The Story of Get It Together (A Blessing in Disguise)
Between an insightful question from our son, to the valuable tool you hold in your hand, is the story of our family Getting It Together. It is our privilege to share it with you.

Upon retirement, my husband and I traveled and vacationed like so many baby boomers. While discussing an upcoming trip with our family, our eldest son asked, “What if you both died in an accident? What kind of a mess would you be leaving us to sort through?”

“We have life insurance, and a Will”, I replied. “And you are the executor.”

He was unimpressed. “That’s great, but what about everything else? Titles to the cars? Bank account information? Investments? How would we know where all your personal and financial documents are?”

His concerns stopped me in my tracks. Even I didn't know where everything was if my husband were taken before me. We were determined then to get our financial records in order before our trip. Good thing we had several weeks to prepare, because the more questions we asked ourselves, the more daunting the task seemed.

Maybe you can relate to a few of the problems we ran into:

• Where was the deed to the house and title to the cars?
  
• What were the passwords to our computers/online banking, etc.?
  
• Our wills were outdated and did not reflect our son’s marriages, or the birth of grandchildren.
  
• While updating our life insurance, we spent the better part of four days tracking down the right person to provide us the information needed because this one company changed its name four times.
  
• Many documents need to be an original: birth certificates, marriage license, military DD-214. It took time to get the certified copies sent to us, in some cases it could take weeks.

The more we worked to collect everything we needed to organize our estate, the more we found this process a blessing in disguise. We solved problems that would have taken our family months, even years, to sort through.

We also realized the end-product benefited us in the here-and-now:

• We had a full inventory with pictures of our possessions and their relative value. This would help our sons in the future, but we were prepared now for the insurance company in the event of a fire or theft.
• We updated our family medical history. This will not only educate our sons on any and all health histories, but if we become incapacitated, they would have our doctor’s names, numbers and medications all together.

Our arduous task complete, we enjoyed our trip with a clear conscience. When we returned, we mentioned to family and friends what we had gone through organizing everything, and the relief it gave us to have it done.

To our surprise, we found most of them as ill-prepared, if not more so, than we were. The idea for this comprehensive, yet simple, estate organizer system for any family, young or old, was born: “Your Life & Family Estate Organizer.”

Our hope is that you use this tool to gather the pieces of the puzzle that is your life, and Get It Together for your family. Order your organizer kit with easy, fill-in-the-blanks workbook, and durable storage organizer case today!

- Brenda & George