What does your family do when you are either not able to communicate because of health issues or end of life issues and everything is left that you have for your family? How do they find stuff? Where do they find stuff? What do you need? What kind of stuff do you need to stack up somewhere so that trusted family members can pick up the financial household that you’ll leave and run with it? That’s what we’re going to talk about in the show today.

Now, I think I have a background of about 55 years that proves this is really important because for almost two decades I was a minister and one of the first people that gets called, at least back then, particularly after the doctors called and the health people are called is the minister, and you come into a situation and the minister starts trying to help the family put the pieces back together.

How do you pay for all the costs that are going to come about? How do you divide the things that are left? Now, the minister doesn’t do all of that, but sometimes the minister is the one that coaches that. So I’ve seen it from that angle and I’ve also seen it from 30 years of financial services and working with people to make sure they never run out of income the rest of their life. But what happens when they run out of life? How do they take what they have and transfer it to the right people? What are those documents that are needed and where do we find them?

Let’s talk about the documents that are needed, and I’ll tell you the rest of this is going to be just more or less a list. Number one, if you’re building this war chest for your family, have a copy of your driver’s license. For whatever reason they ask for the front and back side of your driver’s license. There may be some things you have or need and if you can’t communicate or are gone, your family is going to need to know where your driver’s license is and what your driver’s license number is before they can access it.

Next, where’s your social security card? Many things that must be accessed, require a social security card, and because it’s an end-of-life event or a health event, then your family will need to know where your Medicare card is. So here’s what you do. Let’s just start with those. Stack up a copy of your driver’s license. Stack up a copy of your social security card. Stack up a copy of your Medicare card and possibly, I’ve also seen this, it might be good if somebody knew where a copy of your passport is because who’s to say you’re going to be right there at your house or right there in your own neighborhood? You might be across the world when something happens, and somebody is going to need your passport. I’ll tell you a little instance here that happened recently. We had somebody who was way on the other side of the world, and they needed a copy of their passport. Guess who had one? We did. So we were able to get them a copy of their passport – it wasn’t an official passport – but we got them a copy and they were able to get it replaced. So stack these things up. You never know when somebody’s going to need to have access to that.

Now let’s dig a little deeper. When you go in, I just recently went in for some tests and I was coming to a testing clinic down at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange, and they said, do you have a durable power of attorney from a medical standpoint? I said, yes, I do because we have a trust. They said, bring a copy of it because when they’re going to do a test, particularly if they’re going to put you out for a few minutes or an hour or an hour and a half, maybe a little minor surgery, you never know what’s going to happen. So, they need that durable power of attorney so they know who to turn to when decisions might have to be made if something doesn’t go the right way.

Now, let’s talk about financial, and this is really if something happens to you and you’re not going to be here any longer, but you need copies of your bank statements, at least the first page, maybe some copies of any kind of investment accounts that you have. Maybe it’s a qualified account or a non-qualified account or IRA. If you’re still working, you’ll need a copy of a 401k statement, maybe a Roth IRA statement, all of those things, you don’t have to have all the pages, but that front page is going to tell trusted family members the name of it, and it could be different names. I use two different names sometimes some of my document is Felton, Thomas Mosley, and some of my other documents  is Tom Mosley. So you’ve got to have all of that, but just the front page, have all of those bank accounts, investment accounts, all of those things stacked up.

Next, have a copy of your will or your trust and at least let your family know where to find it, and you don’t have to have the whole trust there. You can have that in a secure place, but maybe the front page and just a little note on where the whole trust can be found or the will can be found because if you’re gone, those things are important. Down the road, they’re also going to need to know where the deeds are to property. It’s going to be recorded in the trust, but you’re going to have to have the actual deed at some point or know where that deed is.

If there’s a mortgage against a property, you probably still want to have that mortgage there. I’m not trying to be morbid at anything I’m doing, I’m just trying to help you and try to help your family because if you’ve ever been in a situation where you needed these things and you didn’t know where they were or you couldn’t find them because mom and dad didn’t tell you, you know how important this is, and there’s one more thing I want to mention on here. These days it seems like almost everybody has a computer password and almost everybody has a cell phone, even if it’s a flip phone. So if you’ve got a cell phone and there’s a password to get into the phone and a password to get into the computer, make sure those passwords are noted in your documents.  I have found that many of my clients have found it very advantageous to when it comes to trying to put a wrap on all of these things. You’re family will be able to get into your computer and phone when needed.

Now, let me tell you a story about my dad. One time when I was buying a house when I was very young, the bank said, “We can get you a little bit lower rate if you have a family member with a bank statement that shows they have a large amount of money in the bank.” Well, that was my dad. This is an absolute true story.  I remember so vividly calling my dad and saying, “Dad, I could get a little bit lower rate on a house if I could just have a copy of your bank statement to show my bank so that they know that I have a family member standing behind me.” My dad said in almost these exact words, he said, “Son, if you have to move in with me and you never get a house, you’re never going to see my bank statement.” So that was my dad. That was the generation that he was from. I never saw his bank statement until he passed away and my brother and I saw it at the same time after he was gone. That’s what we’re talking about. You don’t have to share all this information, but there needs to be one key place where your family can go to find all these things. You say, “Where do I put these?”  Maybe a safety deposit box, maybe a safe at home. But then you got to make sure that somebody knows the combination. If there’s a trust issue, there may be problems there. But gather all these things.

This is by far not necessarily an exhaustive list. You may have other things, and you may be saying right now, you may be saying, “Hey, there’s something else that people need!” Hey, right on! I’m not telling you that I’ve exhausted this list with all the things I’ve talked about, but if you have all the things that I have talked about gathered in one place, your family is going to be appreciative that you’ve taken the time to do this – especially if you’re incapacitated or even if you’re gone.

Hey, I hope this was helpful. If you want to see more about how we help our clients, go to our website, www.mosleymanagement.com. That’s M-O-S-L-E-Y wealth management.com, And if you want more information about what we’ve talked about today, give us a call.