Banking, Bills, Passwords…and the “Little” Things

I think it is safe to say that there are some things in life that we take for granted. We know the sun will rise. We generally feel that when we sit in a chair, that the chair will support us. We also have many things in life that we just know from past experience will continue on without giving much thought. However, in our current times with the COVID-19 virus, we can see how quickly things can change.

Many of us do not plan for that day in which life can change suddenly. However, it’s the little things that are often forgotten, or overlooked that can become the most critical. When Lyn was stricken with her stroke and cancer, we quickly discovered how many things we had overlooked.

Lyn loved working with numbers, math, and solving complex puzzles! Lyn loved doing income taxes to see the puzzle come together. She enjoyed balancing the books and strategizing how we were going to become debt free! I still cannot decipher the complex spreadsheet she left behind on our computer. I almost think it was a joke she left to remind me how much I depended on her financial duties! She was brilliant in working with budgets and numbers.

I always said, “God thank you that I don’t have to focus on the monthly bills, the financial picture, and the taxes!”

On the original blogpost I wrote that I would be writing about our journey. Some of the situations would be about life + faith, some posts would be medical in nature, and some would be just situations that we wanted to convey to help others that are going through a crisis or are just trying to move forward after a loss.

After Lyn’s stroke and cancer diagnosis I was suddenly thrust into needing to take charge of many of the financial duties. Even during a crisis, the bills still needed to get paid, unfortunately. As ridiculous as it sounds, I quickly realized I was not nearly as equipped to get the bills paid as I should have been. I had some clue of what needed to get paid, however, I had no clue of what bills were paid electronically, by check, or even how often. All I focused on was that we were sticking to the monthly budget and trying to get debt free!

Within days after Lyn was released from the hospital, she quickly realized that bills needed to get paid, and she needed to give me a crash course. Oh boy, was that both challenging and humorous! I realized at that moment that I should have been much more engaged in the process because it was like we were talking a foreign language to each other. And, in fact, we were talking a foreign language. Lyn could not speak due to the stroke, and had difficulty conveying information to me on what needed to be done. So, we were indeed speaking different languages.

As a reminder, Lyn also could not write very well at this point, so she pointed, and attempted to draw pictures, arrows, and show me old bills. She could not remember the password to log into the computer, or the banking. I am so thankful that Lyn had some of the passwords stored in a secure location where she could direct me to log into the various accounts where we were making payments. Once we could break through that barrier, we were able to get the necessary bills paid.

She was able to show me which bills were auto paid, e-pay, and manual payments. It wasn’t difficult or confusing as much as there was just the language barrier that made a task that should take three or four minutes, to taking three to four hours! Something so simple, such as the need to tell me why money needed to be transferred to a different account on a specific day took FOREVER! I had no clue because she couldn’t verbalize it at that point.

Besides paying the bills, there are many other things that I never considered. I didn’t even know the passcode for my wife’s cell phone. There were people texting her that had no idea that she had a stroke and cancer diagnosis. I had no way to respond to these friends until her phone could be unlocked. Thankfully Lyn was able to remember her pattern on the phone to unlock her device.

On a side note, her remembering the pattern was just a small, but important victory that her brain was slowly healing. We rejoiced and gave thanks even at this small victory.

In addition to the phone messages, I needed to login to her emails to get banking notifications, and various other normal emails that needed to be checked or returned. I also needed to change all the banking alerts from her email and phone, to my phone.

Many people forget about the social media accounts. Thankfully once Lyn was able to get into her phone, most passwords that she did not have, could easily be changed. However, if one does not have access like I had, it can be impossible to access, or shut down a social media account, and they will live into perpetuity.

An example of this was when my wife passed away, I wanted to memorialize her Facebook account. The only way this can be done is to make someone your Legacy Contact. A Legacy Contact is someone you choose to look after your account if it is memorialized. If you add a Legacy Contact, that person will be able to make decisions about your account once it is memorialized. My wife made me the legacy person for her account, which made it possible to memorialize her account, and I can change things like her profile picture.

Retirement accounts, passwords, and power of attorney’s are vitally important to have worked out before a loved one becomes ill. Unfortunately, in our situation, while we had a living trust, her government retirement account needed to have its own power of attorney signed by my wife so that I could make decisions on how we wanted disbursement to happen, and how we wanted to retire her. I needed to make decisions if we were going to have her quickly retire under a medical disability, which made a huge difference financially.

This became an issue toward the end of her life. While early on we solved the bill-pay fiasco, we did not know about the retirement confusion and requirements. I needed to have close friends jump into action and connect me with the necessary experts to solve this huge and potentially disastrous situation. Simply put, certain decisions needed to be made prior to Lyn’s passing because it impacted how her retirement funds would be handled, and if I would receive health insurance benefits under her.

It was extremely stressful, and I have been telling friends about our situation, so no one has to go through this stress like we did.

Unfortunately, no one knows when a rough situation in life will happen. In our case, Lyn was instantly stricken with a stroke and cancer diagnosis. Thankfully in our case, Lyn was able to recover enough to assist me through the first steps of taking control. However, we talked about this situation and we learned from it. We became vocal when talking to friends to have these “little” details worked out. These little details are not so little when one really thinks about it.

Lyn and I truly became a team in all aspects, including the financial area. Lyn wanted me to be prepared for the, “what if”, scenarios that might come up. More specifically, Lyn wanted me to be equipped to continue moving forward in life if the cancer caused another stroke, and even planning for death.

I am thankful to God that He not only gave us the two-plus years together where we could live, laugh and love. I am also thankful to God that Lyn was able to step in and train me to be more engaged and attentive to the things that I took for granted. These little things that I never paid attention to had the potential to create serious issues down the road. I discovered that having my affairs in order did not just mean having a living trust and getting bills paid. Having my affairs in order meant being able to take control of things that often go unattended and preparing for all situations that might happen.

Again, with all that is going on with the world right now it should cause us to pause and ponder what are things that might need a little attention to have peace of mind. Are your affairs in order? Trust me, paying attention to these things on this side of a life-changing event is much easier than on the other side.