My husband and I just got back from a visit with his parents.
Finally, we definitely know where the wills and trust are. We probably would have looked there but I had them show my husband where their stuff was.
My fil was very confused today. Last year they gave all of the siblings and grandchildren money. Somehow their FA told them they should set up a bank account to “gift” us money. I think it was to keep the money with the FA but I digress.
My fil was convinced that we had some bank account that had money in it. There is an account, but it has no money in it, they never transferred anything into this account. That we have no access to.
It would be so much easier for them to put any money they want to gift (which isn’t actually that much) and write us a check. Having a bank account that we have no knowledge about that my fil is confused about funding. Writing a check is easier to understand.
His dad kept going on about if we needed money we could access this account. That has no money. Also we would never ask them for money.
It was kinda a mess honestly. My fil got pretty upset.
I’m pretty sure I’m repeating myself, but I told my kids I “owed them” in-state tuition room and board for 4 years, and they each wound up with a car before or at the end of the 4 years (and 2 went to private school, but one we only had to pay for half of, and the other got a pretty good scholarship). After that I could choose to support things/give money, but I don’t feel like I OWE them anything. It would be awesome if kids wind up with some left when we die, but I will be dancing in my grave if I depart without costing them anything. The big unknown is long term care. We have funds we sort of plan to use for that if we need, but who knows how much end of life care will really cost.
I also like the idea of giving more now, doing things like family vacations they wouldn’t otherwise pay for, and hopefully we can help contribute to college for grandkids, but all of that is optional.
I feel differently about my parents and their money/financial decisions, I guess. I know that they could’ve done “more” with their money and I let my mom move some things that weren’t optimal from a bottom-line perspective, but toward the end of her life she wanted things simplified and all in one place. Losing a little interest/gains here and there felt like not a huge sacrifice for her peace of mind. And it DID make it simpler when she passed. No regrets.
My mother at their home at around age 92 showed me where her will was (after my father died and before she went deeper into dementia). I then took it home with me. She never knew it was gone and did not miss it. She then went to an assisted living and died 2 years later. I was so thankful I had the will. I was executor and trying to find it later would have been almost impossible.
This may not have been as unusual as it sounds. The federal funds rate was 0% during most of the period between 2009 and 2021, so shorter term fixed income products paid ~0%. I don’t think a portion of portfolio in fixed income paying ~0% was necessarily a horrible investment for persons that were risk averse, as there weren’t many options for risk-free investments with a decent return. Even investing in fixed income products that had slightly negative yields in many Europe countries was not necessarily crazy. Many people are willing to pay a small fee to safely store $250k for them, if the alternative is storing $250k in cash bills somewhere themselves for the slightly higher 0% interest.
My parents also invested in CDs during this period, and they still invest in CDs today. My mother is anti technology and wants to keep things simple. She asks me what she should do with investments from time to time. If I say anything that is significantly different what she is currently doing, it is too complicated. My father is okay with using technology or having more complex investments than CDs, but he is convinced that Trump is going to cause any type of market investment or treasury product to lose the vast majority of value. CDs are one of the only investments that both of them are okay with – not complicated, and no expectation that Trump will cause investment to lose value.
So many good comments here, but I’ll reply to this one.
Part of the estate was not-well-maintained rental properties. My siblings and I have been suspicious that the non-licensed property manager was embezzling. It seems that way — and they trusted her enough that they never knew if the requested work had been done. She worked for them 2017-2024. We fired her and hired someone who is working well for us.
One large investment (or perhaps, hobby) absorbed close to $2 mil over time. We netted $0 on the sale as we sold it for just enough to clear the debt/bank personal guarantees. Not the same, but let’s say you don’t build a ski area in Mississippi. Neither the weather nor the economics of the community are likely to be a good fit.
Owning old, not maintained real estate became a bit of an albatross around the neck. Due to the write downs and capital gains, the sales would have netted little during his lifetime. We may get 2x by selling with the stepped up basis.
When they were in assisted living we sold the house after noting that the empty house was costing ~$45k per year due to taxes, utilities, and maintenance. That house sale money has helped fund their AL costs and other medical needs.
Given the choices made along the way, there was not enough money for round the clock in home care, which would have been their preference. Luckily the AL worked out well and step-mom is there now. (She’s a second wife and there’s a prenup so the rest of this is pretty clean).
ChoatieMom, you are right. He made many choices. I needed that reminder.
Oh, goodness - my dad’s bad investments were pretty mundane. He kept way too much of his former employer’s stock, and it was worthless when the company went bankrupt. He also sunk a big portion of his savings into an automotive supplier that tanked when the auto industry tanked. I consider that garden variety bad investment … too much money in just a couple stocks in a single industry. He grew up very poor and never exactly got rich. I think he was trying hard to cross the hurdle from comfortable to well off. He had a lifetime of bad breaks, which is why his losses saddened me. But as I said, he had enough to live on for as long as he did live.
I can’t help but wonder how much money older people lose - actual principal.
In many cases, if an older person does not have someone to assist/do/advocate for them or someone who knows/has access their finances, I imagine they could lose out (because of cognitive issues, they can’t physically drive to the bank, they can’t do things online, etc.)
A bank was basically holding $250k of my dad’s money hostage (CDs). He could not have done what my sister did which was relentlessly working her way thru the bureaucracy, working her way up the chain, calling, emailing, etc.
Except this was at a time recently when CDs went up to 4+ percent. The CDs were originally my grandmother’s and he just left them there for 14 years.
Side note: In 14 years, nobody at the bank ever contacted him to say “hey let’s look at doing X with these funds” or “you might be interested in Y”.
When he and my sis went to move them to another bank making 4+ percent, they were told that they could not release the money because they did not have a signature card on file for him. It was a huge PIA and very time consuming.
For 14 years, they were fine sending him the statements (with his name on the accts). For 14 years, they were fine with him rolling it over and over and over with them. If that signature card was so important, they should have audited their files periodically…
I actually find this odd. The banks where I have CDs have constantly been asking me to move money to their brokerage accounts or make different investments. Usually calls start close to the renewal dates or in person when I go in to renew the CD myself. This started when all the banks merged with brokerage firms almost 10 years ago. I myself have been using CDs as investment tools forever. I typically go to the bank when the CD renews and choose their “special” rate CD (they usually have one incentive one with a higher rate). There were some lean years, where I ended up with bigger sums in Money Market Accounts which were giving higher yields than CDs.
We managed my mother-in-laws finances during the last 5 or so years of her life. It was during this lean CD rate time and the 2008 crash We felt it was a victory to have maintained her money (not lost anything - most of it proceeds form selling her house).
It was super odd! It was like 3 CDs and 2 of them were over a certain dollar amount so they required a special approval. And the approval department said no. Even the bank manager disagreed with them.
Also odd they never provided any customer service like contacting my dad about the money. Maybe they did at some point, and he doesn’t remember?
It is too bad they didn’t provide good customer service. We consolidated a lot of his stuff to make it easier for him. That bank is the on-site at this retirement and we could consolidated it there, but instead, they lost a customer.
FIL kept an ongoing list of his CDs and other assets in a notebook. As he aged, his handwriting deteriorated and the account numbers became harder to read.
Fil had one $25k CD that he had not written down. I can’t remember how its whereabouts became known to my dh (who was the executor) because it was at some random bank where fil didn’t have anything else. I think mil received some sort of notice eventually showed up snail mail to their house. As I wrote above, mil had no knowledge of what their assets were when he died. He viewed all of their money as, his money. Even though her lifetime earnings exceeded his (she worked longer).
The largest newspaper in our state used to publish an annual, “treasure hunt,” which listed unclaimed property with a certain lead time (maybe a year?? I can’t recall exactly how it worked) before said property would escheat to the state. I guess they still do that. It’s probably a state statutory requirement everywhere. Searching those for a few years after death might be advisable to executors.
We search on unclaimed property sites relatively regularly and have found things even for ourselves. We once found forgotten stocks from ages ago, and we found a paycheck our son never received. My brother just found an unclaimed amount from my dad’s prepaid cremation account - our dad died in 2013. It was a pain to go through the claims process, but that company was a pain to work with when our dad died, so we weren’t about to leave the money unclaimed.
You can definitely find money left in limbo from a deceased relative - refund on a telephone, electric, gas bill. I actually claimed my final paycheck before we moved to Atlanta, this was pre auto-deposit and i guess they just held onto it even though they actually had my new address. The fact I forgot completely that I never received it is probably reflective of the confusion of moving a family while a husband travels 100%.
I know my mom and my aunt (both now deceased) have money from random places in California. I guess I could attempt to claim it, but too much trouble for too little reward.
One frustrating story - I lived in California, but have lived elsewhere for 50 years now. I checked the CA site (probably bc I’d checked my mom and my aunt’s names) and my name showed up as having unclaimed property. I called to see what it was, but they wouldn’t tell me. I can’t remember how exactly it worked, but it was co-mingled somehow with a person I hadn’t seen or spoken to for close to 50 years (not related to me). To collect whatever it was, I would have had to find his heir (who was mentally challenged, and I’m sure would have no recollection of me), and send him something to sign off on. Fortunately, I called the California people again, and either talked to a more flexible person or a supervisor, I can’t remember. In any case, I explained my situation to that person and explained that I just wanted to know if whatever it was was valuable enough for me to go through all that trouble. She said NO, it was just a $25 savings bond.
My parents were not financially savoy. They didn’t really need to be as they both had a pension and SS. Their house was paid off in 1997 and they bought cars at the end in cash.
Things got fine for them in the late 90s and they always had enough money. They started to really build a nest egg, but always just had it in checking and savings accounts. I couldn’t get Mom to go to the bank in 2022 or 2023 to investigate better rates on her accounts.
If they had just been investing a portion of the excess monthly funds starting around 2000ish Mom probably would have had almost double the amount when she passed last August. It wouldn’t have changed their life as they had no interest in traveling much and they still lived like they were lower middle class.
We knew a retired who really liked their Financial Advisor. And for the most part he served them well. But… some of the estate was in some kind of odd private investment that was very hard for the beneficiaries to sell. Methinks they would have preferred that chunk in CD.
Anybody familiar with a good resource for comparing FA custodial services? (Schwab vs Fidelity vs Pershing vs LPL vs Raymond James etc). We are happy with our fee-only advisor, who uses Schwab. My husband likes Schwab (I am not keen on the website), which is good diversification from my 401K at Fidelity. I have a friend doing research for a new FA and thought it could be good discussion topic here too.
We were with alot of people our age this weekend and the subject of retirement came up. Those that had retired were enjoying it but when I asked them why it all came down to flexibility in their lives. Get a haircut or go to the store in the middle of the day. Take as much vacation as they want. I already have that because I work my professional job by the hour. I have no set number of required hours. I have no days I must work. It is much harder for me to see the joys of retirement. I can financially retire comfortably but I really enjoy working and using my earning to spend completely frivolously. We are going to the US Open in September. That’s a crazy amount of money. When we went to visit our daughter in one town last weekend we stayed in a hotel for 5 days but left for 24 hours to go to a wedding 1.5 hours away and stayed at a different hotel for the night. . Rather than check out at noon and then have to check in after 3 we just kept both places. That’s what I mean by frivolous.