Cohortskates

Financial freedom is being responsible, which starts with being responsible to those you love.
It is not okay when you get sick, or when you die, to leave financial chaos behind you for everyone else to clean up. It will be hard enough for those around you to bear the grief of your terrible illness or death; imagine, for a minute, their pain. Please don’t force them to deal as well with all the matters you could have taken care of while you were healthy or alive.
A big part of financial freedom is having our hearts and minds free from worry about the what-if’s of life. Each of us— from those who wish creditors would stop calling to those with millions—has to face the what-if’s. It is not enough to say you’ll “get to it” or to think somehow that you already have gotten to it. It is essential to get to it and know you have planned and prepared everything in the best way possible. You faced the reality of your present financial life. You face the reality of your death.
What I have discovered with my clients is that their state of mind has a direct effect on their finances. Merely knowing that you have taken care of the people you love always, in my experience, frees up major blocks on this path to financial freedom. If you take this step, you will feel freer already—in mind, body, and soul.
If you really love your spouse, your children, your life partner, you must say you love them, think you love them, and act as if you love them—which means doing, really doing, the things specified in this chapter. I cannot tell you how many people I have met through my work who have thought they had taken care of everything, only to have their loved ones discover that they had not. Please take these actions for yourself, for your peace of mind—and most of all for tht ones you love.

Not only that, the judge can also take charge of the funds you want your children to have (for private school, camps, music lessons, prom dresses) until they are eighteen years old. [or instance, if your children are underage, and all you leave them is that life insurance policy, a guardianship for those assets is created upon your death, naming the executor or someone else as the guardian for this money. Each year the guardian has to go back to court to account for the money spent on behalf of the children during the past year. When each child reaches eighteen, regardless of each one’s ability to handle the money on his or her own, each one’s share will be legally signed ovei lock, stock, and barrel. By the time they get it, too, there will not be as much as there could have been, because every year there have been guardian fees and fees to a lawyer to do the guardianship reporting.