50 KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCEFamily Finances Are a Joint Project
M
y column on sharing pass-
words and other key financial
information with your spouse
(“Money Smart Women,” July 2019)
struck a chord with a number of
readers—myself included (more on
that later). “Your article sparked some
cleanup activity for my wife and me,”
writes Dale Tennison. “We went to
work to document everything, in-
cluding automatic payments and
withdrawals.” They also made sure
that family members know how to
access the information.
Other readers wrote about their
personal wake-up calls. “Our credit
cards were compromised several
times, and that was the incentive for
us to organize our records so that
changing credit card auto-payments
could be done easily and
quickly,” writes one reader.
She and her husband later
expanded the list to in-
clude information about
life insurance, pensions
and financial accounts.
For reader Craig Carlson,
the catalyst was help-
ing his elderly mother
manage the paper-
work after his father
passed away. Carlson
says that prompted
him to “start a check-
list for my wife.”
My friend Teri, one
of the savviest money
managers I know, took
charge of her family’s
finances when she
married later in life
and became part of a
blended family. When
she was planning to
retire, she says, “I
got serious aboutwhat he had done. Now she has to
deal with 100% of the consequences.
To avoid complexity, the Tennisons
have consolidated a number of ac-
counts with a single financial institu-
tion because “there’s less to document
and communicate.” And Teri and her
husband have cut back to one joint
credit card. Readers also stress the im-
portance of making sure both spouses
have access to joint accounts, as well
as keeping track of beneficiaries,
which Teri includes in her quarterly
financial statements (see “Living in
Retirement,” Feb.).
And that’s where I come in. After
writing my column, I sat down with
my husband to review our own fi-
nances. I realized, to my shock, that
when I rolled over my Roth 401(k)
account from work to a Roth IRA with
a financial firm, I had neglected to
name beneficiaries. I had assumed
sub consciously—and erroneously—
that beneficiaries on my other ac-
counts at the same firm would apply.
Needless to say, I hurriedly logged on
to my account to remedy this.
But that wasn’t all. My husband and
I live in Maryland, and tax law in the
state has changed since we last updated
our wills several years ago. We realized
it makes sense to revisit (and possibly
simplify) our designations. Now a visit
to our lawyer is on our to-do list.
Keeping an eye on your finances is
an ongoing process. But it can be less
intimidating if you take it one step at
a time and have a system that both of
you understand. “Our system is far
from perfect or even finished,” writes
one reader, “but it has given both my
husband and me much greater peace
of mind.” ■knowing the balances in all of our
accounts.” She keeps a spreadsheet
of all those accounts (including pass-
words), which she updates quarterly.
“I tell my husband he’s not allowed to
change any passwords without telling
me,” she says.
Readers have adopted various strat-
egies for safeguarding their informa-
tion. “We keep a paper copy under
lock and key and another encrypted
on my laptop,” says one. “I don’t trust
security in the cloud,” writes another,
“so I keep my information in a file on
a USB f lash drive. All my wife needs to
do is look for that file, and (hopefully)
she’ll find everything she needs.”Streamline your system. In addition to
sharing information, it’s also critical
to keep things as simple as possible.MAKE SURE YOU
HAVE ACCESS TO KEY
ACCOUNTS, AND KEEP
THINGS AS SIMPLE
AS POSSIBLE.MONEY SMART WOMEN Janet BodnarCommentaryJANET BODNAR IS EDITOR AT LARGE OF KIPLINGER’S
PERSONAL FINANCE MAGAZINE. YOU CAN CONTACT HER
AT [email protected].A friend of mine re-
cently lost her husband
after a long battle with
ALS. She is a profes-
sional woman with
a law degree,
and she and her
husband had
worked with a
financial adviser. But her
husband had made their
financial arrangements
so complex that she con-
fessed she “only under-
stood about 30%” ofMONEY