Episode 28 – In Case of Emergency Conversations to Have Now
In Case of Emergency Conversations to Have Now – Life is largely based on plans….whether it’s planning our day, the next family vacation or how to buy that new car.
So what happens if you can’t be in charge of the plans. What if something happens to you and you need someone to take over your role?
I know, not fun to think about but as planners we know the importance of contingency plans.
Well…your contingency strategy starts with conversations. I mean talking with your loved ones about who takes over, how and where all your information is should something happen to you – the family CEO.
In this podcast, I am going over how to have these chats now while it is comfortable. They are a gift to your family, trust me. Listen now so you can feel more at ease having these talks with your loved ones.
Show Notes:
Hello and welcome to another round of “Our Heart of Money Talks.” This is Episode 28, and we’re going to talk about the “in case of an emergency” conversation to have right now with your family. I know firsthand how hard this is to actually follow through with. We know we should be doing this. It’s on our mind, but it feels about as big as Mount Everest, especially on busy days.
Never mind that though. The days, the weeks that go by in life with work and family, are crazy busy. So today’s reminder to just tackle it, be done with it. And then you’re free to focus on living your life. The Family CEO Organizer helps tackle this and it puts everything in one place. Then you store it and you just let somebody know where it is.
Hopefully, it’s locked up because you might be writing in, your account numbers and your PINs. So I want to share a true story here that helped inspire the idea that we need to have these “in case of emergency” talks. This is about a young couple in their early thirties, with small children. They were farmers living on the family farm.
They were extremely busy raising a really young family and running the farm and working super hard at it. Then tragedy hit and a farming accident ended up taking his life. The young widow and her husband had never talked about the emergencies and the what-ifs. They had no life insurance or savings. They had never had open discussions.
Ask yourself this – if something were to happen, what would you like at your funeral? Would you like to be cremated or buried? As a joke in my house, we talk about the fireworks that I’m going to have at my funeral. Those are the healthy talks we have…and well, as you can imagine they didn’t have them.
So what ends up happening is there are some family disputes. They started to happen after he passed away. His family wanted him buried in the family plot and his wife wanted him to be cremated with a different type of service. In the end, she was exhausted from grieving and just ended up caving on everything.
It caused family fights and heartache for everyone. So the biggest gift we can give is to talk about your wishes and then write them down. For me, talking is super easy. I am the queen of TMI.
I overshare. I talk about things all the time with my family.
I’m even talking to you every week, all the time – I know you’ve heard me. But I can share this – the hard part was to organize my accounts and logins for my family. So I might’ve shared all the details of what I want when I pass away. That was easy for me.
The hard part was actually then sitting down to log in, putting in my accounts and the PINs and where things are. And I remember doing it because if I had this thought, “If I’m in the hospital for a length of time, I could at least hand over the running of the household, the bills and accounts to somebody else.”
They could just pick up this binder and run with it. Same thing in my business, I’ve tracked it all down so that payroll can continue bills, continue to be paid and business just flows. The contingency plan in business is important, but so is doing this for our home. I actually found it harder to do for my home.
If I’m high on morphine with all my limbs broken, I don’t want to try and remember my logins. Good luck getting that out of me.
Oh my goodness – a true story yesterday. I had to call a lifeline in the grocery store because I couldn’t remember my debit card pin. So I can’t even imagine if I’m hopped up on drugs in the hospital.
Oh, and you know what? This just sparked a memory. I just remembered right now that when my grandma was in the hospital – this is quite a few years ago – she’d had a stroke and she shared a room in the hospital. I can’t remember if it was with two other people or three other people, but there was an elderly woman and I’m assuming the visitor was a son or relative.
He was trying to get information from her and she wasn’t responding. It wasn’t malicious – I could tell that. I wasn’t alarmed. This was somebody trying to help take care of things for her, and it was awful. I remember, I felt really sorry. She was unresponsive. He wasn’t getting any answers and that resonates right now.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the rest of my family took organization for granted. That’s because Grandpa was fine and he had everything in his special Martha Stewart Tupperware filing box with all his information in case something happened.
I look back right now and it puts a smile on my face, thinking about how organized he was. It is so nice, but it was really unappreciated until the time came when we actually needed it.
Okay, so let’s jump to how we start these conversations with our parents.
Start with the CEO Family Organizer. Honestly, tell your parents, “Okay. You know what? I’m going through the process for my family. What would you like? What have you started?
That’s going to open the door for conversation.
Once you tell them that you’re doing it, ask them if they want a copy and if they have one like that. That might make a really easy segue into them opening up. They might say, “Hey, you know what? We’ve already done the work and gathered everything. It’s in our filing cabinet already.”
You’re going to remember that one day down the road, or they might say,” You know what? We really haven’t done it yet. What a great idea.”
That’s the conversation starter and it’ll just flow from there. You’ll be able to take it on from there, but it really is the icebreaker. Now, when it comes to our spouse or our adult children, I suggest you just start putting things to paper, use your organizer, and then make a date to sit and share where you stored it. Then ask for help with it from your partner if you have one.
Ask them to help fill out some of the stuff in there. There’s just no easy dance around this. We just have to start communicating.
Send me a note. If you have any questions or if you want to purchase the Family CEO Organizer, we’ll get it off to you. It’s truly a conversation starter and it makes things a lot easier.
Email me at [email protected]. Until next week, take care.