Slow Down * Enjoy Life

If you quote me one price and less than two weeks later quote me a higher price, you’re not going to get my business.  Does it really cost this much to fill out some forms??? 

On top of that, everyone has a different opinion about what to do when it comes to estate planning … a will, a trust (revocable or irrevocable), a 529 plan … the list goes on.   I mean, I know what I want, is it too hard to just get a simple answer and for everyone to be on the same page??  It’s going to take [this lawyer] maybe 8 hours to fill out these forms and [the lawyer’s] hourly rate is some $250 so that’s going to be … $2000+.  WTF!  Should i just use legal zoom?  Can’t I just fill out these forms myself?  So, a trust is a little more complicated and perhaps incurs additional costs but a will for $950?  Legal zoom lists it’s price for a will and power of attorney at < $200.  And they’ll do a trust for ~ $200…so let me see, < $400 with legal zoom or $2000+ with a lawyer.  Hmmm!

It was shortly before all this happened that I either read or heard on tv a story about ‘what happens to your digital life after you pass?’.  I know for me that I have in excess of 30 different user names and passwords at various sites throughout the internet.  I can’t even remember all of them myself, so for someone else to figure them out it seems virtually impossible.

Never did I think that I would be right here in the middle of all this. 

I know enough about her to get me past basic security, but what about those custom security questions … what is your favorite author, where did you meet your hubby?  I mean, thankfully I know the general answers but not necessarily the exact answer she would have typed in.  Besides the fact that one of the above mentioned questions brought tears to my eyes, my answer was not quite the same as hers; I would have said the town and she said the specific venue.  Thankfully through enough guesses I finally figured out her user name and password and was able to get into the account, but what if I couldn’t figure it out.  Then it would have been one more call to a company to explain the painful situation again.  And that’s only one site, what about all the rest?  What about the ones that I don’t even know about?

We create trusts and wills to assign assets, but what do we do about our digital lives?

I’m extremely paranoid about providing my credentials to some 3rd party.  The stuff I’d be handing out provides access to all my financials so should it land in the wrong hand I would end up in a credit nightmare…a nightmare nearly as bad as the one I’m already experiencing.

So other than writing down all this stuff, storing it in a safe location, and letting someone know where that information is located…and then keeping it up to date, what are our options?  I don’t know right now.  I’m probably not the only one that would be concerned.

A family member who experienced his own challenges in life offered some very helpful advice soon after the accident and I continue to refer back to it on a daily basis.

Whenever times get tough and seem impossible, I try to think of something funny, something happy, something about our life that will help me get through whatever I’m dealing with at a particular moment in time.

I turned around during the services at Queen of Martyrs and just about the entire church was filled.  I thought to myself for a brief moment, somewhat jokingly, that a few of these people might be here because they know how much grief Cari would have given them if they didn’t show up.  Now I know that’s not the case but she always let people know when they left early or didn’t show up, that she wasn’t particularly happy with them.  Looking back, she just loved having people around her and never wanted the day or whatever it was to end.

There are so many hundreds of little things that I continue to remember.  Each day seems to be just has difficult as the one before but I really hope and know that she’ll always be in my thoughts.