What if I died tomorrow calculation

[Like2Plan]

Tom,
I hope you are feeling better soon.

[scfr]

tomhole, I'm really glad that you are still here with us!

Beyond what you have already done to get your affairs in order, many people like to leave a "Letter of Instructions" for their loved ones. I have completed Jonathan Pond's, and so have my sister & mother. It is available for download free-of-charge at http://www.jonathanpond.com/letter

Does your employer give you the option of purchasing additional life insurance through payroll deductions?

Is your wife aware of the "shortfall?" If not, she may appreciate knowing. With more knowledge, she might feel empowered to make some changes (cut back spending even further, start working part time, etc.).

[corn18]

tomhole, I'm really glad that you are still here with us!

Beyond what you have already done to get your affairs in order, many people like to leave a "Letter of Instructions" for their loved ones. I have completed Jonathan Pond's, and so have my sister & mother. It is available for download free-of-charge at http://www.jonathanpond.com/letter

Does your employer give you the option of purchasing additional life insurance through payroll deductions?

Is your wife aware of the "shortfall?" If not, she may appreciate knowing. With more knowledge, she might feel empowered to make some changes (cut back spending even further, start working part time, etc.).

I just finished typing my 7 page paper entitled "Tom is dead, now what?". Walks her through everything from money, life insurance, retirement to funeral arrangements and what to do with the cars, house and college. She read through a draft and it made her cry but she got why I did it.

I have $1.6M of employer sponsored term life. $710,000 is gratis (although they do report it as imputed income). The rest is payroll deduction at a competitive rate.

I do not have a shortfall at this point. If I died tomorrow, she would never have to work, college and house can be paid for immediately and she has enough left to live forever without decreasing her current standard of living. That in and of itself has reduced my overall stress level significantly. I thought that was the case before, but now I KNOW and that is very calming for me.

Life is good.

Tom

[JoeP]

I just found this post after reading "heart attack" in another thread. Yikes! I'm glad you came through ok, and hopefully you are getting the treatment you need to continue living healthy and without complications.

You were given the chance to think long and hard about your situation, and thankfully, you took steps over the past couple years to be in a better position financially. A lot of people don't get that chance, so I (and I'm sure others) will ruminate on that as well.

Glad to hear you wrote your 7 page document. I've been meaning to do the same in a formal format. Right now, it is just a loose collection of verbal wishes, and a long list of hymns scrawled in the cover of my hymnal that I want sung at my service!

[Like2Plan]

I purchased a book called Get it Together with downloadable forms. (Forms are in a format that can be easily updated)
So far, DH and I have updated our wills (last time was 10 years ago). We had to have a Composition and Value of Estate worksheet (I made a spread sheet) in order for the attorney to do the wills for us. Our attorney said the spread sheet would be a good thing to update and keep with the wills.

The spread sheet has also been a jumping off point for me to double check our beneficiaries for each account--life insurance, checking accounts, retirement accounts and so on.

I still have a little work to do on making sure everything is TOD. In our case, we just have 1 child--so after DH and I are out of the picture everything passes to DS. Pretty simple.

I am going to go through the book/forms just so I don't forget anything, but it is a lot of information to digest. The aspect that I most worry about is the mine field the pretax retirement accounts (and to some extent the Roths, too) would be for my DS. The penalties for not taking RMDs for inherited IRAs are punishing and there are time limits. On the other hand, cashing them all in-in 1 tax year would result in much higher taxes than need be. So, what guidance are you leaving for your beneficiaries regarding your 401k/IRAs?

[corn18]

...The aspect that I most worry about is the mine field the pretax retirement accounts (and to some extent the Roths, too) would be for my DS. The penalties for not taking RMDs for inherited IRAs are punishing and there are time limits. On the other hand, cashing them all in-in 1 tax year would result in much higher taxes than need be. So, what guidance are you leaving for your beneficiaries regarding your 401k/IRAs?

I recommended that they just leave the 401k to distribute on the RMD schedule. There is enough non 401k money in the trust to fund everyone for a long time, so the 401k will just be extra money. If most of my wealth were tied up in the 401k, this would be a tough decision. If I had a $3M estate and $2M was 401k, I would not know how to handle that. Would like to hear what other's have done with respect to large 401k's (as a percentage of total inheritance) and estate planning.

My IRA's are all post tax and haven't grown much (just started contributing), so they can decide whether to pull them all or leave them to the RMD's. I recommended in my diatribe that they pull them as the tax impact would be small and that would simplify the outyear management of the trust.

Tom