Over the last couple posts, we’ve been talking about estate planning. So, if you remember on our path to financial success, estate planning is one of our two rails.
Those rails are there to protect our wealth and help us when bad things occur, kind of keeping us in bounds, if you will. I often like to think of them as rails. Like guardrails on the side of a mountain that I know if I go over that rail, there’s going to be some pain and bad things that occur.
The last couple of episodes we’ve talked about estate planning basics and why it’s important. We talked about the order of transfers at death. We talked about how to choose agents, the people inside of your estate plan and the qualities to look for in those agents. Last week we talked about trusts and how to use them and the basics of them.
Today I want to talk about and discuss how you can help Your loved ones deal with the loss of your passing and really give you three ideas that you could implement to help with that. Now the reality is this is not a fun topic to talk about and I’m sure it’s not a fun topic to listen about, but we all know it’s important.
The Bible says it’s appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment. We all know we’re going to die. We all have an appointment with death. The challenge is we don’t know when it’s coming. And so hopefully for you and for me, it’s many, many years away, but the reality is it’s coming. So, what can we do to help prepare for those that we love, and we leave behind when that appointment comes to fruition?
Well, I got three ways. That you can help your loved ones prepare for your death. And the first one is to create what I call an, I love you binder. Couple of years ago, probably well over a decade ago. Now I had a realization. The reality is in our house, I take care of most of our finances. I know the accounts.
I know the logins. I know where they are. I know the balances. I know what we’re doing., I pay all the bills, et cetera, et cetera. And the thought came to me one time, if something happened to me, all that knowledge, all that tribal knowledge that I have, all that information basically goes, goes away because it’s not like after I’m dead, Erica can kind of come and extract it out of my head.
And so, I thought, what could I do to help her prepare for my loss? And then I had a second thought after realizing that was at the time our kids were kind of young and if Erica and I went on a date night together and we, got hit by some tractor trailer and we both died at the time, our parents were our executors, our co executors.
How would they begin to pick up the pieces of our information? Do they know who we bank with? Do we know who our homeowner’s insurance was through? Do they know our life insurance policies? Like they didn’t know any of that stuff. And so, what I did was I started to create. What I call an I love you binder.
Basically, this is, this is it today still. And it contains all the pertinent information that either Erica would know, or executors would know to basically get them started on understanding our financial lives. And I called it and I love you binder because even at the bottom it says, because I love you, Mrs.
Beautiful, right? The intent is this is one final way to tell my wife. And my kids, if they must handle it now, that I love them and that I tried to prepare for my death, which I know is inevitable with excellence and diligence. And this is just a way to make it easier for them. I know all this information.
I don’t need it for me. I didn’t put it together for me. I put it together for them to tell them. That I love them because the reality is if you’ve ever experienced extreme loss, that in that moment you’re dealing with mourning, you’re dealing with emotion, you’re dealing with the loss. And yet a lot of people must make a lot of decisions in that moment, must handle a lot of financial stuff and they’re not prepared to do so.
They’re kind of scatterbrained. And they might not even know where to begin. And so, the intent here with all this information is to help, give her a track to run on. Does it include every decision she’s going to have to make? Absolutely not. But a lot of the information she knows now, and our kids know that if something happens to us, all they must basically do is get the, I love you binder.
And there’s a lot of information in there that they can begin to process through and help them. So, what are some things? In that list that I put, well, there’s a handful of things in there. There are our state documents. So, wills, power attorneys, medical power attorneys, trust documents, et cetera, those are in there.
Important documents we keep in there. So, birth certificates, marriage certificates, business documents, things like that. Military records, basically those are in there. A lot of things when it comes to tangible property. So, deeds, titles, the cars and properties, stuff like that. A lot of financial asset information, account statements are in there.
What types of accounts we have, retirement accounts, savings accounts, checking accounts, investment accounts, things like that. Basically, we keep a, a somewhat record of that information in there. All of insurance documents in there. So, who are life insurances with, who are medical insurances with our auto insurance, disability coverage, things like that.
I keep in there basically, a budget in thereof, of our bills and our reoccurring bills. So, who, who the electric company is with, who then., telephone company with who are cell phone providers in there as well as stuff from the business side of things. So, they run a business profit loss statement, balance sheets, stuff like those digital assets, right?
So, information about logons and accounts and passwords. Basically, there’s some information there about those points of contact. So financial advisors, lawyers, accountants, caretakers, trustees, things like that, as well as funeral wishes and instructions, right? This is just a. A sample of what’s in there.
In fact, I give clients every, two years when we go through the financial planning process, we go through it initially. And then every two years we cycle back, and we do an estate plan review just to make sure that everything is, is right and correct and in order. And I give them an updated list at that point of the contents to put in that I love you binder.
If you want a copy of that content, you can send an email to mike@truewealth. show, just put the subject as binder, capital letters, just the word binder, and you’ll get a response with the contents that I recommend putting in that I love you binder. So that’s. Tip number one of how to help your loved ones prepare for your loss.
Tip number two, one of the things I mentioned in there is that of funeral instructions. So, one of the things that you can do to help your loved ones prepare for your loss is that you can pre plan your funeral. Not prepay. But pre planned and so I did these years ago back when we were in Omaha, We Eric and I it, again, it’s one of those uncomfortable things, but I’m doing it again.
It’s not for me So it helps me push through the discomfort. It’s more for we went to a funeral home and What a funeral home a lot of times will let you do is they will basically guide you through the process. So, they’ll help you understand what you need and what you don’t need and what you must choose and what can be chosen later.
And so, things like vaults, things like caskets, things like the linings, things like, flyers and all kinds of various stuff. And they’ll basically walk you through, to an exhaustive level if you want to., you can look at all the different, casket options. You can look at all the different flower arrangement options.
You can look at all the boat options. Generally, there’s only a couple of those., but designs that you want on, the, the announcements, the bulletins, the schedule, all that kind of stuff, all that stuff can be pre planned. And I did this back when we were in Omaha and they basically take a sheet and they put it all on file and then they just kind of stick it in the drawer and so really if something happened to me while we were there, Erica knows all she has to do is go to that funeral, basically all the arrangements are already there and it’s all done.
Now, the reason why I say is don’t prepay is because, the cost of funerals goes up with inflation. If I don’t die for another 20 or 30 years, right? The money that I pay them then for that prepaid funeral is only increasing at the rate of inflation. Well, that money can sit over investments that can get eight, 10, 12 percent rate of return last year in the market.
23 or whatever it was. And so, I can make a lot more money on that money rather than them having it for all this time. So, recommend not prepaying. They’ll try to sell you basically a whole life insurance policy to prepay for your funeral. Don’t recommend that. But preplanning. Is a great gift. In fact, I recently had a client that parent passed away and he basically said, what?
Dad took care of everything. It was all preplanned, right? We didn’t really have to do anything., everybody knew what’s happening because dad., took care of it all. Imagine how much stress that took off basically the family members because they already had a plan. They didn’t have to go through all those heartbreaking decisions of what would mom want or what would dad want?
It was already taken care of. Again, it’s a great gift and especially right at funeral generally comes. Within a week or two after your passing, that’s at a very emotional time, right? And, and the waves of emotion really haven’t even come at that point because the person must take care of everything.
They’re just in doing mode and they only have time to process or mourn the loss. And yet they must make all these decisions about what you might want, what you might not want, and who should this and who should that. And it’s just overwhelming, exhausting. And I’ll be honest with you. It leads to potentially a lot of family conflict because that moment, for a lot of people is sealed in their memories and in their hearts and in their minds and their emotions.
And people act a lot of times out of character than they normally would because it’s a very stressful time. And so, people can say things and do things and, and react to things in ways that they might not otherwise because of the, the emotion and the stress of the loss. Well, if you can take care of this stuff now that eliminates all those conversations and all those decisions that must be taking place later by your loved ones, and then they can just focus on.
your loss, comforting each other, celebrating your fact that you’re in heaven if you’re there and just spend time being together instead of the conflict of the decisions that must be made. So that’s tip number two of how you can help your loved ones prepare for your loss. Tip number three. And again, this is an uncomfortable one.
All these are uncomfortable. There’s nothing comfortable about this, but these are great gifts that you could give. To others, tip number three that you can do to help prepare for your loss is to talk about it. Have some conversations about it. Honestly, I don’t understand why this is taboo. I know it’s not comfortable to talk about.
I know it’s uneasy for you and really for everyone. But the reality is, again, it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. It’s part of everyday life. It happens all around us all the time. Just maybe not to us directly to us. And so, the more you can have conversations about what you want to take place and when and how across all spectrums of this stuff, the better and easier it is.
At Christmastime all our, our adult children and we were together, Eric and me. And so, I carved off some of the time while we were there, we had some fun and had some food and all that kind of stuff, but I wanted to carve off some time to have some conversations about this. It was just an opportunity while we were all there.
And so, I sat down with them, basically gave them, a kind of a glimpse in the high level of our financials, where things stood. And we talked about what would happen if I died. And I gave them some space to talk about it amongst each other. So, what should happen and what shouldn’t happen? And we got some feedback from that.
It was some good ideas, things I hadn’t thought about, things that they had some questions about things Erica hadn’t thought about. And so, it was a good opportunity to have some, to address some things, to convey some things to them. There are some things that, I won’t go into it, look kind of personal, but I wanted them to hear from me.
That, hey, if, if I pass, here’s what I want you to know. And here’s, here’s our things that are okay. And here’s what I want things, to be, and here’s my wishes and convey that now, and, and it might change, Lord, well, I won’t die for another, 20, 30, 40 years, hopefully rapture will come and that’ll, that’ll take care of that too.
But the reality is, I want them to be prepared for it. And so, us having that conversation, it wasn’t long, 30, 40 minutes or so. It gave us space to talk about it. And was it a little uncomfortable for them? Yes. Some leaned into it more than others, which would be., typical of family dynamics and personalities and stuff like that.
But the reality was that we came away with, a better understanding, a better awareness, better Comfort with the inevitable, right? And so again, something to do. So, it’s always good to talk to your agents, every year or two, just to say, hey, just as a reminder, I have you as this in my estate plan.
Are you okay with that? Talk to the executors about, , kind of where you stand financially, what things there are, what things are aren’t, , ideally if you have an, I love you binder, you can point them to that and show them that it’s just good to talk about, talk to the guardians, talk to your adult children, talk to your grandchildren, if they’re old enough, things like that.
So, in closing and giving you three tips today of how to help prepare Your loved ones prepare for your loss. Your micro action for the week is to either create or review the contents of your, I love you binder. If you have something like that, go through it, review it, make sure that this stuff’s up to date.
If you don’t have one, this would be a good opportunity to create one. And again, if you want the contents that I recommend clients put, you can send an email to Mike at true wealth dot show with the word binder in the subject and I will send you that. List, right? So today I’ve given you three tips of how to help prepare your loved ones, prepare for your loss.
Number one, create an I Love You binder. Number two, pre-plan your funeral. And number three, have conversations about what life will look like after you. I hope this is helpful for you on your financial journeys. If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them below or send an email to Mike at True Wealth Show.
And until next time, I hope you have a great day.
