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Get Your Shit Together

getyourshittogether.org

51–60 of 154 posts

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#51
How does disability insurance work for students?

I am going to be entering medical school. You typically get disability after you graduate, but if something happened in those four years, I could be a hundred thousand in debt with no viable career option as an MD.

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#52
post #21

This is great advice all around, but get a local lawyer involved to prepare your will. Even in US, there is not a single set of laws that apply to wills and power of attorney. It varies state by state. With a generic template pulled from the internet, you could just be doing a whole lot of work and ultimately be ending up with a document that has little legal basis. Do your loved ones a favor - hire a lawyer to do it…

There are a few grammatical errors in these documents as well that do not inspire confidence. Also, you better be damn sure that you can trust the person you give power of attorney to -- the document provided here assigns power of attorney immediately, not on incapacitation/death, and allows the person you designate to gift themselves up to $13,000 a year of your own property without your consent. Considering the law…

> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows.

Or maybe it's because the site is a useful checklist of what we should do to prevent death from completely destroying our family.

I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", the pdfs are described as templates. The core message is:

  Get your shit together now and breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#53
post #34

What they don't mention: * Document -all- of your bank accounts, assets and debts. * Don't die without a will. If you do and you appoint an executor, you are giving them a very dirty job. * Think twice about offshore accounts. They are a nightmare for executors.

Don't die without a will. If you do and you appoint an executor, you are giving them a very dirty job This is one of the reasons I've been putting off completing a will :-( Is there a good option for going about this without naming an executor?

Certain countries require you by law to appoint an executor to your estate. If you don't, the state steps in and does it for you. Hardly the sort of thing you'd want, especially if you want it done properly.

You can appoint lawyers to be executors to your estate, mind you. They take a fee from the total bucket, and make sure everything is done according to your will.

Also, as far as I'm aware, appointing them the executor of your estate doesn't mean you give them the money. You entrust them with resolving all the issues with your estate, it's a bit different.

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#54
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've always wish the Social Security Administration offered was an executor service of sorts. They're the canonical reference if you're dead or not, so upon my death, I could have configured in their web interface: * who to notify, along with documents for each person (personal letters, etc) * who to turn bank accounts over to * a whole long laundry list of other stuff I have to find someone I trust to do i…

You may set your beneficiary for almost all of your bank accounts and financial accounts. You just have to notify them of your beneficiary. EDIT: This may only be for retirement accounts?

I use Simple for banking, which doesn't support this, but Betterment (who manages my retirement accounts) does. My wife is my primary beneficiary, and I've submitted a feature request to them that they support specifying a 501(c)(3) as my contingent beneficiary (Watsi, in case you're wondering) if we've both died at the same time.

I'm curious what their UX around it is; I should ask! Ideally, my wife would provide them proof of my death, and then they would say "Here are your options, and the consequences of each."

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#55
Equally important to having legal documents is having conversations with your loved ones about your end-of-life preferences--there is a lot of nuance here and the legalese will not always speak for you the way you'd want it to (and won't necessarily cover things like how you want to be remembered, which photo of yourself is your favorite, what you would want to happen to your FB/twitter/Instagram/HN account, etc.).

I've been working for years in end-of-life planning and as others have said, a lot of these legal documents are state-by-state so be sure to talk to an attorney and your healthcare providers to make sure you're covered.

Apologies for self promotion, but we are building a modern end-of-life planning platform at https://myexitstrategy.co/ and our first offering will be an easy way to designate health care proxies -- everyone over age 18 should have one!

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've always wish the Social Security Administration offered was an executor service of sorts. They're the canonical reference if you're dead or not, so upon my death, I could have configured in their web interface: * who to notify, along with documents for each person (personal letters, etc) * who to turn bank accounts over to * a whole long laundry list of other stuff I have to find someone I trust to do i…

You trust the government to do that? You're braver than I am. I would expect the government would have a great time knowing about everyone's end of life plans. The IRS would certainly love it. I don't trust the government to wash my car let alone ensure my family is protected if I were to die.

[deleted]

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#57
post #15

I'm the sole income earner for our household (my wife is at home with our wee ones). I've found that it's a lot easier to plan for my own disability/death than for hers. For instance, I get relatively straightforward short-term and long-term disability insurance through my company. Should I become disabled, I get a percentage of my salary. But because my wife does not work, we've struggled to find a straightforward w…

Create an account on ssa.gov to estimate your Social Security Disability benefits and Social Security Survivors benefits. Mine are plenty enough for me to live comfortably on but I have a very, very modest lifestyle without any debt.

If fact you should create an account on ssa.gov and irs.gov no matter what so nobody else does it for you if your identity is stolen.

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#58
post #30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few grammatical errors in these documents as well that do not inspire confidence. Also, you better be damn sure that you can trust the person you give power of attorney to -- the document provided here assigns power of attorney immediately, not on incapacitation/death, and allows the person you designate to gift themselves up to $13,000 a year of your own property without your consent. Considering the law…

> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. My guess is it struck a chord with people similar to myself - young family and minimal EOL planning. (although the snarky domain definitely helps) For us, the biggest problem has been deciding who should take care of the kids if something h…

Find a friend in the same situation as you, and agree to be each other's back-up parents. Get some term-life insurance in a fairly large amount to go in trust to the kids if your spouse dies; that will cover the expenses, and term-life is pretty darn cheap.

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#59
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may set your beneficiary for almost all of your bank accounts and financial accounts. You just have to notify them of your beneficiary. EDIT: This may only be for retirement accounts?

I use Simple for banking, which doesn't support this, but Betterment (who manages my retirement accounts) does. My wife is my primary beneficiary, and I've submitted a feature request to them that they support specifying a 501(c)(3) as my contingent beneficiary (Watsi, in case you're wondering) if we've both died at the same time. I'm curious what their UX around it is; I should ask! Ideally, my wife would provide th…

The social security administration notifies banks of your death.

Re: Get Your Shit Together

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've always wish the Social Security Administration offered was an executor service of sorts. They're the canonical reference if you're dead or not, so upon my death, I could have configured in their web interface: * who to notify, along with documents for each person (personal letters, etc) * who to turn bank accounts over to * a whole long laundry list of other stuff I have to find someone I trust to do i…

You trust the government to do that? You're braver than I am. I would expect the government would have a great time knowing about everyone's end of life plans. The IRS would certainly love it. I don't trust the government to wash my car let alone ensure my family is protected if I were to die.

You, presumably as an American citizen, already trust the government to do a whole lot more than "wash your car," so the fear seems a bit unfounded. You implicitly trust them to fund/manage/develop/build: the entire infrastructure your car rides on (and which your safety depends on), the educational system that will likely educate/indoctrinate your children for 12+ years, and the legal system (and all of it's record keeping complexities) which preserves and allows you to uphold your rights and well-being. That's just to name a few that are certainly more complex than the task the GP is envisioning. Maybe you can pose a "free-market alternative" for the second one, but you can't for the other two. (Thankfully.) Plus, if you still prefer having a "real" physical executor there, just put that single person's name down for all of the fields from the SSA.

Adding a few fields to a database is well within the capabilities of pretty much every government agency around. At least until feature bloat and cruft starts to develop...

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