If you were to die today what would your family be left with?

a receipt to pick the casket.

Not yet. It keeps nagging at me though.

My husband knows that I want to be cremated.I don’t care what happens to my ashes.
I told my niece to come get my jewelry box.My art supplies,I would like given to a friend that teaches kids.Anything else,doesn’t matter.

My iPod. That’s significant because I am a music fiend. Really obsessed with it. My family knows that, and usually associates me with every time they see a violin, or hear a piece of classical music.
And my extensive book collection because I am also known as the nerd of the family, different from all of them because I do really well in school.

Interesting question. I have kept every letter and every email I received since I was 18 or so. I have all my tax records and electric bills and credit card bills in paper form, and now in electronic form since like forever. My kids could review these things to find out more about me if they wanted to. I hope they will. They’ll probably just throw it out, but I’ll be dead so I won’t care. I should probably review it, or maybe even get it all scanned into PDFs. Then it’ll be easy to store.

I also have my diaries, such as they are, in electronic format going back, probably, to 1980 or so. I wrote very irregularly. The only problem is that they are password encrypted, and my wife knows the password… if she can remember how it was created. I hope she didn’t write it down, somewhere. There’s a lot of stuff in there I don’t want her to know until I’m dead. Maybe she won’t look. She never wanted to hear any details when I told her what I had been doing.

Maybe my kids will. Maybe they’ll want to keep their image of me intact. Maybe they’ll want to understand what I’ve been dealing with, because some day they might have to deal with the same thing.

Our financial records are all on my computer (in Quicken), but they are also duplicated with the mutual fund company we use. My insurance policies are all in files in my file cabinet. It’ll take a little looking to find everything (even I can’t find everything), but it’s all in one place.

This is making me a bit sad because the reason I kept all those records was I thought I might be an interesting enough person that my children would want to know me and would be willing to plow through this stuff. I hope they will, but maybe it’s too much. Or maybe it won’t be worth it.

There’s a personal record and a forensic accounting record. If I want to know what I did when, all I have to do is look at what I spent money on in 1998. It’s all there, even though I didn’t keep a diary. With a little bit of prompting, I can remember a lot more.

So I think if I died today, my family would be left with a lot. Whether they would take advantage of it, I have no idea.

They would be left with a lot of insurance money. My boys will cherish my guitars and album collection….my wife’s dreams will finally come true…I will finally get a much needed rest.

About $485 a pound.

Achey breaky hearts :¬(

one less problem

My daughter is my only beneficiary, she would inherit a decent amount of cash,and the cats & geese. lol

My home is small but very cute, nicely decorated, so she would also have a lot of art, and other assets to sell or keep.

But..being of sound mind I plan on spending all my money while I am still alive.

She also knows I desire to be cremated and that if she cannot find appropriate homes for my animals I wish to have them euthanized to avoid any trauma.

A huge garage sale, not to mention the garage & the house that comes with it… :-/
I guess my insurances too…. If my son ever turned up I like to think he made use of my tools & not just sell them. But they’d be his to with what he pleased…
It’s just a shame I wouldn’t be here for the entertainment & the arguments about who gets what. I’ve no interest in wills, let em fight for it…… :-/

@Scooby

Yeah, nothing like an estate settlement to bring out the Hyenas beneath the fuzzy little ducklings! lol

I walked out on a family members estate dispersal of which I was one of 4 beneficiaries some years ago…what a flock of Vultures!

Terrible experience, terrible!

120.000 insurance money (euros)(almost tempting to fake my death) A load of computer stuff, some real bad crappy furniture, and thats about it really.

Some Beatles memoribilia, a lot of blue jeans, many vegetarian cookbooks, a bunch of different colored Keds, a billion disks and photo albums full of family pictures I’ve taken and a banjo.

They’d get some 200K in various life insurances, some 70K in school loans debt, 2 amazing children that I brought into this world and my activism that, I think, has affected many – they’d have my ideas and there are people (friends, as well) who would go on teaching them to others.

I’ve been sitting here for sometime thinking about this…..

The only items of any value I own are three harps of various sizes. Otherwise it’s all small-fry items (tv, playstation 2, wii, hifi – small change stuff). I don’t have any debt however, (nor any savings worth writing home about) so I should be quite easy to tidy up after.

I’m trying to think what would be of special interest to my family; what would open their eyes to me in ways they had not seen in my living years… I did write a note-book full of all the terrible things I experienced during one very bad and painful relationship, that no-one has ever read nor been told the content of. I guess that would make an interesting read.

Otherwise, I think perhaps the most valuable thing I can leave for my family is a list of names and contact details for all the people I have ever come into touch with in life… I hope that I have enriched other’s lives and that they would share their memories with my family. I’m quite a different person around my family than I am in my own space or with friends, so I think they would be quite surprised by other’s experiences of me.

Debt, some antiques, a VW Beetle and some pets.

My wishes, to be cremated. No funeral, no visitation. I just want an internment (immediate family), then for family and friends to get together afterwards for a party.

I’d want my ashes buried next to my Mom’s.

I just put this question up because I thought maybe for the new year some would like to get some things in order so that family won’t be left without something from you and about you. How many things do you have that others don’t know about but will be found once you pass on? Are there things you want others to find or know that they won’t unless you do something now? Just some thoughts to think about. Thanks for all the responses I have enjoyed reading them.

Oh..I learned that chewing Betel nut in asia last spring was N-A-S-T-Y stuff!

After partying at a street bar with friends I asked our cab driver for a chew…I handled it well but thought I was going to puke! haha

My husband is the primary beneficiary on my $150,000 life insurance policy and he would receive my half of the community property, plus all my IRA’s and other investments.

No, but i need to get them in order. It’s always, i’ll do that tomorrow!

My husband would collect the money from my life insurance. The only debt I have is my student loans.

There are many things in the house that they will have to remember me. Tons of pictures, books, cards, drawing, decorations that I picked out, etc. My son knows who I am and I’m sure my husband would be sure to keep my memory alive.

As far as my wishes for after death, my husband already knows I want to be cremated (after any usable organs are donated to others) and my ashes stored in an urn until he dies. Once he dies, we want our ashes mixed together and spread on a certain part of the land his family owns at their hunting camp.

@Coloma

^^^^^^^

Oops..last answer was displaced…never mind! lol

Unpaid debts prolly lol.

Yeah, dying is a great way to save money! lol

I am to be given to university of alberta for medical students to cut up, and if they refuse me, I am to be plasticized. At present there’ a bunch of money, but I have some travelling to do. I have a wee life insurance policy. I’ve been in this hose for 30 years and am not good at throwing away so they’ll have plenty here.