A client was telling me a story about how the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a business he used to own passed away unexpectantly. Of course, it was a very sad event both personally and professionally. But an unexpected additional consequence was that the business was locked out of internet banking. The CFO had many important passwords committed to memory (for security). The business had to pay staff the week following his death without any access to banking! This taught my client a very important personal lesson. That is, make sure your loved ones are looked after in the event of your unexpected demise. Don’t leave them in the dark!
Here are a few things you must organise.
Passwords galore!
Its ridiculous how many passwords we have these days – almost too many to keep track of. If your spouse or loved ones don’t have ready access to your passwords, it can be very frustrating and stressful – at a time where additional and avoidable stress is definitely unwanted. You need to make a list of important passwords, including:
- Online banking
- Superannuation accounts;
- Managed fund providers or share brokers; and
- Any other investment providers.
There are password apps you can use or a simple
password protected Excel spreadsheet does the trick. Save the file in Dropbox (or similar) and share it with your spouse (or executor/s). This is simple to do and will avoid a lot of unnecessary stress.
Summary of assets and liabilities
It is important to have an up-to-date summary of all your assets and liabilities. This will make it easier for your executor/s to ascertain what assets you have, their value and what immediate actions need to be taken, if any. It is also useful if you have a summary of regular financial commitments such as loan repayments to ensure these are met on time. This will help your executor get on top of everything. Perhaps you can include this information in the password-protected Excel file mentioned above.
List of personal risk insurances
You should also maintain a list of personal risk insurances such as income protection, life and total & permanent disability insurances. You need to note policy numbers, sum insures and insurer. This will be important because if you have an accident,
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