When I heard that a former high school classmate died from cancer, the news hit me hard. He wasn’t a close friend, but we were on the golf team together and I knew him well enough. My memories of him as a full-of-life, popular, athletic high school kid made it hard to accept the fact that he was now dead.
Other than all the usual reminders that come at times like that (keep the “first things” of faith and family truly first, treat life as a gift), and the internal voice that kept screaming, “I’m far too young (ah, no) to be losing former high school classmates,” it also reminded me of the importance of making sure my family’s financial affairs are in order. It would be bad form for any steward of God’s resources to fall short in this area.
That's why I highly recommend going through an excellent Compass resource, Set Your House In Order, which is partly about putting all of your essential financial documents in one place for the benefit of your survivors or executor. I went through the study a number of years ago and found it very helpful.
Unrelated to my former classmate’s passing, several years ago I increased the amount of life insurance I carry. After notifying me that the policy had been approved, the agent I worked with asked me some excellent questions. For example, if I died today…
Have I talked with my wife about what to do with the insurance proceeds?
How should she invest the money?
Or, if my wife and I both died…
Have we named a guardian for our kids?
Who is the executor of our estate?
How confident are we in this person’s abilities?
What instructions have we specified in terms of providing for our kids?
Have we specified that any of the estate be given to charitable organizations, and if so, which ones?
How specific are our instructions for managing other aspects of the estate?
My wife and I had sorted through most of these topics, but not all of them. I appreciated the agent raising these questions and I worked with my wife to answer the remaining questions. Plus, when we moved from Illinois to Kentucky in 2012, I discovered that our power of attorney documents needed to be be redrafted using Kentucky forms.
These are the sorts of things that are easily put off. There’s always something that seems more urgent. But they’re important, and I know it’ll be far easier to take care of them now than for my wife to take care of them after I’m gone. What about you? Are your family’s financial affairs in order? When is the last time you reviewed your estate planning documents?
