In this weekend’s Your Money column, I pay a visit to Chanel Reynolds, a widow who has built a site whose name cannot be mentioned here (though I can give you a link to it). It encourages you to get your will, living will and power of attorney done. And it urges you to collect all of your financial and other account information in one place and let a few trusted people know where to find it.

Ms. Reynolds hadn’t done much of this before her husband died in a bicycling accident in 2009, and she lost dozens of hours in the months afterward reconstructing her financial life. Her site urges you to avoid making the mistakes she did and helps you get started.

So, confession time. I have much of this together (though my wife and I had not finished it by the time our daughter was born in 2005). Still, I’m not perfect, and I imagine that most of you aren’t either. Our files are well organized, but there is no one else who knows how to access everything in my absence or has a complete list of accounts. This is going to change, pronto, and I have Ms. Reynolds to thank. It’s the raw, naked urgency of her story that gave me the kick that I needed.

How far along are you in getting your act together? And if you’ve learned the hard way how badly things can go when people don’t have their affairs in order, what advice would you offer to others who are just now sorting their own?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/getting-your-will-and-estate-plans-together/?partner=rss&emc=rss