Life Organizer: The Essential Record Keeper and Estate Planner

Do you remember where the deed to your house is, what you paid for the painting hanging over your mantle, where your life insurance documents are? Have you photographed your belongings? Have you thought through your estate planning? Does anyone know what to do if something happens to you? Does everyone know what your wishes are?

Life Organizer: The Essential Record Keeper & Estate Planner is the perfect place for storing all essential information, and finding lots of personal planning advice. Learn how an estate plan is, well…planned, and what you need to get started. In one handy location, find reader-friendly explanations, definitions, tips, worksheets and storage space for everything you need to organize your wishes and assets, and get on with your life!

Nancy Randolph Greenway, the extraordinary co-author of Pass it On: A Practical Approach to the Fears and Facts of Planning Your Estate , combines clear and friendly prose with legal expertise to make Life Organizer the definitive resource for reference, organization, and storage in all matters of basic estate planning.

The organizer is divided into eight sections:
• Family and Beneficiaries
• Personal Considerations
• Property and Investment Records
• Insurance, Retirement and Business
• My Will, Trusts and Gifts
• Health Care Choices
• Final Wishes
• Resources and Advisors

Produced as a three-ring-binder, Life Organizer includes 8 tabs with pockets, 15 plastic sleeves for storing copies of important documents, and 1 sleeve to hold 2 DVDs for photo and video inventory, plus dozens of worksheets, checklists, and pages for contact information of family members and professionals.

Whether you’re a baby boomer planning your estate, parent with a new family, or recent grad just beginning to earn an income, it’s a beautiful and helpful organizer for anyone at any age.

Nancy Randolph Greenway is co-author and primary writer of Pass it On: A Practical Guide to the Fears and Facts of Planning Your Estate. With a law degree and personal experience in estate matters across many states, Greenway remains uniquely qualified to distill estate-planning concerns faced at any stage of life.A Note to Readers from Nancy Randolph Greenway

The Life Organizer turned out just as I had hoped! Crisp and clear. Getting organized has never been easier.

When I talk about the organizer, I describe it as an estate-planning workbook for absolutely everyone. The usual reply is, “Oh, boy, do I ever need it! And I know a few other people who need one, too!”

Twenty- and thirty-somethings are starting jobs, opening accounts, leasing or buying cars and homes, sometimes with the help of parents, taking out loans or paying back student loans … and often signing papers without a full understanding and then shoving papers into drawers. We have all done that!

Forty-somethings are starting to worry about their parents … do they have enough, will I have to take care of them, have they made plans, will there be anything left for me? Fifty-somethings are starting to worry about themselves and their health. They are reconsidering their investments and health care and they may be caught between the costs of parents, children and retirement. From the sixties on, reality has struck and all issues are on the table, though that drawer may still be full of loose papers.

I see Life Organizer as a conversation starter. The narrative helps the reader address pertinent personal questions, clean out that drawer stuffed with important papers, and figure out a few things, like “Oh, my life insurance is taxable?” or “What? My stepchild is not included in my will?” or “Does this mean my son won’t get the farm he’s been running for twenty years?” or “Whoops, I never repaid that student loan?!”

I also see the organizer as an open workbook. A place to keep important records, documents, names, and notes. A resource to learn the basics about an estate plan—what’s involved, why it matters, what will happen when something happens. And a personal portfolio to review and change as life changes. Which it does.

Life Organizer makes a great gift from child to parent and parents to children of all ages. In its clean, crisp appearance and layout, it carries the distinct message that it’s time to talk and time to get organized for life. If you’re organized for life, you’re organized for what comes next.

List Price: $ 29.95

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