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I CALL IT MY “BIG BOOK.” I got the name from a Washington Post article about compiling all the information your family will need to navigate your life, should you become incapacitated or after you die. It can include your will, insurance information, investments, real estate deeds, car titles—even who gets the family china handed down from Grandma.
I started my big book in Dropbox, the cloud filing service I can access from home or away. Eventually, I became a paid subscriber because my information is so sensitive and irreplaceable that I never, ever wanted to lose it.
I toiled for four long years collecting the information my family might need to carry on after I was gone. Yes, I’m a professional procrastinator. I felt under no pressure to complete my terminal mission until 2020, when my wife fell and suffered a traumatic brain injury, just as COVID-19 was starting.
My wife’s condition kept her in hospitals and rehab for six months. Her recovery has been miraculous. A stranger can meet her today, have a 30-minute conversation, and probably never pick up that she has significant cognitive impairments. Her doctors, concerned for her safety and because she has partial vision loss, require someone to be with her at all times.
I’m 77 and our children range in age from 46 to 52. They’d been asking about our financial condition and health for years. My wife and I were reluctant to discuss anything with them. We felt they could cope with our demise simply by talking to our accountant and lawyer. Her recent health challenges changed my mind.
My wife is anxious and obsessed with how she’d carry on if I died before her. I wanted to complete the big book to help ease her worries. A few weeks ago, I reviewed my Dropbox files to see if anything was missing. While there wasn’t much to add, I got a bad feeling that my heirs wouldn’t be able to retrieve all the information from the cloud.
I needed a better way to share the big book with my three children, my wife’s two kids, my accountant and my lawyer. I wanted a secure system with compartmentalized access, as not everyone needs to see every document.
Fortunately, I discovered the Bublup organizational app last year. I’d used it in my consulting practice to store information for myself. To my surprise, it had the exact file-sharing abilities I needed for my big book. Moving folders and files from Dropbox was easy and fast. The real test was yet to come. Could my kids find what they needed easily?
I sent them a Bublup invite so they could spend some time poking around the app. Two kids who live nearby came over one night to ask me questions. I had the computer hooked up to the wall-mounted TV and I was able to locate answers to most of their questions fairly quickly.
They also asked questions that I hadn’t anticipated. I took notes to add the missing items later that night. My focus had been on their mom’s health, insurance, doctors and medical files. It never occurred to me to add my own health information for my children.
The next test was to show the big book to the kids who don’t live nearby. The recorded Zoom call with them lasted 90 minutes. In a blended family, indicating who inherits what can get complicated, especially because my wife and I maintain our assets separately.
I handled the list of bequests with an Excel spreadsheet that shows what would happen if one parent died today and the other died the next day. I ran two scenarios to cover all the bases, no matter which of us dies first. The examples were clear to everyone.
The children now understand that we have enough resources to live another 20 years and then some. More important, we both feel more comfortable that they completely understand our health issues and can care for whoever might need their help.
More than 20 years ago, my wife pushed to buy long-term-care policies for both of us. We purchased generous policies—which you can no longer buy—with a 5% annual increase in coverage and no dollar or time limit on care. That’s fortunate, as it turned out that my wife needed round-the-clock care for about 18 months after her fall, and now has a caregiver all day. I easily handle the nights and weekends.
We had experience caring for our parents, who wanted to stay at home in their later years. Their example was invaluable. We remodeled our home several times so we could age in place. We can even convert the den into a hospital room if needed. All the doorways and openings are wheelchair accessible. The stairs have chairlifts, and we might even win the prize for the most grab bars.
I was also fortunate to receive the help of a wonderful case manager when my wife was first hospitalized. It’s my fulltime job to manage all the details regarding doctors, surgeries, hospitals, rehab facilities, home care, occupational therapy and so on. According to the experts, it can take a team of up to 14 medical specialists to care for one traumatic brain injury patient.
Fortunately, when things got rough, we discovered new friends in high places who came to our aid. We’ve been very lucky to get this far. It could have been much worse. So far, I haven’t needed to pass the big book on to the family. It’s ready, though, for when it’s needed.
Richard Hayman is a second-generation family business owner and inventor with three patents. He studied engineering at Cornell University and received a master’s degree from George Washington University. After his family’s business was purchased by a public company in 1999, Richard went on to enjoy several additional careers. He’s also been a STEM instructor for middle and high school students in after-school technology programs. Richard’s previous article was Investing in Family.
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Unless you encrypt the documents yourself prior to uploading them to a cloud service they are not secure. Employees of the service can easily decrypt them. Bank deposits boxes are loss-leader products. A bank has no obligation to keep or maintain them. Box content is not insured and, as the pandemic revealed, even physical access can be a real problem.
Caring for a loved one, in your case, your wife, and in mine, my teenage grandson, definitely adds to the anxiety of preparing your family for your own possible death or disability. I hear you on this topic, Richard! When I lost my husband in the early days of Covid and only a few months after a grandson came to live with us, I panicked. I knew we had adequate resources but could I access them? Fortunately, I had asked my husband about two years earlier to prepare a cheat sheet about our financial instruments and, separately, passwords. He never trusted storing things anywhere except on the hard drive of out laptop, not in the cloud. But that cheat sheet, which he had printed out, guided me to update and expand it so it now resembles your Big Book. I’ve given it to my adult children along with all the passwords so they can find everything easily if I become disabled or die. We also have a plan for the care of my grandson (his parents live overseas where travel is extremely restricted at this time). Fortunately, I remain in good health, but I am, like you, relieved that, I have things in good order. Still need to fine tune my will, but with beneficiaries on all my financial instruments, I don’t worry too much. I’ve also reduced what I called my husband’s various “buckets”: insurance policies, bank accounts, credit cards and investment accounts, from 27 to “only” 20-22!
One thing not mentioned that may be helpful is to list items that you don’t have but that your heirs may expect or have thought that you have. As mentioned in the WaPo article they spent a lot of time tracking down a life insurance policy. If you don’t have things like safe-deposit boxes or life insurance it may be worth mentioning that to save your heirs a fruitless hunt for assets they thought you have.
This is such an important article!
We have always maintained the “Redbook” for my better half as I was always on the road with the military and airline. I recently discovered that Fidelity maintains an online document storage system called FidSafe. I’m about to start digitizing the Redbook for the kiddos. I couldn’t find this option at Vanguard. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the article. I suspect it will help me make better decisions as I try to simplify my financial decisions.
Great idea. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Richard, for emphasizing the importance of a complete “big book” and the need to involve those who may need to turn to it. Also for considering the necessity to think ahead about aging in place. I am sorry to read of your wife’s injury and the life changes it brought for her and for you.
Call me old-fashioned, but my big book is in a safe deposit box. Both my likely executor and my contingent executor (an attorney) and representative (power of attorney) know this, and mention of the book and its location is also appended to my will. I do this to limit access to sensitive information by third parties (primarily at the law firm). The digital file comprising the book is stored on a hard drive that is well hidden and not on my computer.
Of course, you have the advantage of updating your big book easily at any time. I review mine biennially and make updates after major changes.
Jo Bo, thanks for reminding all of us that security of estate documents is paramount. If there were no on-going health issues, the need to keep my BIG BOOK (BB) constantly up to date would be far less important. When one spouse survives another, and that spouse has cognitive issues, the children need to be aware and, perhaps, involved early on. We can all breathe a bit easier now after a comprehensive review of the BB.
As I understand it, sometimes, after the owner’s death, a bank will prevent access to a safe-deposit box until it can be opened in the presence of someone from the local tax authority. That may not matter — but it’s a reason not to keep your funeral instructions solely in your safe-deposit box.
From our bad experience, this is true regardless if you are an authorized person. There were many lessons learned about having a safe deposit box.
Not if there are other authorized users of the safe deposit box. Most banks will also allow the safe deposit box to be owned by a trust. Our trust beneficiary and successor trustees (if needed) will have immediate access. They all have copies of our documents already though.
Richard, I am very sorry to read of your wife’s TBI. It’s one of those life-changing events that a family can only fully understand through experience.Thank you for your suggestions for preparations to make the load a little lighter.