Good idea.

00:25:44.060 | - At a time as well.

00:25:45.500 | - Yes.

00:25:46.340 | And just in case you can't look at the originals,

00:25:49.700 | then you have a few.

00:25:50.540 | Does it have a copy?

00:25:51.380 | It's better than nothing, right.

00:25:53.140 | Miriam?

00:25:54.460 | - Yes, this is a story from a friend of ours.

00:25:57.140 | When his father passed away,

00:25:59.900 | he and his brother were going through everything,

00:26:02.340 | and they were going through his file cabinets.

00:26:04.100 | His father was a lawyer and had all these file cabinets,

00:26:07.180 | and they were going through file cabinets in the house,

00:26:09.500 | and they had all the kids going through the file cabinets

00:26:11.660 | in the house, looking for things.

00:26:13.660 | And they came across a lot of these files

00:26:17.380 | that had been in the house for a long time.

00:26:19.740 | And they were looking for things.

00:26:21.780 | And they came across some very beautiful pieces of paper

00:26:26.780 | that were actual original stock certificates.

00:26:31.940 | Before the days when you were with Merrill Lynch

00:26:34.260 | or a brokerage, and the brokerage company held the stock,

00:26:38.780 | that the father had actually original stock certificates.

00:26:43.500 | And that's all they were.

00:26:45.220 | And they were in the file cabins,

00:26:47.140 | and they were worth quite a bit of money.

00:26:49.620 | Our friend had said, "What if they had just tossed them out

00:26:52.780 | and not looked at what they were?"

00:26:55.140 | Now I'm not saying everybody would have

00:26:56.580 | original stock certificates,

00:26:58.260 | but your parents may have things you don't know they have.

00:27:01.620 | - Very true, very true.

00:27:04.540 | PJ, your hand is still up.

00:27:07.820 | Do you have anything to add or?

00:27:08.940 | Okay.

00:27:09.780 | Okay, we're gonna go to the next slide.

00:27:14.180 | Okay, this is a big area.

00:27:17.020 | And like I said, I don't wanna give advice

00:27:19.820 | on what you should do

00:27:20.660 | 'cause there's different ways to handle things.

00:27:22.860 | So I have a disclaimer here.

00:27:24.340 | Obviously you wanna have your passwords documented.

00:27:29.420 | Like Lady Geek was saying for your power of attorney,

00:27:31.860 | if you're incapacitated, they do have authority

00:27:33.900 | to, I believe, log into your accounts

00:27:35.380 | and handle your accounts for you.

00:27:37.020 | And in a lot of cases, your surviving spouse

00:27:40.140 | is also on the account and would have authority to log in.

00:27:44.180 | But other than that, if somebody passes away,

00:27:45.940 | we don't wanna worry about it.

00:27:46.780 | We wanna be really careful about using passwords

00:27:49.060 | to log into the account.

00:27:51.620 | We wanna say, check with your estate probate attorney

00:27:55.020 | before you do that.

00:27:55.980 | So that said, there's many different ways to handle.

00:28:01.580 | You could just hand...

00:28:02.540 | One time we had somebody in my job as a paralegal.

00:28:06.180 | We had somebody die, we went in their house

00:28:07.700 | and they just had right on their desk,

00:28:08.980 | they had this handwritten list.

00:28:10.620 | Well, actually it was printed out list of passwords

00:28:14.100 | and accounts, but then a lot of things

00:28:15.900 | were like scratched through

00:28:16.740 | and they changed the password a bunch of times

00:28:18.380 | and scratched through.

00:28:20.380 | So someone that worked.

00:28:21.780 | You could keep it in a computer file.

00:28:24.580 | You could use a password manager.

00:28:25.940 | And I haven't used it myself, but I hear my dad uses one.

00:28:29.660 | I hear there's like LastPass, Dashlane,

00:28:31.660 | 1Password, Bitwarden, and those are,

00:28:34.340 | from what I understand, they're very secure

00:28:36.940 | and they're very, very helpful

00:28:37.940 | 'cause you just have to remember one password

00:28:40.500 | and then all the rest of your passwords are very, very secure.

00:28:43.780 | Like Lady, you mentioned earlier, there's FidSafe.

00:28:46.020 | I haven't used it myself,

00:28:47.020 | but it's a free service from Fidelity

00:28:48.620 | to securely store documents.

00:28:50.180 | If you wanna create this book binder online

00:28:53.940 | and then be able to store it with some trusted people,

00:28:56.540 | your children or other people like that.

00:28:58.860 | You can also give specific documents

00:29:01.980 | to only certain people.

00:29:03.620 | And you can also, I don't know how you do this exactly,

00:29:05.740 | but you can grant access to somebody after your death.

00:29:08.580 | Now, also there's the whole issue

00:29:10.220 | of secret questions and answers.

00:29:13.300 | That could be also another sticky situation

00:29:15.220 | where you don't really wanna be careful

00:29:17.300 | who you give that out to,

00:29:19.220 | but it might be helpful in some cases.

00:29:22.140 | And then there's also the issue of,

00:29:24.300 | I found a thread on this on Bogleheads,

00:29:26.060 | two-factor authentication where they send some code

00:29:29.100 | to your email or your cell phone.

00:29:31.260 | So you may wanna include your swiping pattern

00:29:35.180 | or your code or whatever to get into your cell phone

00:29:37.980 | in case that's helpful.

00:29:42.180 | There's also, you can also have,

00:29:43.500 | make sure you're surviving a spouse.

00:29:45.500 | Like for, say, for example,

00:29:46.580 | your Vanguard or your Fidelity account,

00:29:48.860 | you can also, of course, access the joint accounts,

00:29:52.460 | but you can also set,

00:29:54.380 | make sure that your spouse has their own login

00:29:58.740 | to a lot of the accounts.

00:30:00.820 | You can have a whole separate login

00:30:02.220 | where they have their own set of passwords

00:30:04.100 | and that way they don't have to use yours.

00:30:05.940 | That's just one option.

00:30:07.260 | There's other household passwords.

00:30:09.780 | There's wifi password, garage code, home security code,

00:30:13.060 | home safe combination,

00:30:15.420 | and it's kind of up to you how you wanna handle that.

00:30:19.020 | But these are all just things to think about.

00:30:21.460 | And one thing I do is I have kind of two passwords.

00:30:26.460 | I have like a base password

00:30:27.820 | where I have one that's used

00:30:29.020 | for just whatever I don't care about.

00:30:30.500 | It's my, some account that I don't care about.

00:30:34.460 | And then I have one that's for financial.

00:30:36.180 | And then what I do is for each account,

00:30:39.060 | I add a bunch of like some characters at the end,

00:30:41.340 | like pound 62.

00:30:42.900 | So in my document,

00:30:44.060 | I don't actually have the actual password.

00:30:45.860 | I say it's my financial password plus pound 62.

00:30:49.260 | And then when I print out the document,

00:30:51.700 | that's when I write on the actual, like the base password.

00:30:54.500 | I mean, that's one way to do it.

00:30:56.100 | Another way to do it is to like,

00:30:58.060 | say you have your very important password manager password,

00:31:00.300 | you could give half to one of your relatives

00:31:03.980 | and give the other half to the other one and say,

00:31:06.220 | in the event of my death,

00:31:08.020 | you can get together and you'll have a whole password

00:31:09.980 | or something like that.

00:31:11.220 | There's many different ways to handle things,

00:31:13.340 | but these are just all things to think about.

00:31:15.580 | Does anybody have any input

00:31:19.380 | on how they handle their passwords?

00:31:22.220 | Anything like that?

00:31:23.060 | I know it's kind of a complicated situation.

00:31:26.980 | Nope.

00:31:28.980 | Miriam, go ahead.

00:31:31.820 | - Just wanted to ask if anybody

00:31:34.420 | had ever had any problems with this

00:31:37.700 | when they were dealing with their relatives passing away.

00:31:42.700 | Was there ever any problem with passcodes and passwords

00:31:47.380 | and account numbers falling into the wrong hands

00:31:52.380 | and being used?

00:31:55.700 | - Well, I had the other problem is I couldn't get access

00:32:00.340 | to my late wife's email when she passed.

00:32:05.380 | And that caused no end of havoc.

00:32:08.580 | So definitely important.

00:32:12.100 | After that BogleHeads thread,

00:32:15.540 | I did shift to 1Password and I've been very happy.

00:32:18.780 | Seems like a really...

00:32:20.460 | So I'm an advocate for a password manager,

00:32:24.100 | especially like 1Password where you can also store,

00:32:28.940 | you know, copies of files and, you know, scans and stuff.

00:32:33.340 | So it becomes a much bigger repository than just passwords.

00:32:38.340 | It's sort of where everything is.

00:32:43.580 | - I was just wondering if we were overdoing the concern.

00:32:47.980 | - I think it's probably not overdoing.

00:32:53.740 | But, you know, you might be able to navigate

00:32:58.100 | through some of it, but I could not get, for instance,

00:33:01.780 | Google to get me access to my wife's account,

00:33:05.980 | even with a copy of the death certificate.

00:33:08.100 | - The other thing I would add is many password things

00:33:12.940 | require two-factor and you better know your passcode

00:33:16.300 | of your partner's phone or have access to their fingerprint

00:33:21.300 | or facial recognition, which could be obviously problematic,

00:33:25.980 | but you may not be able to get into certain accounts.

00:33:31.140 | - Okay, that's a good point.

00:33:32.540 | Alan, go ahead.

00:33:33.500 | - Yes, I don't know about other email programs,

00:33:38.220 | but Gmail allows you to set up a trusted contact

00:33:41.900 | that would be notified if you have no activity

00:33:44.860 | on your account after a certain period of time

00:33:47.820 | and would grant them access to your Gmail account.

00:33:50.980 | I presume, you know, iPhone and so forth

00:33:55.980 | probably have similar type abilities,

00:33:58.820 | as well as other social media,

00:34:00.740 | whether you're on Facebook and other social media

00:34:02.860 | to possibly have a designated trusted contact.

00:34:06.860 | - It's great to know.

00:34:10.020 | Bostonian?

00:34:12.180 | - I was wondering if anyone has done a dry run,

00:34:18.540 | so you have, let's say, a solid plan together,

00:34:21.660 | and then you say, all right, assume that I'm dead.

00:34:25.660 | Can you try and get into everything?

00:34:27.940 | Can you try and get access to everything,

00:34:30.180 | execute the plan like you would if I were not around,

00:34:32.940 | just to see if the whole plan works?

00:34:35.340 | Do people do that, or do you do your best and you hope?

00:34:38.140 | - Are you saying like test, pretend like you're dead

00:34:43.620 | and just test it out to see if people, is that what you're-

00:34:45.420 | - Right, right.

00:34:46.700 | So if my account doesn't do it, like, I am not here now.

00:34:49.460 | You try out, like, we have a plan together.

00:34:52.820 | And if something fails, better know now than later.

00:34:55.940 | - That's a good point.

00:34:57.820 | Yeah, that's something I think about.

00:34:59.380 | Someone told me once where they forced their spouse

00:35:02.100 | to do the books or numbers once a year,

00:35:05.100 | so that they have to exercise their way

00:35:08.220 | through the checkbook, the brokerage accounts, whatever.

00:35:11.660 | - That's not a bad idea at all.

00:35:16.820 | Probably something, that's a good idea, probably, yeah.

00:35:19.580 | Doug, go ahead.

00:35:23.260 | - I was going to, I guess, third,

00:35:25.740 | what the other previous two people said is training.

00:35:29.060 | And what sounds right, twice a year?

00:35:32.940 | Does that sound good to go through from start to finish,

00:35:35.380 | pretending like you're dead?

00:35:36.780 | But I think that's about right, twice a year.

00:35:40.380 | - Twice a, maybe once a year might be enough,

00:35:44.380 | but yeah, twice a year is good.

00:35:46.100 | Depends on how long it takes, I guess.

00:35:50.460 | Okay, we're going to go to the next slide.

00:35:57.220 | Okay, so this is a list of the information

00:36:00.540 | that's going to be helpful pretty quickly.

00:36:03.300 | There's some things you can wait on,

00:36:05.300 | but there's some things you want to do

00:36:09.500 | the first couple of weeks.

00:36:11.380 | So first of all, you want to have a list of people

00:36:13.380 | to call and contact.

00:36:14.820 | My parents have, a lot of this book is actually based

00:36:18.380 | on what my dad put together,

00:36:19.620 | and they have a whole list of people.

00:36:21.340 | I think that they have their email addresses

00:36:22.620 | and their phone numbers.

00:36:23.500 | I'm sure they would call everybody personally.

00:36:26.180 | But another way to do it would be to actually type up

00:36:30.300 | a list of emails and then mail that list

00:36:35.020 | to your spouse or whoever.

00:36:37.220 | And then they could use that at the time

00:36:38.780 | to either copy and paste individual emails

00:36:41.140 | or do a whole blind carbon copy

00:36:44.820 | where you just have to send that one in.

00:36:45.940 | It kind of depends on if you're good friends

00:36:48.420 | with that person.

00:36:49.260 | If your spouse or child who's taking over knows that person,

00:36:53.060 | they may want to write a little personal note,

00:36:55.060 | but if they don't, they may not want to have to do this

00:36:57.380 | a hundred times and send out a hundred different emails

00:37:00.180 | or phone calls, whatever you want to do.

00:37:02.300 | And as, Alan, you mentioned earlier in the chat,

00:37:04.900 | you could pre-write your obituary.

00:37:07.540 | And my mom did this, and the reason she did this,

00:37:10.060 | she's like, you're not going to know,

00:37:12.260 | like my dad had military service.

00:37:14.060 | You're not going to know the dates

00:37:15.500 | and when he went to Korea and this and that,

00:37:17.460 | and what his unit was.

00:37:20.540 | I'm not going to know that information.

00:37:22.420 | So she kind of put together,

00:37:24.100 | and she had to make sure all the relatives' names

00:37:26.220 | were listed correctly with the spouses

00:37:27.940 | and made sure all the,

00:37:30.820 | a lot of times you list like your educational information,

00:37:33.380 | military information,

00:37:34.460 | and a lot of times you don't know details

00:37:36.340 | of that kind of thing.

00:37:37.180 | So you may not want to write up the entire obituary

00:37:40.660 | and say how great of a person you were,

00:37:42.740 | but you may want to list some details

00:37:45.300 | that the other people may not know.

00:37:48.660 | So you definitely want to list your wishes

00:37:50.660 | as far as burial, cremation, church service,

00:37:53.940 | who you want to be, your officiant, favorite hymns,

00:37:56.700 | that kind of thing,

00:37:57.700 | whether or not you have a prepaid funeral policy,

00:38:00.660 | whether or not you have a,

00:38:02.020 | either you already have a cemetery plus purchase,

00:38:03.980 | or you have a preference for this particular cemetery,

00:38:07.820 | this particular kind of headstone,

00:38:09.060 | all that kind of information is very useful, of course.

00:38:11.820 | You may want to collect military benefits as far as,

00:38:16.700 | and I'm not real familiar with this,

00:38:18.260 | but my dad, he was a Korean war veteran.

00:38:20.900 | He said, there's some kind of special medallion

00:38:22.700 | you can order, or you get it for free,

00:38:24.900 | and you put it right on your headstone.

00:38:26.580 | So I knew something about that.

00:38:29.140 | And you may be eligible to be buried in,

00:38:31.700 | what is it called?

00:38:33.020 | VA National Cemetery, is it in Arlington, or?

00:38:36.260 | - Yeah, Carol, my father-in-law passed away.

00:38:39.020 | He was a Korean veteran also,

00:38:41.300 | and he chose and advanced the military ceremony.

00:38:46.300 | So they had an honor guard.

00:38:47.700 | It was really nice, really, really nice.

00:38:50.180 | And he was interned, although he was cremated,

00:38:53.140 | they have both in the ground cremation,

00:38:56.060 | and above ground, and in these columbariums.

00:38:59.100 | It was just beautiful ceremony.

00:39:00.780 | He would have really liked it.

00:39:02.220 | The other thing we did, which I recommend is,

00:39:05.260 | we wrote a personal obituary

00:39:07.740 | that we had people fill in paragraphs.

00:39:09.620 | This was not for the newspaper.

00:39:11.380 | This was for internal friends and family,

00:39:13.380 | and it included funny stories, and vulgarities,

00:39:16.460 | and all sorts of things

00:39:17.300 | that you could never put in the newspaper.

00:39:18.540 | You didn't want in the newspaper.

00:39:19.780 | So it was actually two versions of the obituary.

00:39:22.620 | - Nice, nice, very nice.

00:39:25.100 | So one of the things you probably wanna do right away

00:39:27.860 | is inform and collect on the life insurance,

00:39:30.580 | 'cause that's usually pretty quick.

00:39:32.060 | From what I hear, you can get that pretty quickly,

00:39:34.140 | assuming, of course, you're gonna document later

00:39:36.140 | who all the beneficiaries are,

00:39:37.580 | and what the name of the company is, and that kind of thing.

00:39:40.940 | Inform Social Security.

00:39:41.860 | Of course, the funeral director would do that.

00:39:43.980 | If there's any pension, you wanna inform them.

00:39:47.980 | And from what I understand,

00:39:49.220 | if Social Security will take back,

00:39:52.020 | 'cause they always pay on the first of the month,

00:39:53.300 | and if you say if you died on the second,

00:39:54.580 | they'll take it back, is from what I understand.

00:39:57.380 | So just be prepared for that.

00:39:59.420 | You wanna obtain multiple death certificates.

00:40:01.380 | From what I understand, 12 or even 20 is not too many,

00:40:04.540 | because a lot of places are gonna want originals.

00:40:06.980 | And you don't have to do this right away, usually,

00:40:11.220 | but you may wanna consider going ahead

00:40:13.060 | and contact a probate attorney and start the process.

00:40:15.540 | There are certain deadlines.

00:40:17.620 | For example, nine months,

00:40:19.500 | if you wanna elect the estate tax portability.

00:40:21.860 | From what I understand,

00:40:22.700 | there's a nine-month deadline after the death to do that.

00:40:26.340 | And then also, if you don't already,

00:40:28.540 | if you're not the spouse

00:40:29.380 | and you don't have access to the house and things like that,

00:40:32.580 | you probably wanna go ahead

00:40:34.340 | and start that process pretty soon.

00:40:36.700 | You also wanna transfer and collect any accounts

00:40:41.100 | that the surviving spouse was named beneficiary of,

00:40:43.860 | for example, IRAs, 401(k)s.

00:40:46.740 | And I don't know enough to know the details,

00:40:49.700 | but I know there's a certain way you have to title the IRA

00:40:54.180 | to be able to have the full benefits

00:40:56.460 | of extending the RMDs and things like that.

00:40:59.900 | And I did put a link in there

00:41:01.220 | on how to title the IRA as you transfer it over.

00:41:05.500 | And then also,

00:41:06.340 | there are certain required minimum distribution deadlines

00:41:08.700 | that even after a person dies,

00:41:10.100 | from what I understand,

00:41:10.940 | you have to meet those or you have to pay.

00:41:12.300 | It's like a 50% penalty.

00:41:14.700 | It's a very large penalty

00:41:15.740 | if you don't take out the RMDs when you're supposed to,

00:41:17.540 | I think, even after somebody dies.

00:41:19.660 | Of course, one big thing

00:41:21.660 | is you wanna continue to pay monthly bills.

00:41:23.300 | And we're gonna have a whole page on that later.

00:41:25.700 | And then these are kind of things

00:41:28.020 | where now we're getting to be a little bit later

00:41:29.580 | where after the accounts have been transferred,

00:41:31.580 | you wanna check on,

00:41:33.780 | you're gonna have to name beneficiaries

00:41:35.100 | 'cause it's gonna be in your name now

00:41:36.380 | and you wanna double check all your beneficiaries.

00:41:39.220 | You're gonna wanna notify credit bureaus

00:41:41.220 | and department of motor vehicles

00:41:43.140 | so they know your driver's license

00:41:45.020 | so you don't have identity theft.

00:41:46.300 | Even after your death, you can have identity theft.

00:41:48.980 | Then the surviving spouse

00:41:52.420 | is gonna wanna check their existing state plan documents.

00:41:54.380 | Sometimes it'll still be okay

00:41:55.580 | if you took care the first time

00:41:57.580 | to name all the contingent beneficiaries.

00:42:00.180 | It still may be perfectly fine

00:42:01.700 | as long as you have,

00:42:02.540 | like usually people put their spouse

00:42:03.980 | and they put one of their children as contingents

00:42:07.940 | for like the power of attorney and things like that.

00:42:09.220 | So that may be perfectly fine.

00:42:10.820 | You may not have to redo that,

00:42:11.780 | but you just wanna check on that.

00:42:13.780 | And if you've left emergency contact information,

00:42:16.020 | for example, with doctors,

00:42:17.020 | you'd wanna get that changed.

00:42:18.780 | And then you also wanna think about

00:42:20.980 | your spouse may wanna attend a group support group.

00:42:24.580 | If you happen to know of any,

00:42:26.300 | you may wanna go ahead

00:42:27.140 | and have that contact information handy for them.

00:42:29.580 | Does anybody have anything they wanna add?

00:42:33.780 | Jim, is your hand still...

00:42:35.740 | Your hand's up, Jim.

00:42:36.740 | - Sorry.

00:42:38.780 | - Okay.

00:42:40.300 | Lady Geek.

00:42:41.380 | - Oh, interesting.

00:42:42.740 | Brings back a memory of some interesting experience.

00:42:45.820 | Well, first, when you say death certificate,

00:42:50.580 | the only original death certificate

00:42:52.620 | is the one filled out by the medical person

00:42:55.300 | at the time of death.

00:42:58.740 | Everything else is a copy of a death certificate.

00:43:01.860 | I had a problem where my father passed away

00:43:04.180 | before a medical person could...

00:43:06.420 | He was at home,

00:43:08.100 | but the hospice nurse didn't arrive in time.

00:43:10.580 | So he passed away.

00:43:11.580 | And she says, "I can't sign off on the certificate

00:43:14.340 | because I wasn't there when he passed."

00:43:15.980 | I ended up calling Philadelphia 911,

00:43:18.740 | explained the situation to have a EMT guy

00:43:23.100 | sign a death certificate.

00:43:24.820 | And then he called the medical examiner

00:43:27.740 | 'cause they didn't know.

00:43:28.580 | There's police coming to the house.

00:43:30.060 | Did this guy...

00:43:30.900 | Was there a crime involved?

00:43:31.940 | So I actually had a copy of the doctor's report

00:43:35.620 | a few days ago saying he was in terminal stages.

00:43:38.260 | So to say everything...

00:43:40.260 | So when you say you get a copy of a death certificate,

00:43:42.980 | they say there's one original filled out

00:43:44.700 | by the attending physician or medical person.

00:43:46.620 | They're not present.

00:43:47.780 | The funeral home will not accept the body.

00:43:50.420 | I had to wait two hours and get all this stuff

00:43:52.580 | straightened out with the Philadelphia EMTs

00:43:54.620 | before they would even come and take the body.

00:43:56.980 | So if somebody passes,

00:44:00.060 | make sure they're in a medical facility.

00:44:02.060 | But the other...

00:44:04.580 | Yeah, okay.

00:44:06.060 | The other thing was interesting.

00:44:08.260 | I don't know if anyone else would experience,

00:44:09.980 | but only a bogal head would do this.

00:44:12.660 | When my husband passed,

00:44:14.220 | well, I said, I made arrangements for cremation

00:44:18.740 | for his funeral while he was in the nursing home.

00:44:20.740 | We made arrangements.

00:44:22.060 | The guy was an insurance agent.

00:44:23.900 | He sold me a funeral insurance policy.

00:44:27.260 | Like I said before, they can increase the costs

00:44:30.260 | and you have to pay for it.

00:44:31.180 | So I started talking to him, "Are you an agent?"

00:44:33.620 | "Oh yeah, you're getting a commission for this?"

00:44:35.100 | "Yeah, it's only like 30 bucks."

00:44:36.460 | "Okay."

00:44:37.300 | So I signed it and I checked my account online.

00:44:39.700 | My husband passes.

00:44:41.100 | I look at the value of the policy.

00:44:44.300 | It increased $60.

00:44:46.300 | The value of that.

00:44:47.140 | So he's gonna get paid $60 more than what he charged me.

00:44:50.380 | So I go in, I go in with the policy copy

00:44:55.180 | and I needed some death certificates.

00:44:56.940 | I horse traded.

00:44:58.660 | I showed him the policy and said,

00:44:59.820 | "Yeah, you know, your policy is like $60 more now.

00:45:03.060 | Can I have it in cash?"

00:45:05.300 | So I negotiated with the guy

00:45:07.380 | to get three copies of the death certificate,

00:45:09.340 | the prices are set by the state in Pennsylvania.

00:45:11.540 | It's $20 per copy.

00:45:13.420 | So I got, in exchange for that,

00:45:15.420 | I basically negotiated three free death certificates

00:45:20.100 | because of the life insurance policies.

00:45:21.860 | I just felt I got something out.

00:45:23.820 | I just had fun in negotiating at your husband's death,

00:45:26.740 | but it was just bugging me that because of the insurance.

00:45:30.820 | So I just really-

00:45:32.220 | - How many do you typically need?

00:45:33.740 | How many did you end up using and do you need?

00:45:36.180 | - Oh, that's nothing.

00:45:37.140 | My husband was also an army vet during Vietnam and stuff,

00:45:40.500 | but there actually is a VA cemetery

00:45:43.140 | within commuting distance from our location,

00:45:46.180 | but we chose cremation.

00:45:49.780 | I could have opted for a free VA funeral and burial,

00:45:52.420 | but we didn't go that route.

00:45:53.980 | I usually said like 10,

00:45:55.540 | and also the VA will supply three copies

00:45:58.260 | of the death certificate by the by.

00:46:00.820 | So they said, "How many will they give you?"

00:46:03.580 | He said, "20."

00:46:04.420 | He said, "Give me 10."

00:46:06.020 | So I still have a few extras.

00:46:09.060 | So I'd say, but we had no complications,

00:46:12.140 | but I thought 10 was a minimum number.

00:46:15.180 | And half the time they just wanted photocopies anyway,

00:46:18.500 | like Vanguard or whoever else I was doing it with.

00:46:21.740 | Oh, and social security, they gave it back to me.

00:46:24.660 | Yeah, also a file for the social security death benefit

00:46:27.020 | of 255, $255.

00:46:29.420 | It's something.

00:46:32.020 | So, okay, that's why I just wanted to relay

00:46:34.140 | that interesting story that, yes, I'm a bogey head,

00:46:36.700 | and I negotiated at my husband's death

00:46:38.660 | over an insurance policy.

00:46:40.340 | - Okay, thank you, Keith.

00:46:42.620 | Okay, PJ, go ahead.

00:46:44.700 | - Yeah, I had a recent experience

00:46:48.100 | after my mother passed.

00:46:50.900 | The beneficiary IRA was held at Franklin Templeton.

00:46:57.180 | And then the end of 20,

00:47:00.100 | I moved it to other ones at Fidelity,

00:47:03.260 | but somehow the RMD was forgotten

00:47:07.980 | as part of the going over.

00:47:10.060 | And then it wasn't recognized until a week ago

00:47:13.980 | when I was doing my taxes that I didn't have an RMD.

00:47:17.700 | So I wound up having to go through three people at Fidelity,

00:47:20.340 | and they actually have a group that does this.

00:47:23.260 | And it all got worked out,

00:47:26.060 | and the penalty is 50% of the tax.

00:47:30.940 | But there is a,

00:47:32.940 | you can request a waiver of the tax

00:47:37.260 | and have to provide a letter of a reasonable cause.

00:47:42.300 | And mine was that it got transferred and got missed.

00:47:45.820 | This was the first year that Fidelity had it.

00:47:48.020 | And it got, you know, I called them on Thursday night.

00:47:51.500 | I talked to the retirement specialist Friday,

00:47:56.180 | and it was executed on Monday.

00:47:59.380 | And now I just had to draft a letter

00:48:01.740 | to include with my income tax submission this year.

00:48:05.820 | So even though it was all done right,

00:48:09.580 | it got screwed up when you tried to consolidate

00:48:12.500 | into everything at Fidelity.

00:48:15.140 | - Okay, thank you.

00:48:18.060 | Jim, your hand's up.

00:48:20.420 | - I just wanted to point out on the VA stuff,

00:48:22.220 | one more thing is,

00:48:23.420 | I know somebody who interned at Cremation Remains

00:48:26.900 | or Cremate, I forget what they call it.

00:48:29.260 | Cremains, I think they call it.

00:48:31.500 | Five years or 10 years after the death of the person.

00:48:34.100 | So the other thing that they do is they provide the wife

00:48:38.340 | or a husband or partner can also do that.

00:48:40.660 | You'd have to find out from them,

00:48:42.300 | but they'll put two names on the headstone.

00:48:44.500 | So the person who served will be on the front,

00:48:47.100 | it'll say, you know, Korean War,

00:48:48.940 | and on the back could be the spouse.

00:48:50.740 | - Good to know, good to know.

00:48:54.020 | Joel?

00:48:56.900 | Do you have your hand up?

00:48:58.140 | - Yeah, boy, I just had a brain thing.

00:49:00.500 | I'm trying to remember what I was going to say.

00:49:02.540 | - You want me to call on Lady Deacon

00:49:03.660 | and then you can go next?

00:49:04.500 | - Yeah.

00:49:05.340 | - Okay, Lady, go ahead. - Please.

00:49:06.740 | - Okay, just from what Jim reminded me of,

00:49:09.980 | because my husband was a vet,

00:49:11.900 | he was entitled to a free urn and a free flag

00:49:15.020 | as part of the funeral director.

00:49:19.220 | And so he gave that to me.

00:49:21.220 | I mean, the urn, he said it was worth $300.

00:49:23.700 | Okay, with nice wooden urn.

00:49:25.460 | I did something else with the ashes,

00:49:26.860 | but they were scattered elsewhere.

00:49:29.380 | But yeah, I sound like I'm making this fun,

00:49:32.100 | but it was a horrible experience to go through.

00:49:34.620 | And when you're upset and angry,

00:49:36.540 | you tend to just be very vocal and just expressing yourself.

00:49:40.980 | So I say, yeah, it was a really bad time for me,

00:49:43.780 | but I guess just by negotiating with the guy,

00:49:46.860 | I was just kind of letting myself vent.

00:49:49.700 | And also, by the way, in hospice,

00:49:51.700 | you do have a bereavement counseling.

00:49:53.380 | I did go through that process

00:49:54.580 | and that was actually very, very helpful.

00:49:56.260 | So if anyone is on a hospice,

00:49:58.220 | please take them up their offer of bereavement counseling.

00:50:03.980 | And that can be done while the person is alive

00:50:06.420 | because it's a process that's about to happen.

00:50:08.420 | So please take advantage of that.

00:50:09.940 | It is free, supplied by the hospice

00:50:12.380 | and for a period of 13 months after the death

00:50:14.620 | for close family members.

00:50:17.620 | So, okay.

00:50:18.460 | - Okay, very good, thank you.

00:50:19.860 | Oh, good to know.

00:50:20.700 | Joel, did you remember what you were gonna say?

00:50:22.540 | - I did, I did.

00:50:23.740 | Sorry about that.

00:50:24.980 | So as part of the estate plan,

00:50:27.940 | what I do is I keep a spreadsheet

00:50:31.260 | that's sort of tied to my automatic updates

00:50:35.500 | that splits out every account by the beneficiaries.

00:50:39.980 | So they can easily, you know,

00:50:41.740 | whoever manages my estate, my wife or daughter,

00:50:45.820 | you know, can easily sort of see at this point in time,

00:50:49.620 | you know, Joe gets 10%, Frank gets seven,

00:50:54.260 | Ismerelda gets 20, charities get this.

00:50:58.260 | They can see a spreadsheet that's real time

00:51:01.460 | with all of that information.

00:51:03.180 | And then I also gave sort of instructions

00:51:06.740 | for each of the inheritors on how to assume the account.

00:51:11.220 | So like I would want my wife to make the IRA or her own,

00:51:17.780 | whereas my daughter is gonna have a 10 year stretch.

00:51:20.980 | And here's the suggested way of going out to get it,

00:51:25.980 | you know, 1/10th in the first year,

00:51:29.980 | 1/9th in the second year, 1/8th in the third year,

00:51:34.220 | and so on and so on.

00:51:36.500 | And I'm not sure if that's gonna be helpful or not,

00:51:39.460 | but I'm a little ADHD in terms of planning.

00:51:44.460 | It made me feel better.

00:51:47.260 | - Okay, very good, thank you.

00:51:49.900 | Keith.

00:51:51.340 | - I was just gonna add, you know,

00:51:53.500 | something to document for, you know,

00:51:56.500 | the person that survives if you pass is reoccurring charges

00:52:00.900 | that are either happening on your credit card

00:52:03.100 | or maybe being taken out of your checking account.

00:52:06.300 | We had several of those when we went through it

00:52:10.500 | with my mom and dad and it was hard to get those turned off.

00:52:14.260 | They wouldn't accept that, you know,

00:52:16.940 | we were calling to say they needed to be turned off,

00:52:19.420 | they needed death certificates sent to them.

00:52:22.020 | Sometimes if it takes a while,

00:52:23.420 | you can be charged for something that's no longer necessary.

00:52:27.300 | So if you're putting together a list of things

00:52:30.220 | for your surviving spouse or whoever,

00:52:33.860 | beneficiary to take care of, you know,

00:52:36.340 | that's something that they wanna understand

00:52:39.980 | what needs to be turned off, you know,

00:52:43.060 | immediately after your passing

00:52:45.020 | and how they're able to do that.

00:52:46.500 | 'Cause that can be, you know,

00:52:47.980 | hundreds or thousands of dollars a month.

00:52:50.140 | It can be anything from Netflix to an antivirus program

00:52:54.900 | and anything in between that person that passed away

00:52:59.060 | was being charged for that's no longer needed.

00:53:01.980 | So you wanna make sure that you document those things

00:53:05.180 | so they're not sifting through your charge card

00:53:08.580 | looking for them

00:53:10.220 | and also that they know how to turn them off.

00:53:12.780 | - Okay, great.

00:53:15.980 | Doug?

00:53:16.820 | Oh, you're muted.

00:53:21.260 | - I don't know if this is the right time

00:53:25.940 | to talk about this right now

00:53:27.740 | or if it's gonna come up later,

00:53:30.380 | but what do you do in the case of elderly parents

00:53:34.260 | who aren't doing any of this due diligence?

00:53:37.820 | I'm not sure they have any planning at all.

00:53:39.900 | And you know, they may not have that much longer.

00:53:44.020 | You're gonna be faced a big mess to clean up.

00:53:46.580 | Does anybody else have that problem?

00:53:48.260 | - Somebody, I don't know if it could have been you.

00:53:50.260 | Somebody submitted that as a comment on the RSVP

00:53:54.180 | and I don't have a slide for that.

00:53:55.460 | However, I did put in quite a few links

00:53:59.180 | on different articles, books, podcasts,

00:54:01.300 | and that kind of thing.

00:54:03.100 | So let's talk about that when we'll talk about that.

00:54:05.980 | If anybody has any suggestions, I don't personally,

00:54:08.140 | but when that slide comes up with the links,

00:54:11.180 | we'll talk about that.

00:54:12.220 | That's definitely an important thing to talk about.

00:54:14.460 | - Okay, thank you.

00:54:15.700 | - Sure.

00:54:17.140 | Okay, let's go to the next one.

00:54:19.100 | Let's see.

00:54:22.300 | Whoops.

00:54:23.620 | Okay, this is a real short one.

00:54:25.180 | Just a list of contact information for professionals.

00:54:29.060 | So while on the first slide,

00:54:30.380 | we had contact information for friends and family,

00:54:32.580 | that kind of thing to inform them.

00:54:34.020 | But this is people that you may have to work with,

00:54:36.780 | your surviving spouse may have to work with,

00:54:39.660 | probate attorney, the one that drafted the wills,

00:54:41.580 | and then it may be the same or a different attorney

00:54:44.340 | that you recommend.

00:54:45.380 | You may have one picked out

00:54:46.220 | that you want to probate the estate.

00:54:48.380 | And then any kind of other attorneys used,

00:54:51.180 | like if you have a real estate attorney,

00:54:52.580 | a business attorney, anything like that.

00:54:54.940 | If you do use a tax preparer or a CPA,

00:54:57.060 | you want to obviously have that contact information,

00:54:59.780 | financial advisor if you have one,

00:55:02.100 | or if you don't have one,

00:55:03.500 | but you want to have one listed

00:55:05.700 | for your surviving spouse if they feel they need one.

00:55:09.500 | And any kind of insurance agents.

00:55:11.220 | Is there anything I left off this list

00:55:12.540 | as far as contact information for professionals?

00:55:15.580 | Can anybody think?

00:55:17.580 | Keith?

00:55:19.060 | - I just wanted to add again,

00:55:21.100 | based on personal experience,

00:55:23.180 | my parents had worked with an estate attorney for many years

00:55:28.140 | and also had worked with a CPA for probably 20 to 25 years.

00:55:34.660 | Literally became a family friend.

00:55:36.980 | And when my mother passed and we had to sort everything out,

00:55:40.940 | we leaned on them pretty heavily for a number of things,

00:55:45.860 | whether it was documents that the attorney had in his files

00:55:50.860 | or the CPA that was able to help out with things

00:55:55.300 | because of the knowledge that they have.

00:55:57.020 | So just from my experience,

00:56:00.300 | that was a huge help and well worth the additional fees

00:56:04.060 | that we had to pay for their consulting

00:56:06.860 | or whatever you want to call it.

00:56:08.820 | I think it would have taken us probably twice as long

00:56:11.820 | to get through everything.

00:56:13.300 | And we might've made some,

00:56:15.220 | what could have been costly mistakes without that help.

00:56:20.220 | And that caused me to say that I wanted

00:56:23.700 | to have something similar

00:56:26.020 | 'cause I'm the one that handles the financing.

00:56:27.900 | If something happened to me,

00:56:28.980 | I want my wife to be able to have somebody to call to say,

00:56:32.380 | can you help me?

00:56:33.220 | I don't understand this between her

00:56:35.060 | and whoever is helping her to do this.

00:56:38.220 | So I think, although I know Bogleheads

00:56:40.980 | typically like to do everything themselves,

00:56:43.060 | they don't like to pay fees and expenses for other people

00:56:46.380 | when they can do it themselves.

00:56:48.380 | I will just say from my experience,

00:56:50.380 | it was very, very helpful and well worth the money

00:56:52.900 | to have these folks involved

00:56:55.180 | for a lot of complicated questions

00:56:58.340 | and help that would have taken us a lot longer.

00:57:02.380 | (mouse clicking)

00:57:04.540 | - Okay, great.

00:57:05.380 | Thank you, Keith.

00:57:06.420 | All right, let's go to the next slide.

00:57:09.380 | Okay, this is kind of a big topic.

00:57:14.700 | Of course you wanna list all your investment

00:57:18.180 | and financial accounts,

00:57:19.580 | because if you have more than just a couple,

00:57:22.820 | your spouse may not know where everything is,

00:57:25.620 | or of course, power of attorney, agent, or anything.

00:57:28.660 | And I'm gonna say a disclaimer,

00:57:31.380 | take care, do not perform any transactions after death

00:57:34.580 | without consulting an estate attorney.

00:57:36.540 | Like I said before, someone suggested to me once

00:57:41.140 | that you should pick a trusted relative or friend

00:57:44.820 | to kind of help your spouse

00:57:46.460 | in addition to like any of the professionals

00:57:49.980 | that your spouse may need.

00:57:51.900 | Sometimes they just want a point of first contact,

00:57:54.820 | and this could be like a trusted friend

00:57:56.700 | if they're just totally lost,

00:57:57.780 | like I don't even know what to do first,

00:57:59.260 | or I'm totally overwhelmed.

00:58:01.940 | You wanna, it's a good idea

00:58:03.220 | to have a trusted relative or friend picked out

00:58:05.460 | to kind of help your spouse with that.

00:58:08.700 | One thing that's good is to just have a printout

00:58:12.100 | of all your accounts, your net worth,

00:58:13.740 | just so that your spouse knows,

00:58:15.580 | oh, here, just get an overview

00:58:17.140 | of all your different accounts.

00:58:19.180 | Then of course you wanna list every single account,

00:58:22.060 | bank accounts, online banks,

00:58:23.780 | safe deposit box, whose name is on the box,

00:58:27.180 | which physical bank branch,

00:58:29.700 | where the key is, we've mentioned this earlier, the PIN.

00:58:34.460 | And also you may wanna kind of list what is in there.

00:58:36.940 | Do you have savings funds, car titles?

00:58:39.860 | So that person knows, oh, if I wanna get the car title,

00:58:42.220 | it's in the safe deposit box.

00:58:43.620 | Of course you wanna list all your investment

00:58:45.860 | brokerage accounts.

00:58:46.900 | And it's not a bad idea to print out maybe once a year,

00:58:50.020 | just the recent statement,

00:58:51.140 | we'll have all the list of the assets

00:58:53.540 | and the contact information for the institution on there.

00:58:56.860 | Of course, all your retirement accounts.

00:58:59.420 | IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401Ks.

00:59:01.660 | If you have an HSA, list of savings bonds.

00:59:04.460 | Some people may have savings bonds, paper.

00:59:06.220 | I know I have paper bonds and a treasury debt account,

00:59:09.060 | which of course is very hard to get into.

00:59:13.300 | People can't even get into their own accounts,

00:59:14.900 | much less somebody else's, right?

00:59:17.380 | Pension, if you have any college accounts,

00:59:19.780 | 529s, Coverdells.

00:59:21.580 | Listing real estate, of course your spouse is gonna know,

00:59:25.060 | but just, you may wanna have a copy

00:59:26.820 | of the deed and the mortgage.

00:59:28.260 | Your primary home, a second home,

00:59:29.820 | rental homes, land, mineral leases.

00:59:33.540 | You may wanna actually list.

00:59:36.140 | And if you don't have a mortgage, you may wanna list,

00:59:39.500 | I think I have this on the other side,

00:59:40.420 | but you may wanna list that

00:59:42.020 | because you may assume there's a mortgage on all of it,

00:59:44.060 | trying to find it.

00:59:44.900 | Oh, but it's paid off.

00:59:45.740 | So you may just make a note if it's paid off.

00:59:48.540 | If you own a business, I don't know anything about this,

00:59:50.740 | but you might have certain business documents

00:59:54.500 | that you may wanna include information there.

00:59:58.420 | And these are some kind of newer things,

01:00:00.340 | digital wallet services that have a balance.

01:00:02.500 | I mean, you could have $500 in your PayPal account,

01:00:05.100 | Venmo, Cash App, that kind of thing.

01:00:07.020 | I know nothing about this, but cryptocurrency,

01:00:10.380 | you may have a cryptocurrency wallet somewhere

01:00:12.540 | that has a lot of money in it.

01:00:14.020 | Like I said, you could maybe print out a statement

01:00:19.340 | or at least download it to a place in your computer

01:00:23.780 | that's referenced statements or at least where they are

01:00:26.540 | so they have a general idea what's in the...

01:00:29.180 | Oh, did I accidentally...

01:00:30.460 | And there's a reference to a thread later,

01:00:35.980 | or I think maybe it's a Wiki page

01:00:37.420 | or a thread investment policy statement,

01:00:39.740 | just kind of like a rationale.

01:00:41.980 | This is our asset allocation.

01:00:44.620 | We've got 60% of stocks and 40%.

01:00:47.020 | And then you may wanna kind of explain why

01:00:49.980 | so that when your spouse, say for example,

01:00:52.860 | they may employ a financial advisor,

01:00:55.420 | this would be a good thing to have.

01:00:56.380 | We've always, we've done it this way

01:00:57.940 | and this has worked for us.

01:00:59.940 | And then maybe you're planning

01:01:00.980 | to change your asset allocation as you got older,

01:01:03.500 | that kind of thing, just your rationale,

01:01:05.780 | how you've been doing your withdrawals,

01:01:07.300 | your withdrawal policy, that kind of thing.

01:01:09.460 | Let's see.

01:01:12.620 | And then location on your...

01:01:15.620 | Any location on your computer

01:01:17.220 | of files that might be helpful.

01:01:18.620 | You may have, like I have a file

01:01:21.940 | where I have all my dividends

01:01:23.660 | that are coming in from different places.

01:01:25.580 | I have every quarter, I have a list of dividends

01:01:28.460 | and that way your spouse knows,

01:01:29.580 | oh, I'm gonna expect a dividend in a month

01:01:31.860 | and that's gonna be helpful for me

01:01:33.340 | to have that cashflow, that kind of thing.

01:01:34.740 | Just any kind of spreadsheets you have,

01:01:36.340 | you may have estimated tax spreadsheets,

01:01:39.980 | network statement, something,

01:01:41.420 | just put the location of the file on there

01:01:44.860 | that might be helpful to them later on.

01:01:47.580 | Joel, do you have input on this side?

01:01:50.500 | - Yeah, we did a Wiki called a retirement policy statement

01:01:55.340 | that kind of takes it one level

01:01:56.780 | above an investment policy statement

01:01:58.660 | that kind of describes how retirement's supposed to work

01:02:02.660 | and what the goals were and how the money flows,

01:02:06.740 | how you get paid every month.

01:02:09.340 | That might be a useful thing.

01:02:12.300 | - Perfect, yeah, that's the kind of thing

01:02:13.580 | that the surviving spouse would wanna take to the,

01:02:15.700 | if they decided to hire a financial advisor,

01:02:17.340 | that's exactly the kind of information

01:02:19.180 | that would be very helpful for that kind of purpose, so.

01:02:24.460 | Anything else?

01:02:27.540 | This is a pretty important,

01:02:29.020 | as far as, you know, it's so easy to miss a little account

01:02:33.500 | if you don't document all of them.

01:02:35.580 | You know, your spouse very well may not know

01:02:37.700 | and then you may never get anything in the mail

01:02:39.540 | if you're on a paperless system.

01:02:42.900 | It may be going to some email somewhere

01:02:44.580 | and they may never know.

01:02:46.780 | Even if you may have your tax statements

01:02:48.220 | going to paperless,

01:02:49.780 | you may never get anything in the mail.

01:02:51.300 | So kind of important to document every single account,

01:02:54.980 | even if it's even a small,

01:02:57.420 | you know, a couple of hundred dollars or whatever.

01:03:01.100 | Joan, did you have, another comment is your hands,

01:03:03.020 | my hand may still be up.

01:03:05.140 | Lady Geek, go ahead.

01:03:06.500 | - Just one thing, financial mortgage and also car title.

01:03:12.140 | Do you have a car title, let's say, or a car loan?

01:03:16.340 | - Right, yeah, I did not mention car loans.

01:03:19.620 | That's a good point.

01:03:20.820 | Yeah, you definitely want to list debts as well as,

01:03:24.180 | I think I have mortgage is in the bill.

01:03:26.340 | There's a whole section on bills,

01:03:27.500 | but I didn't actually put car loans, but the mortgages.

01:03:30.460 | - Yeah, actually, if you lose a car title,

01:03:32.580 | a notary will get you a replacement.

01:03:35.100 | So it's easy to find.

01:03:37.620 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:03:39.340 | Okay, let's go to the next slide.

01:03:41.460 | Okay, you want to document, of course,

01:03:44.340 | all your insurance information, you know,

01:03:46.900 | list all the types of policies you have,

01:03:48.540 | whether it be homeowner's umbrella,

01:03:52.260 | you may have a boat policy, of course, auto.

01:03:56.100 | You may have several different life insurance.

01:03:57.580 | You may have one from your employer.

01:04:00.540 | Hopefully you have one,

01:04:01.660 | or if you had one at the time when you were younger,

01:04:03.700 | you may not need insurance,

01:04:04.740 | your life insurance when you're older.

01:04:07.380 | One outside of your employer.

01:04:08.700 | So you may have two or more.

01:04:11.140 | You may have long-term disability, long-term care,

01:04:13.740 | several different types of medical, dental,

01:04:17.140 | Medicaid, Medicaid supplement, prescription,

01:04:19.180 | all those kinds of policies.

01:04:21.420 | Annuities, I guess, count as insurance.

01:04:24.180 | And of course, prepaid funeral insurance.

01:04:25.980 | So you just want to list what types of policies you have.

01:04:28.940 | What's the insurance company, agent name,

01:04:30.740 | contact information, if you have that.

01:04:32.620 | Dollar amount on the policy, if there's, you know,

01:04:35.500 | for life insurance, that type of thing.

01:04:36.780 | Of course, who the beneficiaries are is important

01:04:39.340 | for life insurance, that type of thing.

01:04:41.900 | Gauri, go ahead.

01:04:43.700 | - Thanks.

01:04:44.540 | I have nothing useful to say,

01:04:45.780 | but I wanted to share a humorous quote from Charlie Munger,

01:04:49.460 | which is, "All I want to know is where I'm going to go,

01:04:52.740 | where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there."

01:04:56.300 | (laughing)

01:04:58.340 | - That's very funny.

01:04:59.340 | Doug, go ahead.

01:05:02.900 | - Well, I think part of the final instructions

01:05:05.860 | ought to be to have the surviving person

01:05:08.700 | log into your email account

01:05:11.180 | at least once a week after you're dead.

01:05:13.300 | - Good point.

01:05:15.180 | You're going to have stuff for the next year, probably,

01:05:17.860 | once a week for the next year,

01:05:19.140 | 'cause you're going to have stuff coming there,

01:05:20.980 | you know, regarding insurance and who knows what else,

01:05:24.580 | brokerage information.

01:05:26.100 | - That's a very good point.

01:05:27.860 | And if you don't log in, eventually, after like six months,

01:05:30.340 | they could actually delete the whole account

01:05:32.500 | if you don't log in.

01:05:33.420 | - Yeah, that would be really bad, right.

01:05:35.660 | - To log in periodically.

01:05:37.340 | It's kind of the same thing,

01:05:40.180 | like you're getting your mail,

01:05:41.820 | but nowadays, a lot of times you don't get mail,

01:05:43.660 | so, you know, you got to check in the email

01:05:45.380 | because there could be some very important, you know,

01:05:48.380 | tax forms or all kinds of things coming into the email.

01:05:51.580 | Lady Geek.

01:05:53.020 | - Okay, back to bank accounts.

01:05:57.140 | If while the person is still alive

01:06:00.060 | and you have a joint account and the person passes,

01:06:03.460 | do not close that account.

01:06:05.500 | It depends on the bank.

01:06:06.860 | Each bank follows the uniform commercial code for the state

01:06:09.820 | and it's up to the bank to decide,

01:06:11.340 | but you can deposit checks made to your deceased spouse

01:06:15.860 | if your name is on that account, it is legal.

01:06:19.980 | And the way you endorse the check is for deposit only.

01:06:23.620 | That is a legal endorsement.

01:06:24.900 | You do not have to,

01:06:26.020 | you never have to sign a check, actually,

01:06:27.740 | unless you want to cash it.

01:06:29.220 | For deposit only is a legal endorsement.

01:06:31.500 | So if they make an account, like once a year,

01:06:35.300 | I've been getting a couple dollar checks

01:06:37.500 | because my husband's had something that spits out a dividend

01:06:40.460 | like for a couple of dollars and I can't kill the thing.

01:06:43.860 | I can't get rid of it.

01:06:45.420 | That's another story where I have to file probate.

01:06:47.460 | I didn't file probate in this one County

01:06:49.380 | in Western Pennsylvania for some royalty thing.

01:06:52.420 | And they have to have the file in that County.

01:06:54.300 | It ain't worth it.

01:06:55.380 | So, and at least below the amount that he has to pay taxes,

01:06:59.620 | it's like a couple bucks.

01:07:01.060 | But the thing is, it comes in his name.

01:07:03.540 | I say for deposit only, it goes into my joint account

01:07:06.620 | and it's his income.

01:07:09.420 | So they say, but it depends on the bank,

01:07:11.700 | but that's why I have a local service bank.

01:07:14.420 | They do that for you.

01:07:15.860 | So that's very important.

01:07:17.220 | Otherwise you'd have to set up an estate checking account,

01:07:19.420 | which is a whole nother thing that I can go through.

01:07:21.860 | On life insurance.

01:07:23.500 | A lot of times you don't know if you're the beneficiary,

01:07:26.340 | you don't know if this person even had

01:07:27.780 | a life insurance policy.

01:07:29.020 | How the heck, believe it or not,

01:07:31.260 | insurance companies want to find beneficiaries.

01:07:33.980 | When a person passes, they really do want to try very hard

01:07:37.700 | and give you your money.

01:07:39.340 | So if I have a wiki,

01:07:40.700 | I put a link to the wiki's life insurance article

01:07:44.620 | in the chat.

01:07:45.500 | I did it earlier when I was talking about it,

01:07:47.900 | but in there, there's a way that you,

01:07:50.740 | there's a search that you can do for free,

01:07:54.020 | how to find if this person has a policy.

01:07:57.860 | It is well worth it to go through that process.

01:08:01.220 | Additionally, you don't know if that person

01:08:03.540 | has any unclaimed property.

01:08:04.860 | You know, they say unclaimed freight or whatever,

01:08:06.580 | but one thing that actually that policies,

01:08:10.180 | if the insurance company cannot find the beneficiary,

01:08:15.380 | that money goes to the state as unclaimed funds.

01:08:18.340 | So, and also other things go into there.

01:08:22.140 | Like somebody sent you a check like 20 years ago,

01:08:25.260 | they couldn't, it was never cashed.

01:08:27.380 | That goes to the state's unclaimed property.

01:08:29.380 | I've got a couple of bucks that way too.

01:08:31.180 | Oh, they're searching for my own name.

01:08:33.020 | So search unclaimed property for yourself first,

01:08:36.540 | and then for this person who's deceased next,

01:08:39.220 | and you might get hit.

01:08:41.260 | You never know, you never know.

01:08:43.780 | So I just wanna say something about life insurance.

01:08:46.060 | Okay, I'm done.

01:08:47.700 | - Very good, thank you.

01:08:48.540 | They're all good suggestions.

01:08:50.180 | Okay, let's see what the next slide is.

01:08:53.340 | Oh, okay, this is an important one, bills.

01:08:59.300 | Because of course, especially if you're living in a house,

01:09:01.340 | you definitely want your spouse

01:09:02.500 | to be able to keep the electricity on, that kind of thing.

01:09:06.500 | So you wanna know, let them know,

01:09:08.620 | obviously if they don't know where the checkbook is,

01:09:11.380 | and if you have a whole box of spare checks.

01:09:13.740 | I don't know what those are.

01:09:15.900 | You wanna list all the bills, how it's normally paid,

01:09:19.820 | whether or not you get something in the mail,

01:09:21.620 | or you get something from the email,

01:09:23.980 | which is usually the two ways that you pay bills,

01:09:27.860 | or sometimes they're automatically paid,

01:09:30.180 | but you usually do get an email notification

01:09:32.300 | of the amount or whatever.

01:09:34.100 | So the types of bills you wanna list,

01:09:36.500 | of course, credit cards, utility bills,

01:09:38.340 | insurance bills, mortgage.

01:09:40.300 | And if you wanna state if you don't have a mortgage,

01:09:42.740 | because somebody might not know,

01:09:45.260 | might be looking for your mortgage when you don't have one,

01:09:47.820 | property tax, cell phone service, cable streaming services,

01:09:52.180 | digital subscriptions, home security, fitness center, gym,

01:09:56.580 | any other online services.

01:09:58.340 | And there are some that you would wanna,

01:10:02.860 | you can let your spouse decide,

01:10:04.140 | but if you were into genealogy

01:10:06.220 | and you were spending all this money on ancestry.com,

01:10:08.620 | they might wanna cancel that right away,

01:10:11.820 | but they may not wanna cancel the cable service,

01:10:14.540 | the streaming, Netflix or whatever.

01:10:16.940 | So they can decide, but you should at least list them.

01:10:20.660 | And then if you've forgotten a few,

01:10:22.380 | they can, it'll probably show up on the monthly bill,

01:10:25.500 | and then it'd be like recurring expense.

01:10:27.820 | One thing I was looking at today was,

01:10:31.180 | if your spouse just seems overwhelmed

01:10:33.500 | with the thought of having to pay the bills

01:10:35.340 | and figure all this out,

01:10:36.180 | there is something called a daily money manager,

01:10:39.300 | and this is a nationally certified professional.

01:10:42.740 | I've never used one,

01:10:44.380 | but there's a website you can go to

01:10:47.940 | to find one in your area.

01:10:49.020 | And they are certified to be fiduciaries,

01:10:52.020 | and they have to have certain amount of education and exams.

01:10:55.980 | So that is an option.

01:10:57.580 | They basically can pay your bills,

01:10:59.020 | organize all your finances,

01:11:00.620 | get it together, your tax information, that kind of thing.

01:11:02.900 | If for some reason your spouse is just overwhelmed

01:11:06.340 | and just can't deal with that kind of a thing,

01:11:09.620 | so that's just an option that I wanted to mention.

01:11:13.180 | Okay, does anybody have any...

01:11:14.780 | Doug, go ahead.

01:11:16.140 | - Yeah, if you've been doing all this stuff,

01:11:19.020 | let's say for 30 years,

01:11:21.140 | and your spouse has not touched any of it,

01:11:24.900 | they will get overwhelmed.

01:11:27.620 | So I think this is something that you gotta take over

01:11:32.420 | if you're especially getting towards late in life.

01:11:35.220 | Anytime you touch something financial,

01:11:39.900 | drag 'em to the screen

01:11:42.020 | and have 'em sit in a chair with you

01:11:44.300 | while you've logged on to your bank account,

01:11:46.660 | and let's say you've gone to the online

01:11:48.780 | bill-paying area of it,

01:11:50.340 | and just show 'em every month maybe what you're doing.

01:11:55.940 | I mean, now would be the time to include them.

01:11:57.980 | If it's been 30 years and they don't care less

01:12:01.420 | about anything financial,

01:12:03.580 | if you're getting late in life,

01:12:04.700 | now would be the time to get 'em involved

01:12:08.100 | instead of just waiting 'til the very,

01:12:09.860 | until here's a set of instructions after you're dead,

01:12:13.580 | 'cause they're gonna get totally overwhelmed.

01:12:15.780 | - That's a very important point.

01:12:18.020 | I think you're definitely right.

01:12:19.060 | And I'm glad you mentioned bill pay,

01:12:20.420 | 'cause I don't use that myself,

01:12:21.500 | but I should have made a point.

01:12:23.220 | If you log in, I don't even know how you do that.

01:12:25.300 | You log into your bank account,

01:12:26.340 | and then a lot of times you can pay

01:12:28.220 | all your utility bills from there, right?

01:12:30.460 | I mean, I don't know exactly how that works,

01:12:31.580 | but I should have mentioned if you wanna mention that.

01:12:34.460 | - I never send any checks or anything in the mail anymore.

01:12:37.500 | It's all done online.

01:12:38.740 | - Very important, Doug.

01:12:40.660 | Thank you so much.

01:12:41.500 | Lady Geek.

01:12:42.340 | - Okay, you mentioned Netflix.

01:12:46.380 | Let me talk to you about Amazon.

01:12:49.220 | When my husband passed,

01:12:50.780 | he was actually the primary holder

01:12:53.780 | of a ton of Kindle books that we both jointly read.

01:12:58.780 | He shared a lot of stuff under the family sharing thing,

01:13:03.820 | and also some of the services and video stuff.

01:13:07.380 | Everything was under his account.

01:13:08.580 | I had my account too, and we just shared.

01:13:10.740 | So when he passed, I called up.

01:13:12.140 | I actually had to call Amazon.

01:13:14.100 | Believe it or not, it's possible to call Amazon.

01:13:16.660 | Explained, I said, "I have a death certificate,"

01:13:18.580 | everything.

01:13:19.420 | He said, "Lady, just keep the two accounts."

01:13:23.620 | I asked him to combine all the shared stuff.

01:13:26.740 | They cannot do it.

01:13:29.580 | Long story short, yeah, but no.

01:13:32.620 | So he said, "Look, it's okay.

01:13:34.980 | "You can log into his account with his stuff.

01:13:37.380 | "Just go ahead and do it.

01:13:40.580 | "We know it's a household.

01:13:42.260 | "Just stop there.

01:13:46.380 | "No, sorry, no."

01:13:47.820 | So I now have two.

01:13:49.140 | I actually have two Amazon accounts.

01:13:51.020 | What I did do was change his credit card to mine,

01:13:54.740 | just make it the same.

01:13:55.980 | And then when I re-upped Amazon Prime,

01:13:57.900 | I did it under my account.

01:13:59.540 | But the idea is Amazon cannot combine things

01:14:03.340 | that are shared.

01:14:04.180 | So just a little FYI, but it was okay to log in

01:14:09.140 | with his credentials because it's a family thing.

01:14:12.420 | - Joel?

01:14:14.860 | - I appreciate the tip on Amazon.

01:14:17.980 | That was news to me.

01:14:20.420 | My personal problem was genealogy.

01:14:23.260 | I'm glad you mentioned that.

01:14:25.260 | My wife was very into genealogy

01:14:27.620 | and she didn't leave any instructions

01:14:30.940 | on what I should do with all the research

01:14:35.220 | that she had done.

01:14:36.340 | And it haunts me today that she didn't.

01:14:41.620 | I closed the account.

01:14:44.220 | I have no idea what happened to any of it.

01:14:48.540 | But I had no interest.

01:14:52.260 | And I ended up with piles of finished English dictionaries

01:14:57.260 | and English to Dutch dictionaries

01:15:00.300 | and all sorts of weird stuff

01:15:02.580 | that genealogists would love,

01:15:06.580 | but it was just clutter to me.

01:15:10.500 | So this is one area where I kind of thought

01:15:12.700 | I failed her memory.

01:15:16.700 | If you're into an esoteric hobby like that,

01:15:21.700 | definitely arrange for somebody to take it over.

01:15:24.860 | - Good point, yeah.

01:15:28.260 | 'Cause sometimes there's a cousin or something like that

01:15:32.780 | that might be interested where,

01:15:34.740 | usually genealogy, you're either interested or you're not.

01:15:36.820 | So that's a good point that you should kind of think

01:15:40.100 | all that through ahead of time

01:15:41.900 | and maybe link up your tree with somebody else's

01:15:46.340 | so that all the information in your tree

01:15:48.660 | is at least out there somewhere,

01:15:49.940 | maybe something like that.

01:15:51.100 | So that's a good something to think about.

01:15:53.340 | All right, let's see what else we have.

01:15:57.900 | Okay, taxes.

01:15:58.980 | So the important thing is document

01:16:03.180 | how you've been filling it out.

01:16:04.500 | Are you using TurboTax, some of the other tax services?

01:16:07.660 | Do you fill it out by hand?

01:16:08.740 | Do you use a tax preparer?

01:16:09.580 | Which one, the contact information?

01:16:11.460 | And then where the past 10 years,

01:16:14.900 | I guess you only need three, but maybe 10 years are stored.

01:16:17.620 | Sometimes they may be paper files,

01:16:19.100 | they may be on your computer in a PDF

01:16:21.540 | that you've saved from TurboTax, that kind of thing.

01:16:23.420 | They may be with your tax preparer.

01:16:24.980 | So those could be important.

01:16:27.940 | Obviously you want to use,

01:16:28.980 | notify the tax preparer in the case of death,

01:16:30.820 | 'cause there may be some deadlines,

01:16:32.420 | like RMDs and that kind of thing.

01:16:34.780 | There is actually a deadline on preparing a tax return

01:16:39.660 | for the decedent, that kind of thing.

01:16:42.220 | Then there's also a couple other things

01:16:43.620 | that you may want to document

01:16:44.780 | that might be important.

01:16:46.020 | If there's a basis to your IRA,

01:16:48.140 | it's like say somebody who's been making

01:16:49.580 | a non-deductible IRA contribution for many years

01:16:52.340 | and never rolled over to a Roth for whatever reason,

01:16:54.820 | or converted to a Roth,

01:16:56.020 | that does carry over to the inherited IRA.

01:16:59.540 | So that is important to know, that will save you some money.

01:17:02.620 | If you have a gift tax history,

01:17:04.220 | if you've given money to your children

01:17:07.260 | or above the exemption, the 15,000

01:17:10.540 | or whatever it is per year,

01:17:11.980 | you would have supposed to have filed a form 709.

01:17:16.020 | And technically those are important

01:17:17.540 | because they get subtracted from your lifetime exemption

01:17:20.980 | if you go above the, of course now it's 11 million,

01:17:23.420 | but it could go back down someday.

01:17:24.980 | And a lot of bubbleheads could be going above that amount.

01:17:27.660 | So if you had filed a gift tax form in the past,

01:17:32.660 | it would actually be important to have those forms.

01:17:36.780 | If there's any charities you contribute regularly,

01:17:41.460 | especially if there's a case of a small charity

01:17:43.620 | that they're highly dependent on you

01:17:45.660 | and you would like to continue that

01:17:48.300 | as part of your legacy when you die,

01:17:50.100 | you can't force your spouse or your children

01:17:52.820 | or whatever to do that,

01:17:53.660 | but you could make a suggestion,

01:17:54.820 | I really wanna support this.

01:17:56.940 | Of course you can put it in your will too,

01:17:58.580 | but that's just something to think about

01:18:01.540 | if you wanna support any,

01:18:03.940 | continue to support charities after your death

01:18:06.180 | in ways other than your will.

01:18:09.140 | Also think about your HSA, if you have a large balance,

01:18:13.060 | if it's your spouse, obviously it just becomes theirs.

01:18:16.500 | See, I did try to look into this top.

01:18:22.940 | I actually spent a couple of hours

01:18:24.180 | trying to figure this out.

01:18:25.220 | And there was some information in the bubbleheads wiki

01:18:28.940 | that it's not quite clear

01:18:31.180 | if the spouse can reimburse themselves out of your HSA

01:18:34.780 | for expenses that you paid before your death.

01:18:37.500 | It's not quite clear, but it might be possible.

01:18:40.060 | So you may wanna have that information doc.

01:18:43.420 | Most people, if they haven't reimbursed from the HSA,

01:18:45.580 | they have a spreadsheet or something somewhere up.

01:18:47.580 | Here's all the expenses that were paid, but not reimbursed.

01:18:50.580 | So that's just something to think about.

01:18:54.780 | Is anything else?

01:18:56.060 | Keith, go ahead.

01:18:56.980 | - Yeah, I was just gonna mention a couple of things

01:19:00.140 | that you would wanna document

01:19:01.460 | if something were to happen to you.

01:19:02.860 | Are you making estimated tax payments quarterly?

01:19:05.980 | You want your surviving spouse or executive or whoever

01:19:10.980 | to know whether you've done that or not.

01:19:13.940 | And also keep in mind that you'll have a tax return

01:19:20.300 | that'll be due if you've gotten income through half the year

01:19:22.780 | and you pass away in July.

01:19:25.140 | So surviving spouse is gonna need money

01:19:27.580 | to be able to pay taxes for you,

01:19:30.340 | depending on how everything's done.

01:19:33.180 | We just went through this with our mother

01:19:35.900 | with taxes for 2021.

01:19:38.060 | So those are things that you wanna keep in mind

01:19:41.220 | that need to be documented

01:19:43.500 | so that surviving spouse or whoever

01:19:46.620 | is able to take care of that

01:19:47.900 | and knows kind of the up-to-date information.

01:19:50.340 | - Very important, Keith.

01:19:53.020 | Thank you so much 'cause I completely forgot

01:19:54.260 | about mentioning the estimated tax payments.

01:19:56.140 | That's very important because how would they know?

01:19:58.100 | They'd have to dig through all your bank statements.

01:20:00.460 | How would they know that they may not know

01:20:02.060 | that you've made a large,

01:20:03.180 | you could have made a $10,000 estimated tax payment

01:20:05.980 | and they wouldn't know unless you...

01:20:08.420 | So thank you for mentioning that, that's very important.

01:20:10.620 | Doug, go ahead.

01:20:11.740 | - Yeah, I'm thinking that like this in regard

01:20:14.940 | to estimated tax payments and any other TurboTax tactic,

01:20:19.340 | this whole slide here basically,

01:20:21.100 | and also investment policies, all of that.

01:20:24.420 | If your spouse has just not taken an interest in it,

01:20:27.940 | I don't think you can document all this.

01:20:29.540 | I think you've got to make a transition plan

01:20:32.580 | to a professional to take your place after you're dead

01:20:35.820 | and maybe talk to them about what's going on

01:20:40.940 | and give them this information along.

01:20:44.060 | Have a meeting with this professional

01:20:46.180 | along with your spouse with the plan

01:20:48.260 | that you'll transition to this other person

01:20:50.500 | after you're dead, the professional to take your place.

01:20:53.220 | - Very good point because a lot of us,

01:20:57.220 | like I always do the taxes and I've been,

01:20:59.060 | for some reason, I've always been interested in taxes.

01:21:03.300 | So if something in an article comes up on taxes,

01:21:05.860 | I'll read it.

01:21:06.700 | And so I've been just learning about this for 30 years.

01:21:09.420 | So it's hard to forget how overwhelmed somebody

01:21:13.220 | that knows nothing about it is gonna be when you,

01:21:16.620 | like they may not even know what some of this means,

01:21:18.860 | like what is the basis to write?

01:21:19.860 | Like, I don't even know what that means.

01:21:20.980 | I don't even know what, they may not even know.

01:21:23.260 | So they may be completely well.

01:21:24.700 | So I think it's a very good point that-

01:21:26.380 | - They're not gonna know.

01:21:27.380 | - And the reason they don't,

01:21:29.140 | they haven't been interested in it

01:21:30.780 | like you have been and I have been to kind of,

01:21:34.180 | you know, just out of interest.

01:21:35.540 | They don't care.

01:21:36.500 | They're not, they have other things they're interested in.

01:21:38.860 | So you're gonna have to get a professional

01:21:41.180 | to take your place, is my opinion.

01:21:43.220 | - That's a very good point.

01:21:45.700 | And I don't think it's a bad idea to,

01:21:48.300 | even if you don't use a tax preparer,

01:21:50.700 | maybe just line one up and maybe just pay

01:21:53.580 | for an hour of their time to have a meeting.

01:21:55.580 | And then just kind of, like you said,

01:21:57.500 | smooth the path to them taking over, you know.

01:22:02.780 | So that's definitely a good idea.

01:22:04.780 | Okay.

01:22:08.340 | Anything else on taxes?

01:22:11.100 | Nope.

01:22:15.700 | Okay.

01:22:16.540 | The last thing in your book is gonna be,

01:22:20.700 | anything important you wanna mention

01:22:23.940 | that your spouse may not be aware of

01:22:25.620 | about the house itself?

01:22:27.740 | You know, the names of like,

01:22:28.740 | who services the heating and air?

01:22:30.300 | What's the schedule?

01:22:31.220 | You need to have like,

01:22:32.140 | like we have every fall and spring they come

01:22:33.940 | and they service, we have a contract,

01:22:35.300 | they service the air conditioner and that kind of thing.

01:22:37.740 | You wanna know who does that.

01:22:40.300 | If you have any handymen, a lawn service,

01:22:42.580 | plumber that you like to use, house cleaner,

01:22:44.540 | that kind of thing.

01:22:45.380 | You wanna have their contact information.

01:22:47.340 | What kind of schedule you're on for lawn care,

01:22:50.540 | that kind of thing.

01:22:52.220 | Any special filter, you know,

01:22:53.740 | that kind of just,

01:22:54.580 | this isn't just examples of things

01:22:55.940 | that you might wanna mention,

01:22:57.020 | special filters that need to be changed,

01:22:58.580 | anything else kind of that wouldn't be obvious

01:23:01.540 | as far as maintenance on your house.

01:23:03.900 | And then also as far as contents of the house,

01:23:07.220 | and some of these things are not specifically financial,

01:23:09.820 | but since we're talking about all this stuff,

01:23:11.260 | it kind of goes, you know,

01:23:12.180 | goes in with all this kind of stuff.

01:23:14.060 | Location of valuable items,

01:23:15.420 | jewelry, coin collection, firearms, et cetera.

01:23:18.660 | And this is non-financial,

01:23:19.860 | but location of important family mementos

01:23:22.460 | or sentimental items, family photos.

01:23:25.940 | And nowadays, of course,

01:23:26.780 | they could be physical photos, digital photos on a computer,

01:23:29.420 | but they may not even be on your computer.

01:23:30.860 | They could be in the cloud.

01:23:32.780 | And these could potentially be important photos

01:23:35.780 | that, you know, some of your relatives, your kids,

01:23:38.220 | of course, your spouse is gonna want to know where they are.

01:23:40.780 | So you wanna document that.

01:23:42.340 | Then we have the whole category of social media.

01:23:45.540 | It's called the digital estate plan.

01:23:47.220 | A lot of the companies like Facebook

01:23:49.220 | will have something called memorialization settings

01:23:53.700 | where you could think about beforehand,

01:23:55.700 | you know, do you want your account just deleted, wiped out?

01:23:59.660 | Do you want it memorialized where, you know,

01:24:02.740 | it's stated that you passed away,

01:24:03.980 | but then it leaves your page open

01:24:05.780 | so people can make comments in that, you know,

01:24:08.060 | that kind of thing after you're passing.

01:24:10.060 | So you just kind of want to think about that

01:24:11.660 | and then see if, you know, Facebook,

01:24:13.580 | the other ones that you're on,

01:24:15.460 | what kind of settings they have

01:24:17.580 | that you could possibly, you know,

01:24:19.340 | fill some of that stuff beforehand and get it set up.

01:24:22.580 | Going back to the genealogy,

01:24:24.140 | you may want to just figure out

01:24:27.020 | what to do with that information.

01:24:29.060 | If there's another family member, if not your spouse,

01:24:31.740 | or maybe somehow merge your family trees

01:24:35.140 | in with somebody, one of your other relatives

01:24:36.740 | that you have a place to add

01:24:38.380 | on your portion of the family tree.

01:24:40.380 | And then of course, the whole category is pet information.

01:24:46.140 | If you have any preferences,

01:24:48.460 | if it's not, your spouse is not there to take your pet,

01:24:53.060 | who, you know, you might want to recommend

01:24:54.500 | almost like a guardian for your pet,

01:24:57.180 | if they have any special medical needs,

01:24:58.620 | you know, all that kind of information.

01:25:00.580 | PJ, do you have, you want to go ahead

01:25:03.460 | and share on this topic?

01:25:05.780 | - Yeah, on the prior page,

01:25:07.820 | I think we forgot to include,

01:25:10.780 | is if the estate has not finished with probate,

01:25:16.460 | you have to do annual tax return for the estate too,

01:25:20.500 | which, you know, it's another thorn in the side.

01:25:24.940 | I would, I always say is if you don't like somebody,

01:25:26.580 | make them the executor of your estate.

01:25:28.700 | They don't have anything prepared

01:25:31.660 | and let them figure out life.

01:25:33.260 | So-

01:25:35.020 | - Hopefully the estate attorney would be helpful,

01:25:37.860 | you know, would be helpful with that.

01:25:41.060 | And maybe even have a CPA lined up for that kind of thing

01:25:44.740 | if you don't already have one.

01:25:45.740 | So, but yeah, that is important.

01:25:46.820 | If it's open for more than a year,

01:25:48.300 | yeah, you would have to-

01:25:49.140 | - Well, yeah, and you have to go through

01:25:51.860 | which assets remain in a trust

01:25:55.820 | that goes to the successor trust

01:25:58.700 | versus the things that have to be

01:26:00.580 | into the person that died estate.

01:26:05.500 | And you don't want to spend $2,000 for an attorney

01:26:09.180 | for something that's worth 50 cents.

01:26:14.020 | - Okay, all right, thank you.

01:26:15.980 | Doug?

01:26:16.820 | - This valuables in slide 11 is important.

01:26:22.540 | In firearms, when my father passed away,

01:26:26.820 | he had a army issue 45 and a valuable German handgun

01:26:31.820 | called a Walther.

01:26:34.940 | They got through World War II.

01:26:36.820 | When he passed away, my brother and my mother decided

01:26:40.260 | they don't want that around the house.

01:26:41.460 | So they called up Leisure World Security

01:26:43.140 | to get rid of these firearms.

01:26:44.420 | So Leisure World Security came over and took them away.

01:26:47.580 | I found out later they're worth thousands of dollars.

01:26:50.420 | So you could lose thousands of dollars

01:26:55.020 | if you're not aware, if the person who's living

01:26:57.140 | is not aware that there's some valuables around the house.

01:27:00.020 | - And also there might be an issue,

01:27:04.140 | like I don't know anything about firearms,

01:27:05.660 | but there might be an issue where if it's registered

01:27:08.500 | to your name and you just give it to somebody else,

01:27:11.140 | it's still registered to somebody's name.

01:27:12.900 | And then if it's used in a crime,

01:27:14.300 | they could potentially, is that an issue

01:27:15.980 | where you want to make sure that it gets registered

01:27:17.620 | to the person that now has possession of it?

01:27:19.980 | Is that like an issue?

01:27:20.820 | - That's a good point.

01:27:21.940 | I always wondered what happens at home.

01:27:23.900 | - Miriam, go ahead.

01:27:28.260 | - I just wanted to say that home ownership is a lot of work.

01:27:34.420 | And I know we've lived in our home.

01:27:37.060 | We have a half acre of land

01:27:39.340 | and we've lived here for 28 years.

01:27:42.260 | And my husband still asks who are our lawn men,

01:27:46.140 | what are the names of our lawn men?

01:27:47.820 | So it is, your spouse, when you pass away,

01:27:52.420 | your spouse simply may not be able

01:27:54.300 | to take care of the house

01:27:56.060 | and may not realize how expensive it is

01:27:58.420 | to take care of the house.

01:28:00.260 | So it's nice to include them while you're still around

01:28:05.260 | as part of the family work,

01:28:09.820 | but it may be a big weight on them

01:28:14.820 | to take care of a big home.

01:28:19.060 | - Yeah.

01:28:21.300 | But even cleaning out, that's a big job.

01:28:27.220 | That's even probably even a big job in itself,

01:28:29.860 | either just selling the home or cleaning it out

01:28:31.980 | and getting it ready for sale.

01:28:32.820 | That's either way, it's gonna be a big job.

01:28:35.940 | - Decluttering all your stuff.

01:28:37.500 | - Yeah.

01:28:40.380 | - Okay, thank you, Miriam.

01:28:42.900 | Any last call for comments on this page?

01:28:47.780 | See how we're doing on time, we're doing fine.

01:28:50.940 | Okay, the last page.

01:28:54.060 | So that's the end of the,

01:28:55.700 | what we're gonna call the book.

01:28:58.140 | This is just a list of different,

01:29:02.780 | a lot of it, some of it's online discussions on boco heads.

01:29:07.100 | And a lot of this is stuff I just ran across

01:29:08.580 | when I was kind of trying to do a little bit of research

01:29:10.820 | and trying to make all my lists.

01:29:13.460 | And then when we post this slide show, it's a PDF.

01:29:19.180 | These links will be live where you can just click on them.

01:29:22.340 | You can't click on them right now, obviously,

01:29:24.060 | but when you get the, or maybe you can, can you?

01:29:26.940 | So when you get the slides, you can just click on these.

01:29:33.940 | So this was just mostly boco heads discussions,

01:29:36.940 | a couple of other articles that were along these lines.

01:29:40.740 | Some podcasts I listened to that were very helpful.

01:29:43.380 | Oops, a couple of books that were mentioned.

01:29:45.980 | And then, okay, this last page,

01:29:48.420 | this is something that was in one of the,

01:29:52.500 | in the RSVP forum, somebody mentioned,

01:29:56.140 | how do I get my, encourage my parents to document,

01:30:01.140 | 'cause we're talking about you documenting for your spouse,

01:30:04.180 | but then there's also the issue of

01:30:05.860 | if you've got parents that are still living,

01:30:08.020 | you wanna make sure they have documented them

01:30:10.020 | for when you're, you may be having to be the executor

01:30:13.180 | on their estate.

01:30:14.020 | And sometimes people are reluctant to even talk about it

01:30:17.820 | or they may agree in theory, yeah, I'm gonna do it,

01:30:21.380 | but this is, it's a huge job to document all this.

01:30:23.820 | So it's difficult.

01:30:26.180 | So I ran across, there's a lot of articles

01:30:28.580 | and some of these were really good.

01:30:29.860 | There was a YouTube video.

01:30:30.900 | This podcast was really good.

01:30:32.300 | The first third of it was talking about

01:30:34.780 | this guy telling his story,

01:30:35.900 | what happened when his mom didn't have a will

01:30:38.060 | and all the, you know, you can only imagine

01:30:39.900 | what kind of issues you run across.

01:30:42.260 | And then the last two thirds was a woman

01:30:44.900 | who had written this book,

01:30:46.460 | this book called "Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk,"

01:30:48.020 | how to have essential conversation with your parents

01:30:49.660 | about their finances.

01:30:50.860 | She was interviewed in this podcast about,

01:30:53.020 | you know, what, if your parents don't plan it,

01:30:57.100 | how to gently encourage.

01:30:59.140 | And everything that I've read was like,

01:31:00.620 | you don't wanna make it about you.

01:31:02.020 | You don't wanna be what, you wanna make,

01:31:04.140 | you don't wanna be about them making your job easier.

01:31:06.220 | You wanna be about, make it about you honoring their wishes

01:31:10.580 | and making sure that you honor their legacy and their wishes.

01:31:13.260 | You kinda wanna frame it in that,

01:31:14.580 | but even then it's gonna be,

01:31:16.260 | if they don't wanna do it,

01:31:18.780 | it's gonna be hard to convince them.

01:31:20.820 | So I don't have a lot of,

01:31:22.100 | Keith, go ahead, maybe you have some good advice.

01:31:24.580 | - Yeah, I just wanted to add resources.

01:31:27.020 | I get the Oblivious Investor email

01:31:33.660 | and there was a link to an article,

01:31:36.940 | what you need to know about estate planning

01:31:38.940 | from White Coat Investing.

01:31:42.980 | And so I clicked on it and it was, it's gosh,

01:31:45.900 | I mean, I printed it out.

01:31:46.900 | It's a good, I don't know, 15 pages.

01:31:49.780 | And it goes over in pretty good detail,

01:31:53.020 | a lot of things that you should consider.

01:31:55.700 | And because as I mentioned earlier,

01:31:57.700 | I'm in the process of redoing ours,

01:32:00.740 | I'm using it partially as a guide.

01:32:03.220 | I apologize, I don't have the link

01:32:05.060 | that I can put into the chat.

01:32:06.900 | It was written February 12th of this year.

01:32:09.700 | So it's up to date and current,

01:32:12.900 | and it has a lot of great information

01:32:15.020 | on a lot of the stuff we're talking about

01:32:16.980 | in kind of a detail where you could, if you want,

01:32:20.340 | print it out and have it in front of you,

01:32:22.020 | maybe to follow and learn from.

01:32:24.820 | So I just wanted to throw that out there

01:32:26.380 | as another resource.

01:32:29.420 | - Okay, so that was on the Oblivious Investor blog?

01:32:33.140 | - It was, yeah, it was the email that he sends out.

01:32:36.940 | I probably got it maybe six weeks ago,

01:32:39.220 | four, six weeks ago.

01:32:40.380 | - He referenced the White Coat Investor, you said, or?

01:32:43.020 | - And it came from White Coat Investors, yes.

01:32:46.260 | - So it'll probably be on either one of those websites.

01:32:48.780 | - It was written by a Dr. James Dolly,

01:32:51.780 | D-A-H-L-E, White Coat Investor founder.

01:32:56.020 | And it's got a lot of great information on estate planning.

01:32:58.620 | - Great, that sounds very helpful.

01:33:00.420 | Okay, well, that's our last slide.

01:33:06.500 | So if anybody has any final comments,

01:33:09.060 | and then we're going to make sure we save the chat,

01:33:11.780 | or we're going to go over how to save the chat

01:33:13.180 | because there's a lot of information.

01:33:14.380 | Everybody's been entering a lot of really helpful links

01:33:16.980 | and information and stuff in the chat.

01:33:18.140 | Is there any just final comments somebody wants to make

01:33:21.220 | about just wrapping this up overall?

01:33:23.460 | Anything we forgot to cover?

01:33:25.660 | - I actually would just, if I can throw two things out there

01:33:29.140 | just kind of maybe random.

01:33:30.860 | The first is, at the beginning,

01:33:33.060 | somebody talked about when you move to another state,

01:33:35.580 | you want to make sure you update.

01:33:37.500 | That's absolutely true.

01:33:38.940 | And, you know, we were just on a Bogleheads meeting

01:33:42.420 | maybe a month, month and a half ago,

01:33:43.940 | where we talked about moving, relocating, and retirement.

01:33:46.660 | So that perfectly fits with conversation

01:33:49.180 | that a lot of us are having.

01:33:50.860 | But I would also add,

01:33:52.100 | if you have some kind of a change in your life,

01:33:54.780 | for example, you have a grandchild that you didn't plan,

01:33:59.220 | you know, when you written it

01:34:01.300 | and when it was developed initially,

01:34:03.060 | or, you know, something else that happened

01:34:06.380 | where you want to make some changes

01:34:08.740 | or tweaks to your state plans that weren't in there

01:34:12.340 | when you wrote them maybe a year or two or three ago.

01:34:15.060 | You start to have things like, you know,

01:34:17.260 | grandchildren, et cetera, et cetera, that get added.

01:34:19.660 | And all of a sudden, if you're leaving money,

01:34:21.820 | you need to make adjustments to that.

01:34:24.140 | The other thing I would just mention

01:34:25.620 | is to watch about tax changes that happen.

01:34:29.220 | For example, there's a change to Roth IRAs for beneficiaries

01:34:34.220 | in terms of how they have to be drawn down.

01:34:37.500 | That's different from what it was before.

01:34:39.940 | There's other things that are, you know,

01:34:41.740 | on the table or being talked about.

01:34:44.140 | So think about how tax changes that you read about

01:34:47.740 | in the newspaper or wherever you get your news from,

01:34:50.620 | how that might affect your estate planning

01:34:53.380 | or something that you already have written.

01:34:55.300 | Do you need to go back and make a tweak to it

01:34:58.260 | or a change to it based on something that changed

01:35:02.220 | that might affect how you want to pass your money down

01:35:05.740 | or what have you?

01:35:07.100 | 'Cause a lot, you know,

01:35:07.940 | sometimes it can be pretty impactful dollar-wise

01:35:11.580 | and you want to make an adjustment to that.

01:35:13.420 | So just a couple of things to think about

01:35:15.580 | as you maybe already have an estate plan,

01:35:18.660 | but you need to make adjustments to it.

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