Need financial gratification?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Same here. I do all the money. She has a checkbook, an ATM card and a couple of credit cards. "Buy what you want...when it gets into four digits+, check with me so I can make sure theres enough money in the account".

Whenever I start telling her about the finances she humors me by pretending to listen. Once a quarter she does a good acting job of making a brief lament about not knowing anything about the money situation.

Its more or less an "allocated job", like mowing the lawn.

I wrote her a 3 page "where our money is, why its there, how the bills get paid, and what to do if I get hit by a bus" letter. Then I put that, digital copies of our wills, copies of all of our tax forms for the last 5 years, a file with a list of all of our on and offline accounts with passwords, and everything else that seemed relevant onto a crappy 16MB secure digital card that came with one of our old digital cameras.

 

[SteveR]

...I wrote her a 3 page "where our money is, why its there, how the bills get paid, and what to do if I get hit by a bus" letter.  Then I put that, digital copies of our wills, copies of all of our tax forms for the last 5 years, a file with a list of all of our on and offline accounts with passwords, and everything else that seemed relevant onto a crappy 16MB secure digital card that came with one of our old digital cameras.

I am working on the same kind of thing. A sort of "I'm dead now you have to deal with all this stuff" lettter. I am also trying to reduce the accounts I have and consolidating assets into few places (Vanguard) to keep the task of finding all the eggs I have hidden over the years. I have all the files in the safe and she has the combination. Just about everything is in there including notes on my mother's accounts and my late wife's Trust accounts. I just need to keep the files on accounts and passwords up to date.

I hope to get down to 4-5 institutions for our stuff...would like 1 what that is not practice right now. Too many accounts for other people than just us to take care of but if I were to drop dead today.....she would have a really good tool to go by or pass on to the next Trustee. There is a lot to be said for living simply.........I will work on that.