Don't Skip This Step!

One of the most heartbreaking things I've seen over 24 years advising families is a surviving spouse or family member dealing with an unorganized estate. Not having your affairs in order puts a huge burden on your family and compounds the stress of their loss.

According to a recent survey, 61% of people don't have a will. Even those that have a will have failed to organize their financial information to make it easy for their loved ones to act.  Don't be one of them.

Leaving a big mess of your affairs and estate plan will make life suck for your family when you die. A messy estate can take major financial and emotional tolls on your family.

Take the simple steps outlined this week and give a beautiful gift to those you leave behind.

Here Are Your Action Items for the Week

* Listen to episode 50.  We discuss the basics of organizing your estate.

* Review these worksheets. These 3 worksheets will give you the basics to make things easier for your heirs:

* 9 Important Estate Planning Steps

* What Your Survivors Need to Know

* What to Do When A Loved One Dies

* Compete these to give your spouse or family the gift of an organized estate.

* Organizing Your Financial Life

* Create an I.C.E. Plan

* Family Love Letter

* Ask questions. If you're stuck or unclear about something, shoot me an e-mail. I'll do my best to answer your questions. Simply click here and ask your questions.

Don't Miss Friday's Webinar

Don't forget to tune in to the "Can Carl Retire? Results Webinar" this Friday at 3:00 CST.

You'll watch live as Carl finds out whether he can achieve his ideal retirement.

Plus, you see live as I stress test Carl's plan against the most common worries in retirement:

* Bad market returns

* High inflation

* Long-term care costs

* Outliving his assets

Special Note: If you can't attend Friday, still sign up to receive replay information.

 

[spoiler]

The Retirement Answer Man Episode #50

Holy cow! Fifty episodes! Where did the time go?

Well, thank you so much for joining me today! My name is Roger Whitney and this is the Retirement Answer Man Show where we are dedicated, committed to helping you dream up, plan out, and live your ideal retirement. How cool would that be?

This is an important day. This is Step Four, the last step of the “Can Carl Retire?” series that we’ve been hosting throughout the month of January where you had the chance to plan alongside Carl, a fellow listener, as we walk through a retirement planning process.

There’s still time to sign up. You’ll have a little catching up to do but you can go to rogerwhitney.com and sign up in the upper right-hand corner and you can get all the resources that we’ve been sharing to plan alongside Carl as we walk through each week his retirement plan.

Today is the last step, Step Four, and this is all about not leaving a mess for your family. It’s all about cleaning up your mess. When we live a long life, we end up leaving a little bit of a mess that we’ve got to make sure we clean up at the end so we’re going to talk with Carl about organizing his estate plan and I’m going to share with you five or six resources I think it is this week on how you can organize your financial life and estate to leave a beautiful gift for your family.

I want to get going here. We’re going to go right to the disclosure and I’ve got to turn down this happy music though. My attorneys do not like happy music when I talk about the all-important disclosure and that is only you know your financial situation so you need to consider this podcast and my website and, well,