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Money Matters: Tips on sharing our financial facts with our kids

Nine out of ten of our adult children think we the parents ought to discuss our finances with them. We the parents think so too--to a slightly lesser degree of 3 out of 4 of us.  And yet, the 40/70 talk doesn't happen--at 50/80 or 60/90 or any other age pairing.

In part, it's because money is an emotionally charged topic. For those of us at the older end of the parenting cycle, we may see our portfolio as a measure of how we've done in life. If the nest egg is not as munificent as we hoped, we might not want our kids to see us as smaller than we've lived. Or we may see talking about how we'll finance retirement and long-term care as an uncomfortable reminder of our mortality and vulnerability. Or we may think we've got plenty of time to do it.

As someone who's going down that road right now, I'm finding it's not as painful or difficult as I thought it might be. Just the opposite. Adult children may come to the conversation with new ideas, technological efficiencies, fresher ways to manage things. In our family, we aren't having the conversation with an eye toward their taking over our finances but rather to their being prepared should such a time come. We are, after all, no longer in the flush of our youth or even in the stability of middle age. My operating principle: if they know what there is and where it is, it will be easier for them to handle the material side of our legacy--or pay our bills if we're temporarily unable to do so ourselves.

Here are some tips we've come up with on this first leg of our money-talk journey.

Passwords: I'm still stuck in the dark ages. I have my passwords listed alphabetically in a little notebook. Nothing wrong with that. But a digital form might be a good backup. The bottom line is that my kids need to know how to access my phone, my computer and my savings/checking accounts. Access to the phone is key. It's where accounts of all kinds send verification codes. Our kids won't be able to take care of business unless they are able to verify via our phone.

Estate Plan: They don't have to know the details of our will--who's getting what or whether it's all going to a favorite charity. They do need to know the processes we've put in place. Are investment accounts, checking accounts. saving accounts in joint names. Are there pension plans, powers of attorney, and health care directives that cede them decision-making powers--or name other parties to take over.

Largesse: If we're helping our kids out financially--sending them, say, $500 a month to pay down their mortgage--they need to know how solid that financing will be if something happens to us that puts that payment in jeopardy. If we fall ill and, say, need extended care, they may need to have contingency plans, as do we.

painting: Berthe Morisot

 

 

Leaving a Legacy: Updating the digital side of our estate plan

 

photo: courtesy Palo Coleman

 We're making our list, checking it twice: where the deed to our house is, what our bank account numbers are, who insures our health, house and car.

This is not for a phantom Santa. It's our attempt at a 40/70 list--the one our grown kids are supposed to ask for when they're 40 and we're 70, or thereabouts. Ours haven't asked yet, but we're getting ready. A sometimes overlooked part of that list: passwords and other cues for digital access to our accounts.

It used to be that when "the time" came, our grown kids could walk (tearfully, of course) through our home and find all the valuable physical objects and important papers, check our snail mail for account statements and bills, and otherwise get their hands on what they needed to pull together our estate. Today much of that is either delivered via email, stored in the cloud or kept in a folder on our computer. That means it's probably protected by passwords--for the accounts themselves as well as for our smartphones, laptops, email and social media accounts (where sentimentally precious photographs may be stored). Gaining access to those privacy-protected accounts could cost our estate time and money.

All of which means access to the digital side of our estate should be part of the 40/70 list. But not necessarily, estate planners say, part of our will. That's because wills are changed infrequently--or at least they should be--while online info needs regular updating, especially when we "forget" a password and have to change it, yet again.

 

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Parenting Grown Children: Roz Chast, Atul Gawande and the 40/70 talk about "Something Unpleasant."

 

Roz Chast was coming to speak at a community center near me. I signed on immediately. Love the New Yorker cartoonist's humor and outlook on life, but wanted to go especially because she would be talking about her latest prize-deserving tome, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant. The title refers, of course, to her parents' refusal to discuss with their grown (and only) child what they would do if and when they became frail and could no longer manage on their own--which eventually happened.

This is a long way of saying the book was lying around my house when Alpha daughter flew into town on a combo business-home visit trip. She breezed through parts of the book. (Despite the heaviness of its topic, the book is funny, emotionally frank and touching.) I mentioned that I was also reading Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, (not so funny, brutally frank and downright scary) a book her brother, aka Uber Son, had read this past summer and recommended.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise when Alpha daughter sent an email suggesting we all--daughter, son, dad, mom--read both books and have a book-club like discussion about them. The way she phrased it made it seem a charming idea: the togetherness of a book-reading adventure with our grown children.

I saw it as something else as well. The opening to discuss exactly what both authors were writing about--the "something unpleasant," and "what matters in the end" as it pertains to Paterfamilias and myself. In some circles, such discussions are known as the 40/70 talk. That is, by the time the grown child is 40 and the parents are 70, they should have had--before a crisis occurs--a “talk” about the parents' living and financial choices, health, driving and end of life care.

I haven't ask Alpha daughter if that's what she had in mind (she had also included in the reading list a third book, The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and living like the world's healthiest people), but it's something that's on mine. Paterfamilias and I have started to compile our 40/70 financial list: where our assets are, what our passwords to online accounts are, where our will is, where we've stored the deed to the house and car ownership papers. We haven't handed it over yet. But even more important than that list are the more anxiety-provoking Chast-Gawande issues: Do our children know and understand how each of us feel about end of life care, about what we do and don't want done if we are no longer able to make clear and rational decisions or are just not able to care for ourselves or each other. 

Our book club discussion may be the perfect opening to a conversation that needs to take place while we're still the active, busy people our kids are used to. The end may not be in sight but we need to share with our grown children how, when the time comes, we see ourselves ratcheting down our life style and aging with whatever grace we can muster. It may be an unpleasant subject for them (It made me uneasy whenever my mother handed me an updated list of the banks where she had parked her money), but it's downright anxiety-provoking for us.

Let that not be an excuse, I tell myself. Let these books be the entry point for saying what needs to be said and understood. Then we can put the whole business behind us and get on with our lives.

 

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