Checklist for Life–an inventory of all your financial information

Huntington Bank just released what it calls a Checklist for Life. Checklist for Life is a seven page PDF document that allows you to keep an inventory of all your financial information. The idea behind the checklist is to encourage people to begin thinking about estate planning. Here’s how Huntington describes the Checklist:

Many people believe that they need an estate plan only if they are wealthy. The reality is that everyone needs to determine how their assets will provide the income and health care they will need in retirement. They must also ensure that upon their death, their assets will go to the beneficiaries they intended and that the taxes, fees and costs associated with their estates will be minimized. Without an estate plan, they can put the fruits of their labor in jeopardy. The first step is to develop an inventory of savings, investments, retirement plans, real estate titles and liabilities. To help you to develop that inventory, Huntington has created the Huntington Checklist for Life.

The Checklist could be used to help your parents organize their finances. For me, it’s a great way to put all of our financial information in one place so that my wife knows what we have and where it is. She’s not very involved in our finances, and this Checklist would provide her with a convenient road map to our money should she ever need it. The last thing I want to hear one day is, “Honey, you don’t look so good, tell me about our investments.”

Tagged as: financial planning, organization, tools