Day 6 of the Legacy Notebook Series
Now that your banking and investment info is complete, next up are your credit card accounts (if you have any). If you don’t have any credit card accounts, it’s a day off for you. See you tomorrow!
Take a deep breath. Having to look at credit card and other loan accounts in black and white can be intimidating and might feel daunting. For our purposes today, you are just gathering facts for easy reference. Try not to let the balances on the accounts distract you. I’m a huge advocate of getting out of debt, but that’s a topic for another day.
Credit Card Accounts
If you have a bunch of credit cards, it will help to make a list of them for easy reference. You can use this worksheet to summarize your accounts (scroll through the tabs to find the credit card worksheet). If you only maintain one or two credit cards, I wouldn’t mess with the list. Just print off a recent account statement for each one and add that to your binder. All you are trying to do here is to give your family a clue of where to start if they needed to take the lead on paying bills and such when you are not able. In my case, the info in the binder is a bit of roadmap for my husband since I handle most of our day-to-day money stuff. He doesn’t normally pay our credit card bill and would need some clues to step into that role in my absence.
Start by listing and gathering statements for your active accounts (cards you are currently using). Then take a minute to think about other inactive cards you might have floating around. These might be store credit cards that you sign up for to save 20% on a first-time purchase (Best Buy, Sears, Macy’s, etc.) or a credit card you signed up for in college to get a “free” t-shirt. If you aren’t using these accounts any longer, consider closing them permanently. It typically just takes one phone call, although you’ll likely have to live through at least one pitch to try to keep you as a customer before they agree to close your account.
Today’s Action Items:
- Put your completed credit card accounts summary worksheet in your binder
- Print out recent statements from each of your credit card accounts and add them to your binder
- Pat yourself on the back for getting through this one. Credit card debt is no fun.
thanks for reading,
Lesley
P.S. Looking for the rest of the series? You can find it here.
Stronger Wallet’s Legacy Notebook series information is intentionally general in nature and covers typical scenarios. You may have special circumstances that need to be considered. Always consult a trusted advisor before making big decisions about your financial legacy. Feel free to send me questions along the way at lesley [at] strongerwallet .com.
Get started today!
Enter your name and e-mail to get the Legacy Notebook guide delivered to your inbox. Totally free.
The guide includes everything you need to get started: a cover sheet and divider pages to set up your notebook, an overview of each topic, checklists, worksheets, and writing prompts to guide you through the process.
Leave a Reply