Ten Step Checklist for Smart Retirees

With hints of spring emerging all around us, many of us will soon begin undertaking spring cleaning tasks. While we typically work on organizing an area of our home, donating unused items or sprucing up our garden, this can also be a great time to evaluate our financial and personal records.

One way to do this is by ensuring your financial and personal documents and information are up-to-date and organized. Today, we would like to share with you a "Ten Step Checklist for Smart Retirees," written by Dr. Mikol Davis and Carolyn Rosenblatt of Aging Parents. While this checklist was originally created for retirees, we find it to be a helpful guide for all ages.

Ten Step Checklist for Smart Retirees:

1. Decide whom you want to communicate with about your future. Set a date and sit down together.
2. Have a signed, notarized durable power of attorney.
3. Have a signed advance health care directive (You can get items 2 & 3 free on the internet)
4. Make a list of all bank accounts, passwords, hard drive backup, investment records, and financial planning you have done, with people to contact. Give written permission to your loved ones to talk with your lawyer, accountant, and financial planner.
5. Make a list of all insurance policies, including life, disability, health, property, earthquake, and anything else you own that will protect your heirs.
6. Make a copy of your mortgage statement, any other loans, and debts, financial statements, and bank statement. Keep in one place. Update quarterly.
7. List your physicians, care providers, and medications. Give written permission for your loved ones to speak with your doctors.
8. Create or have on hand information about your wishes for burial or disposition of your remains.
9. Update your will and/or trust with a local attorney. Laws change and these need to be up to date in your state.
10. Have a family meeting to give items 2-9 to your loved ones and explain them.