What's important?

My dad's original password book

In the old days, when someone died, you'd go through his or her paperwork and find much of what you need to know. In the digital age, that isn't the case.

I was reminded of this while reading the AARP newsletter today. They were discussing why it's important for parents to fill in their adult children on their finances, their record keeping, where things are located. It's also really important to know where they've written down all their passwords to bank websites, insurance company websites and the like since much of that kind of business, if your parents are anything like mine, is conducted online. The passwords give you a brief window (before institutions learn of deaths and certain accounts are frozen) into the financial records of your parents.

We were lucky in that not only did we have my dad's original "little red book" (as well as my mom's "little red book" (she was not as diligent in keeping her records up to date), but my brother had the opportunity to sit with my dad to create a new password book that was more easily decipherable than his original one. (Even luckier still, over the months that my dad was in the nursing home, my brother had the chance to sit down with our dad and get all his assets entered into Quicken. So once my father had passed away, we didn't have to go searching for things. It was all consolidated in one place. Not many people are that lucky.)

The lesson here is actually something to be learned going forward. You may think that you're going to remember all your passwords to every website you access for all times. Maybe you will. But maybe someday you won't be there and your adult child might need to access some of your accounts. The lesson I was reminded of today is that I really need to make more of an effort to write down all my passwords to all my accounts... and to keep these records up-to-date. At some point, someone might need them. 

Another lesson I'm reminded of in one way or another nearly every day is how blessed I was to be able to spend the final months of my dad's life with him. He was in a nursing home so I consider myself more of his advocate than his caregiver. But I was there nearly every day for the last five and a half months of his life. We got closer than we ever were, close as father/daughter, close as two adults. For that, I will be forever grateful.