subject: Things You Should Settle Before Your Final Journey [print this page] Things You Should Settle Before Your Final Journey
Everyone gets to hear a lot of advices on things to be done before one dies. These may sound too much to do or too tough to work on, but they should essentially be done. That will save your family and loved ones lot of extra headache. The most important thing is: writing your will, finishing all writing work that it requires and making it known to the people who will deal with it and get it fulfilled.
This is all part of what we know as estate planning literally planning our estate before we kick the bucket. Whether we like the idea or not, this has to be done so the ones we love will know and understand our plans and the reasons behind them.
Before you leave the world, there are a huge lot of tasks to be completed. When you start pondering on those lines, you are sure to end up with an unending list of things to be done. But, start out doing things that require your immediate attention :
1. Put a value to all your material belongings. Find out the potential value of your home, your business, vehicles and other things of money value such as long term deposits, trusts, bonds etc. Write them all legibly and correctly and safeguard these details of high value in safe places like in a bank or in your own home locker. Drawing all your assets into a tabular column with their values also indicated will help anyone to understand its worth. When you have done this, you give your family an anchorage and confidence regarding their future.
2. Calculate the rate value of your physical belongings. This involves drawing the value of material possession in your home other than the bank deposits and bonds. You have to tag things in your home such as costly painting, jewelry, furniture, materials that have been passed down generations and also outdated things of worth with an approximate value. You can start doing it with 100 dollars being the minimum value of materials that you have to ascertain. When you are finished with this, you can clearly separate things in your home into things of money value and things mattering only with sentiment.
3. Keeping your insurance agent and your workplace informed of the changes in your beneficiary list is of utmost importance. This will guarantee your money to end up in the right hands at the right time of need. With improper updating of the beneficiary list, your money may be distributed between your ex-spouse and your parent who is already dead and gone or between only one and two of your many children. This is indeed sad. In certain states, the state can take up a portion of the money with your beneficiary list not being filled to the present day. These rates vary across the states and can be as high as 40%. Your family will then be given only the left over which will be too little in comparison to what you had hard earned for them.
4. Write down your will before it is too late. People may find it a strange thing to do when they are alive, but putting down your assets , their values and whom you would like to be benefitted from them when you are gone in written form is a very good decision to take. This will make all the legal transactions smooth and peaceful. If not, your loved one may have to wait for the next person responsible to decide their fate and wait for the judiciary to give them their share of your property. Don't let your family go through this avoidable situation.
5. Updating the will. If there is already a will, we should really check on it to make sure it still applies. Value of our assets may have grown, for instance, meaning there is a portion still unaccounted for (which the state will be all too willing to take). On the other hand, the value may have dropped, which means there needs to be a reassessment of each beneficiary's portion. Updating a will does not take long and should be done every couple of years.
6. Put down the amount of money you have taken as debt and are still accountable for, like how much you have to pay for your credit cards, home loans etc.. This is another important part you should certainly work on, because it will open your eyes to the reality of how much value you are still worth. Don't forget to make necessary corrective steps if you realize you are actually spending more than what you should be for your monetary value.
Naturally, doing all of these will not be of much good if we were to keep it to ourselves. Having a good estate executor or lawyer, preferably one we know will have our family's best interests at heart will ensure our wishes are carried out the way we want them to be. It also means we can truly rest in peace knowing our loved ones are taken care of.
