GenWealth Financial Advisors share their expertise once a month in personal finance and retirement planning. See previous articles at www.mysaline.com/money-monday
A special part of being in a relationship with someone means that each of us has our own gifts and talents we bring to the unity. One person may have the gifts of organization and adventure while the other could have the gift of optimism, administration, or nurture for example.
Maybe you’re the person in your relationship who understands or even, dare I say it, enjoys making the family budget, crunching the numbers, and planning for your financial future you hope to spend with each other. You know where all the accounts are held, how much is in them, and the passwords to access anything and everything.
On the flipside, maybe you enjoy your role of not having to handle the money stuff. You trust your partner to have control of that part of your life because you’d rather be doing something you find to be more interesting. And hey, that’s okay! Just like it takes all kinds to make the world go round, it also takes balance of gifts and talents to make a household work.
As much as it pains us to think about it, it’s a reality of life that one day a spouse will get sick or not come home. And if this happens to be the spouse in your family who directs every dollar, then the survivor has some complicated tasks in front of them to keep finances sorted and bills paid while they care for us or mourn our loss.
This is why, at GenWealth, we talk with our clients about what we like to call the honey-I-love-you letter. This is a letter of instruction made by the “financial” spouse that sums up their money matters and includes important things like bank account numbers, insurance policies and death benefits, investments accounts and their institutions, mortgage or auto loan information, trusted contacts’ names, phone numbers for financial matters, and where to locate trust documents.
The time to plan is always before the storm. The idea here is for the honey-I-love-you letter to be something each spouse knows exists and where to locate it at home or maybe in a bank or credit union lockbox. We’ve seen this scenario play out many times at GenWealth, and the recipient spouse feels such a sense of relief followed by enormous gratitude for their honey who had such forethought to care for them in this way.
The honey-I-love-you letter. It’s like that special gift from your special person that they made for you with love.