Letter from a Widow who is a Chartered Accountant

This is a must read letter for Everyone . I have not seen a better way to explain need for inculcating financial discipline and having an estate plan in place. 

Here goes the letter forwarded to me by Mr Sadique . Thank you Sadique for sharing, it’s appreciated… Nishith.B, Associate Financial Planner 

Here goes a Letter

Hello Friends,

Few things I learnt after Mithun’s death-

We always believe we will live forever. Bad things always happen to others.

Only when things hit us bang on our head do we realise… Life is so unpredictable….

My husband was an IT guy. All techie. And I am a chartered accountant. Awesome combination you may think.

Techie guy so everything is on his laptop.his to do list. his e-bill and his bank statements in his email. . He even maintained a folder which said IMPWDS. wherein he stored all login id and passwords for all his online accounts. And even his laptop had a password. Techie guy so all the passwords were alpha-numeric with a special character not an easy one to crack. Office policy said passwords needed to be changed every 30 days.So every time I accessed his laptop I would realise it’s a new password again. I would simply opt for asking him ‘What’s the latest password’ instead of taking the strain to memorise it.

You may think me being a Chartered Accountant would means everything is documented and filed properly. Alas many of my chartered accountant friends would agree that the precision we follow with our office documents and papers do not flow in to day to day home life. At office you have be epitome of Reliability / Competent / Diligent etc but. at home front there is always a tomorrow.

One fine morning my hubby expired in a bike accident on his way home from office.. He was just 33.His laptop with all his data crashed.everything on his hard disk wiped off.No folder of IMPWDS to refer back to.His mobile with all the numbers on it was smashed.But that was just the beginning. I realised I had lot to learn.

9 years married to one of the best human beings.with no kids.just the two of us to fall back on..but now I stood all alone and lost.

Being chartered accountant helped in more ways than one but it was not enough. I needed help.His saving bank accounts, his salary bank accounts had no nominee.On his insurance his mom was the nominee and it was almost 2 years back she had expired. but this was just a start.. I didn’t know the password to his email account where all his e-bill came.I didn’t know which expenses he paid by standing instructions.

His office front too was not easy. His department had changed recently.I didn’t know his reporting boss name to start with.when had he last claimed his shift allowance.his mobile reimbursement.

The house we bought with all the excitement.on a loan.thought with our joint salary we could afford the EMI.when the home loans guys suggested insurance on the loan.we decided the instead of paying the premium the difference in the EMI on account of the insurance could be used pay towards prepayment of the loan and get the tenure down.We never thought what we would do if we have to live on a single salary.So now there was huge EMI to look into .

I realised I was in for a long haul.

Road accident case. so everywhere I needed a Death certificate, FIR report, Post Mortem report. For everything there were forms running into pages.indemnity bonds.notary.surety to stand up for you.No objections certificates from your co-heirs..

I learnt other than your house, your land . your car, your bike are also your property… So what if you are the joint owner of the flat.you don’t become the owner just because your hubby is no more. So what if your hubby expired in the bike accident.and you are the nominee but if the bike is in a repairable condition .you have to get the bike transferred in your name to claim the insurance.And that was again not easy. the bike or car cannot be transferred in your name without going through a set of legal documents. Getting a Succession Certificate is another battle all together.

Then came the time you realise now you have to start changing all the bills, assets in your name.Your gas connection, electricity meter, your own house, your car, your investments and all sundries. And then change all the nominations where your own investments are concerned.And again a start of a new set of paperwork.

To say I was shaken.my whole life had just turned upside down was an understatement.You realise you don’t have time to morn and grieve for the person with whom you spend the best years of your life. because you are busy sorting all the paper work.

I realised then how much I took life for granted.I thought being a chartered accountant I am undergoing so many difficulties.what would have happened to someone who was house maker who wouldn’t understand this legal hotchpotch.

A sweet friend then told me dear this was not an end.you have no kids.your assets will be for all who stand to claim.after my hubby’s sudden death.I realised it was time I took life more seriously. I now needed to make a Will. I would have laughed if a few months back if he had asked me to make one.But now life had taken a twist.

Lessons learnt this hard way were meant to be shared.After all why should the people whom we love the most suffer after we are no more.Sorting some paperwork before we go will at least ease some of their grief.

1. Check all your nominations

It’s a usual practice to put a name (i.e in the first place if you have mentioned it) and royally forget about it. Most of us have named our parent as a nominee for investments, bank accounts opened before marriage. We have not changed the same even years after they are no longer there with us. Even your salary account usually has no nomination.. Kindly check all your Nominations.

- Bank Accounts
- Fixed Deposits, NSC
- Bank Lockers
- Demat Accounts
- Insurance (Life, Bike or Car or Property)
- Investments
- PF & Pension Forms

2. Passwords..

We have passwords for practically everything. Email accounts, Bank accounts, even for the laptop you use. What happens when your next in kin cannot access any of these simply because they do not know your password… Put it down on a paper.

3. Investments.

Every year for tax purpose we do investments. Do we maintain a excel sheet about it. If so is it on the same laptop of which the password you had not shared. Where are those physical investments hard copy.

4. Will.

Make a Will. I know you will smile even I would.had I not gone through all what I did.It would have made my life lot easier.a lot less paperwork.I wouldn’t had to provide an indemnity bond, get it notarised, ask surety to stand up, no objections certificates from others…

5. Liabilities.

When you take a loan say for your house or car.Check out on all the what ifs.what if I am not there tomorrow.what if I loose my job.Will the EMI still be within my range.If not get an insurance on the loan.The people left behind will not have to worry on something as basic as their own house.

My battles have just begun…But let us at least try and make few changes so that our loved ones would not suffer after we go.We do not know what will happen in the future.But as the Scout motto goes: “Be prepared”

Are we in better Condition

Everything Is Getting Gummed Up In Greece

Tourism, Greece’s second largest industry after the shipping industry, and already in a downdraft, is taking another hit as tour bus drivers will go on strike for four days next week; wage negotiations have deadlocked . Owners demand that drivers take a 50% cut in pay and benefits on top of the 20% cut they’ve already suffered.

The National Organization for Healthcare Provision (EOPYY), Greece’s state-owned health insurer, hasn't paid  pharmacists for months and owes them €540 million. In turn, pharmacists are refusing to sell medications to insured patients, including cancer patients, unless they’re paid in cash—and even hospitals are reporting shortages.

Greece’s ship repair and shipbuilding industry, a highly competitive activity in a global market, has collapsed . Over 90% of its union workers are jobless—though Greek shipping companies own 16% of the global merchant fleet, more than any other nation. They’re just not having their ships built and repaired in Greece anymore—whatever the reason, high cost of labor, lack of investment, changing shipping routes, strikes. A sign that there are fundamental problems related to competitiveness that a bailout, no matter how generous, won’t be able to solve.

And yet, President Barak Obama—whose reelection hinges on the US economy, which is wobbling, and on the jobs picture, which remains dismal—blamed European leaders, specifically German leaders, for refusing to bail out Greece and the rest of the tottering Eurozone at taxpayers’ expense, just so he could sail to four more years. Everything in the book, from the loss in US manufacturing jobs to cancelled IPOs, was “attributable to Europe and the cloud that’s coming over from the Atlantic,” he said at a fundraiser in Chicago.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel shrugged off the bullying and just said no to Eurobonds, again. Despised in Germany, they’re seen as an insidious transfer from bleeding German taxpayers to other countries. Instead, her government wants struggling Eurozone countries to overhaul their economies with utmost speed—and Germans are willing to dole out hundreds of billions of euros to make that possible—but it’s proving to be impossible, at least in Greece, and very painful everywhere, to unwind years of an economic gravy train fueled by cheap euro debt. .

And unpaid bills are now threatening Greece’s electricity supply. State-owned Electricity Market Operator (LAGIE), a clearing house for power transactions, hasn’t paid independent power producers for electricity it bought from them. They, in turn, haven’t paid their natural gas supplier, Public Gas Corporation (Depa), which now doesn’t have the money to pay its supplier. Payment is due on June 22. Alas, its supplier is Gazprom in Russia, and they insist on getting paid. If not, they will shut the valve, and Depa won’t get the gas to supply the independent producers, which will have to take their power plants off line, removing about a third of the country’s electricity production.

But Germany isn’t even worried about Greece’s return to the drachma anymore—a fait accompli. It’s worried about Spain and Italy. Greece simply is the model. The costs appear to be steep, but most of the actual costs have already been incurred. They’re hidden in Greece’s debt, now held largely by European institutions, such as the ECB, and in the infamous Target to balances within the European System of Central Banks. Hundreds of billions of euros. They were spent on everything: social benefits, German frigates, inflated wages, now weedy and abandoned Olympic facilities, profits, bribes, votes. What remains aren’t productive assets to service this debt, but simmering unrest and the debt itself.

International companies have long been preparing for Greece’s return to the drachma, quietly and in secret, but occasionally word seeped out. According to the latest revelation, Heineken NV has moved excess cash out of Greece, doing what the Greeks themselves have been doing. And currency traders were surprised  on Friday to see the new identifier for the drachma (XGD) on their Bloomberg terminals; a test, the company said, so that it would be ready for trading drachmas.

When Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Radical Left Coalition (Syriza)—in first place with 31.5% in the latest poll—laid out his Program, he left no doubt: his first action if he won the June 17 elections would be to annul the bailout memorandum signed by the previous government. The memorandum spelled out the structural reforms Greece would have to implement in order to receive further bailout payments. He’d stop the privatization of state-owned companies, undo wage and pension cuts, lower the Value Added Tax, offer debt relief to households, raise the minimum wage back to the original €751, raise unemployment benefits.... His program had vote-buying promises for practically everyone. And yet, he wanted to keep the euro and expected taxpayers of other countries to fund his promises. Program of “dignity and hope” he called it.

Antonis Samaras, leader of the conservative New Democracy—in second place with 25.5%—also laid out his Program. He’d renegotiate the bailout memorandum, though he stressed that Greece should stay in the euro—whose flood of cheap debt had made the Greek elite rich, and certainly he wouldn’t want to stop the gravy train. He promised to raise pensions, private-sector wages, child benefits ... undoing much of the economic restructuring already agreed to. And he threw in some new goodies: unemployment benefits for the self-employed and compensation to Greek institutions for the haircut they’d suffered on their Greek government bonds. Every item on the long list was at the expense of restive taxpayers in other countries.

Greek politicians, even the new generation, are sticking to their time-worn strategy: vote-buying with ruinous promises that can only be fulfilled with an endless flow of borrowed money. Thus, they define themselves as leaders who need a central bank that can print however much is needed to fund these promises, with periodic devaluations or defaults to get a fresh start. 
Article by Wolf Ritcher