Episode 88 - Legacy File and Checklist

We spoke about this last year; let's review it again. Here is a replay from last year. What is a Legacy File? A Legacy File is a way to show our family that we love them after we are gone. In this episode, I walk you through what belongs in your Legacy File.

Here is a link to my Legacy File Checklist.

Transcript

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Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. So today I'd like to talk about what I call your legacy file. But before we do that, let's start with a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, we ask You for all the grace and wisdom that we need to face the challenges or the circumstances that we find ourselves in we know that you love us and that you have a great plan for us. Allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, we ask all this in Jesus name, amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So a legacy file. What is that a legacy file is where you will keep all of your end of life and other important documents and instructions. It's a way of loving your family and providing them a tool that will help them and give them peace, not only while they're grieving your loss, but as they try to wrap up your affairs, that just a couple of months ago, this was brought back to my mind as an important thing. Two months ago, back in February, my grandmother passed away, and my mom and my aunt are her only remaining children, and my grandma was was 102 years old. And the last couple of months, it's been a little bit of a scramble trying to pull particular documents together, things like her will and some trust documents, along with other instructions and things. And I've been working with my mom and my aunt through this time, and it really reinforced something I try to have in place for Taryn and I, but I also work to have this in place with my clients, my coaching clients, and so we need to do this. We need to create in a file all the important End of Life documents that, God forbid something happens to you or your spouse or both of you. It's a place that has instructions and maybe answers to questions, and it will provide at least a starting point to many different areas and things, situations that are important to the people our family, that are wrapping up our affairs at the end of our life. So some of these things could be financial. Some will be related to insurance, maybe investments. It'll have documents like wills or estate plans, instructions to the guardians of if you have minor children. It would also include instructions for your burial and funeral and any other important documents, like leads, titles, maybe some certificates, things that you have that are important and that other people, if you were gone, would need them and need to know where they are. And you can also have things in there, like your monthly budget, a list of your bank accounts. These are only going to help whoever's looking after those things when you're gone, so that they can have access to it all. So the legacy file is important to have, and I have a tool that I'm going to share with you. I'll put the link in the podcast description for this episode, but it's a link to the legacy file checklist, and it's going to be a good practice. Print it out. Put it together. If you're married, put it together with your spouse and designate where in the house you're going to keep this file. But then you're also going to want to create a copy of this file and put it in a different place, like maybe a safe deposit box or something. And we're going to go through some of these items in this checklist, and I'm going to elaborate a little bit more deeply on them, so that you have a sense of what should be in there. And for everyone, this is going to look just slightly different, because everyone's situation is slightly different. Everything that they have is slightly different. But this file, this legacy file that we put together, there's going to be things in it that change, right? Could be passwords, bank accounts, things that we have online access to, and we're probably going to want to change our passwords occasionally, and so this is going to be a file that we will need to update at different times. I recommend it's updated at least once a year. I do our file around tax time, and it's helpful when you're pulling out a lot of these things and information, and looking at it in that moment, it wouldn't be bad at that time of tax time to pull this file out and make sure everything's current. But then if you change something pretty significant, maybe it's a bank account, or maybe you rolled a 401, K over somewhere, or you changed insurance policy in those moments, I. Pull out the file, replace that piece promptly, or add it in there promptly, right when the change happens. But outside of that, if there aren't any significant changes, just create an annual, you know, calendar entry, and just review it once a year to make sure everything is most up to date. All right, so here's the checklist, and again, I will put a link, a PDF link, to this checklist in the episode description, so you can click on it and download it for yourself. So the first thing in this legacy file that you want is a summary sheet. Think of it almost as like a table of contents, but the summary sheet, it's going to describe what's in the file and what each document is used for, what's the purpose of each one. So that's the first thing that you want to have. Type it up neatly, right? Just like a table of contents, it can be simple as saying, Will for Paul, will for Taryn, Power of Attorney for Paul, Power of Attorney for Taryn Paul's life insurance policy, right? 2023, budget, and so on and so forth. It's just going to provide a sort of like a to do list or checklist for that person who's taking care of these things when we're gone. It'll list everything. So that was the first thing, the summary sheet. The next section in the file, have your financial accounts. So this is going to include all the financial institutions, the account numbers you know, and that's whether it's loans, checking, savings CDs, minor accounts, custodial accounts, investment accounts, college accounts, retirement accounts, for one case, whatever you've got. And what I would like to see, you know, in mine, you have the institution, you have the title, the account, and you can have the username and password to access these things. You could even put the URL, like the website. And then I also like to put the balance. And the balance is just helpful for reference. It just gives an idea of the significance of that account, right? If it's a big account or smaller account. And again, this is something that you're going to update once a year, right? So it's not you don't have to constantly be in there if you close an account or something, you know, again, a significant change updated immediately, but doing it at least annually just keeps this fresh. The next section, have your will and your estate documents. So this would include all your estate plans, be sure to include the name of your executor, the trustees and guardians. In the event that if you and your spouse die and you have minor children, they need to have guardians designated. So have all those names in there. And I'd also include in this section things like power of attorneys and healthcare directives like that's all very, very important. And I would put that under the will and estate documents section. The next section you're going to have is insurance policies. So that would be all the insurances you can think of, right, health, life, auto, disability, and the list could go on, but have the policy names the insurance company, names the name of the policy holder, right, the name of the insured, and then who the beneficiaries are. You know, like life insurance. And it's also helpful if you have a contact at the insurance company, or you have a specific agent you use, provide their phone number details for someone to get in touch with your agent, right if they needed to, so that that was insurance site, Insurance Policies section, the next section, put a copy of your budget in there. Now my recommendation is, you know, we do a monthly budget. I talk to people about having a monthly budget, but there's typically an overall annual budget that we're working towards, right? And because some things we pay aren't monthly, some are quarterly, some are annually, so there's an annual aspect to it. So it's not bad to have an annual summary of your budget, and then also just a monthly line item budget that will provide what the income and expenses are, so that if something happens to you again the day to day, you know, like, the overhead of the household can easily be continued while everything's getting sorted out. And I would include how those transactions happen. So how does the income come in? Is it a direct deposit? Do you look for a check in the mail or on the expenses? How do you pay them? Is it an auto debit? Do you manually go in and do a bill pay through your bank? Do you pay it manually on the website? Right of the you know if it's utility company or something, or you're paying taxes, are they quarterly? Are you paying this monthly? Is it an annual payment? And if it's an annual payment, like, when do you pay that? Right? So having that summary with your budget is so very helpful. And again, if some like for Taryn and I, if something happens. Happened to me and Terrence here, she could go into this part of the file. She knows our monthly budget, because she's part of it, right? We meet and we talk about these things. She knows the bills that we pay, but I'm the one that actually pays the bills, right? I'm the one that enters the information into the bill pay and hits pay and send and all that type of stuff. So she needs to be able to understand, okay, what comes out automatically? What does Paul have to write a check for? Is this a monthly expense, a quarterly expense, an annual one like these are important things for her to be able to know. So having all that in that budget section of the legacy file is important. The next section you want is tax returns. Why do we need tax returns? Well, tax returns are important in case, even after you're dead, the IRS decided to audit you, right? You'd want to be able to have those documents for your family. Now, every year I print out a paper copy of my tax return. It's probably one of the few things I keep a paper copy of, but I also have an online storage place where I keep copies of all those, and my account has a copy of those, right? So with the tax return section of the file, if you have paper copy, it's great to put it in there. If you don't have instructions of how to get the tax returns, or maybe who your CPA is, or where you you know where someone could get a copy of your tax returns. And if you're self employed, you need a copy of your business returns in there as well. Okay. And again, if you've got storage, like a Dropbox, Microsoft, one, Google Docs, something like that, have instructions on how to get into those files, all right? The next section I'm going to label just as important documents. Right? All of these things we've talked about are pretty important, but this would be things like titles to things we own, like vehicles. It would also include deeds right to your property or other properties you might own, birth certificates, marriage certificates, maybe other sacramental certificates, baptism certificates, right, things like that. You can also have social security cards, maybe a copy of your passport, or anything else that kind of falls into this category. I would also include in this file, like copies of a mortgage note or letters of like a loan satisfaction or if you had debt forgiveness, like copies of those documents are really important. If things were to pop up, you have that proof, so I would definitely get those copies in there. So important documents and anything else that in your particular situation that's important. Maybe, if you have adopted children, maybe it's a copy of your adoption papers, right? Those types of things are very important, so put them in that section of the folder. The next section you need is your burial and funeral instructions. So what kind of funeral or burial Do you want to have? I want to have a Catholic funeral mass. Maybe you have a specific reading or a song that you want sung at your funeral. Maybe there's a specific priest or Deacon that you want to, you know, celebrate, or cosa you know, be a co celebrant, and you want them to say your mass. If you have instructions on where you're getting buried, you should have that in there as well. And you know, if you have a deed to a seminary plot, maybe that's in that important document section we just spoke about. But listed in here say, I have a deed. It is at this, you know, cemetery. Here's the information for the the plot that we have. If you have a, if you've, you know, pre planned your funeral. Maybe you have a funeral home already picked out. You could have a copy of those instructions in here as well. So that was burial and funeral instructions. Next section, let's talk about email, social accounts and other online accounts. We need to have a section in the legacy file with all the usernames, passwords, pins, security questions and answers for all of your email, social and online accounts. So this This might include accounts like, you know, Amazon or Netflix, right things, and accounts that your family may need to access in order to cancel or change when you're gone. So this is an important, important file list them all there, right? And again, this is something when you change, you know, if you change things, passwords throughout the year, you'll you'll update this annually so that you can have, you know, a pretty fresh set of passwords in here, and then the second to last section I call just letters or anything else. Wow, that's pretty broad and vague, but some people have letters. Dollars that they might want to leave for their spouse, their kids, their grandkids. This is a great place to put them. Maybe it's an honoring or a love note or a thank you note to a friend or a family member. Place it in here, and you can just tell them how much you love them, how much you're you know going to be praying for them, how proud you are of them, any of those things that you'd want them to be reminded of. It's not bad to write it in a beautiful little note, and there's a great place to keep it. So you should have all of these things in your legacy file. This is just a way to show your family members that you love them. And the last part of all these instructions is, and this is on the checklist, have a duplicate file. So in this last section, provide instructions to the location of your duplicate file. Maybe you provide a friend a copy, or your executor has a copy. You know, if you keep a copy in your safe deposit box, maybe you have a bank safe deposit box, provide the bank name, the location, instructions to access that box, right? All of this, all it does is it defends against the risk of your legacy file being lost or destroyed in some event, like a fire flood in your house, right? So once you have all those items, your legacy file, it's complete, all you have to do is update it, and if there's any significant changes, do it immediately. If not, do it at least once a year. Again, I recommend around tax time, that's when I do ours. Give it a quick update, making sure you have the latest and greatest information in there. And the last thing I'd like to mention and relate it to all of this is to tell people about the file. Now, not everyone, but let your executor know. Let your kids know about the file and where it is. My plan when I have adult children is to walk them through this file very specifically. I already speak to my older kids about what would happen in the event that both Tara and I passed away, and we don't do that to worry them or frighten them, but rather to let them know from our own lips what would happen in that event. It gives them the ability to ask us questions as to why we picked the guardians that we did, and what the financial future would look like. It provides a sense of peace that if the unimaginable thing happened, we have a plan. I also remind my executor trustee, the kids potential guardians each year, so that they also remember what they agreed to do and to serve us. You know how to serve us in the events of our deaths, and it's really the best way to let our family know that we love them so much we have a plan for one of the worst situations that could occur. And when we talk about this, we pray before we speak about this, so that the evil one and his fear stays far, far away, and we invite the Lord and His Holy Spirit to bring peace and hope to our hearts as we lovingly discuss these items. So that's what I have for you. Today. I'll be dropping a link in the podcast description. It's a direct link to the PDF file for the legacy file checklist that I just walked you through. Click it. You can print it out. Use this document to assemble your file, and remember this is a way to show your love and care to your family. I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for joining me today. God bless Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe in your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. You.