Money matters: A few things to do before you die

Now, Google lets you decide what happens to your e-mails after you die, according to this story. It’s good that Google is giving users options as to what happens to their data, after they attain eternal rest. But, let’s face the ugly truth here, more often than not, death comes unannounced and there is a good possibility that once you go up there, your family is left to fend for themselves. No one wants to die early, but if you put a few things in order, and just in case you do visit the pearly gates, these things might just be easier for your family.

For physical/ financial assets

Review nominations: The first step is to ensure that all your accounts and financial documents have nominations on them. You would be surprised to know that there is a good possibility that you have somehow missed to give a nomination. Also, ensure that you have the right person as a nominee. For instance, as a single, your sibling was a nominee, but when you got married may be you wanted to make your spouse a nominee, but forgot about it. Or, may be it’s your former wife who is a nominee and you instead want to make your parents the nominee on you financial accounts, but you keep pushing it for later. Ensure all your nominations on insurance policies, mutual funds, shares and other investments are updated. Of course, being a nominee does not guarantee ownership of the assets, but it does make life a bit easy for your loved ones, in case you have an uncomplicated situation.

Buy a term insurance policy: Remember, when it comes to insurance, always keep it simple. Life insurance cover should have a term insurance policy and nothing too fancy or market-linked. Buy life insurance equal to 12-15 times your annual expenses or 8-10 times your annual income. Remember to take into account the debts (like a home loan) you owe while deciding for a term cover. Buying a term policy online is cheaper than offline policies.

Make a will: Estate planning is probably the best thing you can do to secure your family’s future. And, there are a number of ways you can make a will. You can simply write it on a paper, or meet your lawyer personally and get his help to put down on paper what should happen with your assets when you go up there. Another way is to make the will online. Here you don’t need to actually visit the lawyer’s office and you could make a will by simply on the net. Read more here. We know that if you are a younger person or belong to the middle age group, you probably might not like the idea of making a will. But, we still recommend you do so for your family’s sake.

Digital Property

As far as digital property goes, we probably are the first generation facing such questions, as to what happens to your emails, data and the like when you are no longer around. For instance, you buy a music CD, you can leave it to loved one, but can you do the same with a song you bought via iTunes? While relevant laws are still a work in progress as far as this issue goes, there are a few things you could do. But first, let’s understand whether your digital property can be divided into two parts. First is the financial digital property and the other “emotional digital property” that includes social networking sites. As far as digital property of the financial types, such as online banking passwords, demat accounts, and the like go, once you inform the organisation concerned, they pretty much wrap things for you. As far as financial emails and the like are concerned, Gmail has figured a way out.

Goggle too will have a way to deal with your data with them, once you are no longer around. We assume other social networking sites and cloud will follow suit. Should you share your passwords or not with a family member before you attain eternal rest, is entirely your call. But here’s what D. Prashad, self-employed youth from Mumbai, said, “I am now single, and I have adult siblings who are financially dependent on me. I have left all my financial papers and passwords for various accounts in my bank locker. If something happens to me, my siblings will have access to the lockers hence all the passwords and like. Until, am around, they can’t have access to the locker.”

Ensure that at least one person knows where you have kept documents related to your investments. For instance, take the case of this aged couple who had handed over their policies and other investment-related documents to their young son, who unfortunately died all of a sudden. The aged parents had no clue that the son had safely kept all the documents in a bank locker. They came to know of it only much later.

As far as your data on social media goes, it pretty much depends on what the site’s policy is. You could share you password to relatives, but there is a good possibility that if they use that password after you are no more, it could be unauthorised access. Of course, some social media websites are also working on after-death active accounts. As we said, the relevant law is still work in progress, until things firm up, at least fix the physical and financial property part as soon as possible.