Is Your Spouse in the Know?
Jan 05 2009
As an investment adviser, it concerned me when survivors were left unaware of their financial state of affairs or without the ability to manage their financial obligations. The surviving spouse is suddenly at the mercy of someone else to manage the finances. A spouse relying on someone else whether family or stranger makes for uncomfortable or risky partnerships. Many spouses I worked with were sensitive about being perceived as a burden or felt foolish about being so uninformed about their own business.
To illustrate my point, I have known survivors who knew absolutely nothing about their family accounts. Some couldn’t write a check or pay a bill. One survivor thought that $200 in a checking account would last indefinitely as long as each check written was for less than $200. These were intelligent people. It was just that they didn’t get involved for whatever reason or weren’t allowed to get involved.
So now I ask, does your spouse know about your family financial programs and how to manage those programs? You know…things like sources of income after you are gone, banking and investment accounts, paying bills, insurance policies, credit cards, wills, etc.
Please get your spouse involved in your financial situations enough to handle the basics and be a savvy consumer. Train him/her if you have to. You don’t want to cause a hardship after your death because you didn’t involve your spouse in your family finances. At the very least, appoint a financial manager to run things after you are gone and introduce your spouse to the person. Share the master financial game plan.
Good point! Be a team with your finances.