Legacy Binder - Part One

Somewhere between surgery, a cancer diagnosis and radiation it dawned on me that I’m really not getting out of us this life alive. Wait, I mean I'm getting out of this scrape fine, but in the bigger scheme, we each are going to come to the end of our life at some point. The more I pondered my own mortality, the more I realized that it was time to line things up so that when faced with loss, those left to care for our family would be given a big hug wrapped in a simple accordion binder of papers.  

I dubbed it “The Legacy Binder” as a nod to Dave Ramsey, and it is now stored in our safe with a Summary Copy given to my brother and his wife. The time commitment in gathering the pertinent information and creating the Summary Copy took about six hours. Today’s blog will focus on creating the “Legacy Summary” which is basically a compilation of your assets, liabilities, contacts and logins. The goal of this document is to create a user handbook for whoever is to assume your families financial responsibilities in the event of your death. 

Assets and Liabilities

For our family this document included information about our home mortgage, our bank accounts, our savings accounts (for each member of the family), retirement plans (through work and our financial planner), college savings plans for each of our children and our vehicles. Contact information, account numbers, login access and a balance summary was provided for each account. 

At this time the only outstanding debt that we have is our mortgage but this page may be a good place to summarize your debts as well. The goal is for your loved ones to have a quick walk through of your finances in the the even of your death.

Insurance

The Page is devoted to the variety of insurance plans that we care as a family. I included the overall contact for the benefits department of my husbands employer and then broke up into the types of coverage we have. For each category, I listed each policy held by individual members of our family, the company issuing policies, pertinent numbers and a summary of the benefits. 

Contact Information

We have a large family, and anyone responsible for notifying loved ones in the event of a tragedy shouldn’t have to search for phone numbers and addresses. To figure out which information to include here I just kind of walked through a typical week and who would need to know something big happened in our family. I also included our family doctor and dentist. My thoughts in generating this list is, “How can I love my family well if I were not here?” As a mom so much of this is in my head, and it felt really good to get it down on paper.

Passwords / Logins & Auto-with drawls

On this page I set up a list of companies that we pay through automatic deposits, the date the money leaves our checking account and login and password to access those accounts. The goal is to organize the way the business of our family runs so that someone else could more easily step in and manage in my absence. Especially for ordering a pizza.

I was spurred on to begin this project because of fear, and in tackling it, I found tremendous peace. Gathering this information goes a lot faster then you’d imagine and you’ll reap the benefits for a good long time. With the new year approaching, I’d encourage you to take some time and create your own Legacy Binder for your family.

My next blog will be a description of creating the physical binder with those irreplaceable documents that may be floating around your house. So hang onto any papers you used to create your Legacy Summary for a few more days.