The Advice Column

[Cancer]

This one is more serious than most other items in the thread.

 

If you have access to your financial accounts and other electronic assets secured with biometric keys, consult those providers and arrange for alternate access by your heirs in the event of your sudden, untimely death.

 

The widow of the fellow mentioned in this post is contending against exactly this problem, because apparently he didn't do that.  She can't get to any money.

 

(In my state, community property accounts remain open and usable to the surviving spouse without any interruption.  But if the survivor doesn't have the access tools to get in ....)

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, Cancer said:

This one is more serious than most other items in the thread.

 

If you have access to your financial accounts and other electronic assets secured with biometric keys, consult those providers and arrange for alternate access by your heirs in the event of your sudden, untimely death.

 

The widow of the fellow mentioned in this post is contending against exactly this problem, because apparently he didn't do that.  She can't get to any money.

 

(In my state, community property accounts remain open and usable to the surviving spouse without any interruption.  But if the survivor doesn't have the access tools to get in ....)

 

We went further and set up a trust to which the majority of our accounts and assets belong.  In the event of our untimely demise, the named executor of the trust legally controls everything, neatly avoiding probate court for the most part.  The catch is that trusts are f_ing expensive to set up.  But in theory that should get them access to the electronic stuff eventually, though ideally passwords should be documented separately to simplify the process.  The hard part is keeping them both secure and updated--I would recommend using a password manager for that, then you only have to document the one main password and associated email accounts.  I use Bitwarden which works well and hasn't been hacked (yet).

 

The other thing to mention is don't keep certain critical documents in a safety deposit box.  You can wind up in a catch-22 where the document that grants your successors access to the safety deposit box is... in the safety deposit box.  We had something like this happen with FIL, who left behind a key to the safety deposit box, not realizing that you needed two keys to get into it, and no one at the bank knew what to do about it.

 

None of this applies to me because I'm immortal, but the rest of you might benefit from the advice.

[Cancer]

Yeah, trusts are (usually) the way to go if you have more than $10,000 to leave behind, but their details vary from state to state so I won't go into specifics, and you will need a lawyer.  (And I have utterly no idea how things work in countries other than the US.)  We are now writing wills and setting up trusts for both of us.  The lawyer we're using for that is both good at it (he taught tax and inheritance law for years) and is someone we've known since the late 1970s; he was the first of the "Holy S--t!" exclaimers in the anecdote I got published in KODT's Tales from the Table some fifteen years back.

[Starlord]

9 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

We went further and set up a trust to which the majority of our accounts and assets belong.  In the event of our untimely demise, the named executor of the trust legally controls everything, neatly avoiding probate court for the most part.  The catch is that trusts are f_ing expensive to set up.  But in theory that should get them access to the electronic stuff eventually, though ideally passwords should be documented separately to simplify the process.  The hard part is keeping them both secure and updated--I would recommend using a password manager for that, then you only have to document the one main password and associated email accounts.  I use Bitwarden which works well and hasn't been hacked (yet).

 

The other thing to mention is don't keep certain critical documents in a safety deposit box.  You can wind up in a catch-22 where the document that grants your successors access to the safety deposit box is... in the safety deposit box.  We had something like this happen with FIL, who left behind a key to the safety deposit box, not realizing that you needed two keys to get into it, and no one at the bank knew what to do about it.

 

None of this applies to me because I'm immortal, but the rest of you might benefit from the advice.

 

So you don't assume a new identity every 40-50 years?

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Starlord said:

 

So you don't assume a new identity every 40-50 years?

 

Trusts would actually make it trivially easy to hand over assets from one identity to another.  

 

But I wouldn't know.

[Pariah]

Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it. 

 

(A/K/A the Sunk Cost Fallacy)

[Pariah]

It's better to have your nose in a book than in someone else's business.

[tombrown803]

But what if the book is the someone else's business?

 

[Cancer]

Be cool.  Don't drool.

[Pariah]

Stop being afraid of what could go wrong. Start being excited about what could go right.

[Bazza]

There are two types of people in the world. Those who are x and those who are y. 

[Cancer]

If you're a student having trouble in a class, don't hide from the instructor, and don't break dates for make-ups.  That rapidly consumes the instructor's patience, and convinces the instructor that everything you have said is in bad faith.  The last thing you want an instructor to say about you is something like this, and he won't say it while you're in the room.

[Pariah]

Three Keys to Giving a Successful Speech:

 

1. Be sincere.

2. Be brief.

3. Be seated.

 

 

Alternately, Three Ingredients to a Good Speech

 

1. A strong beginning,

2. A strong ending, and

3. As little space between them as possible.

[Starlord]

[Bazza]

 

 

[Old Man]

I've done more than that--I don't just read bad books, I've partially written bad books.

[Bazza]

Practice makes perfect. 

[Pariah]

The worst book you could ever write is better than the great book you never start writing. 

[Old Man]

With practice, my books will be worse than any other!

[L. Marcus]

Yeah!

[Pariah]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

With practice, my books will be worse than any other!

 

That's the spirit!

[Cancer]

Hey, here's the best part of my book so far.

scratch.pdf

[Pariah]

Vote, if you're able.

[Starlord]

[Pariah]

If you don't take the time to do it right, you'll have to make the time to do it twice.