I am recently married and my wife and I have spent the past few days consolidating our households, realizing that we have 2 of everything in our kitchen, and trying to find the best way to fit two cars and six bikes into our garage.
We’re also combining our bank accounts, updating our wills and changing the beneficiary information on our retirement accounts and life insurance policies. The process was fairly simple, but only because we had copies of those statements and contact information for those companies.
Part of my role at LeConte is to help our clients get organized and stay organized. We provide an online vault for clients to keep their information in a secure cloud format that they can access at any time.
Just as I have updated my estate planning documents and beneficiary information, perhaps now is the time for you to do the same.
- When’s the last time you reviewed those designations on your life insurance policies?
- Can you easily find the policy number and contact information?
- Have you had a life event that would cause you to change those?
- Do you have a will, and if so, when’s the last time you had it updated?
I would recommend creating a folder or online location to store all this information. Tell your loved ones about it and show them that information.
Waiting on hold, filling out forms for these changes isn’t how one would choose to spend their Wednesday afternoons, but the peace of mind that comes from planning and preparing for my wife and children easily outweighs that.
