Early Retirement Extreme Forums

The order of succession is usually spouse, kids, parents, siblings.

What you should leave DW is a manuscript to be published posthumously entitled "The Hidden Secrets of Jacob Lund Fisker".

I've only thought about this a little bit.

I do have a "death file" that has all the information my wife needs to ensure my assets get to her as quickly as possible. I still need to set up a will and have POA officially set up between us.

I don't like the idea of leaving a lump sum inheritance at all for other people. Not sure if I'd want to give it all to charity or somehow leave something to my heirs.

I was thinking of having a trust set up whereby the money just sits in an account and compounds (paying the trustees their cut) until my heirs are ~55. At that point they will get paid a % of whatever rent/dividend/interest/distributions the portfolio generates until they die with some T's and C's laying out a few more details. I might even build in some clauses like allowing bonus payouts to cover tuition for those who get certain degrees/diplomas. Then again I might have squat when I die or if I die before my wife she may have other ideas... who knows....

A running joke between my Dad and I is how he will manage to spend his last dollar while lying in his deathbed...

@jennypenny I've been thinking about this thread. I asked my wife today if she would know what to do and I wasn't surprised when she said no. She gets the general idea of the 2.5-4% SWR but beyond that... I worry because her father, while frugal and smart, thinks the idea of living off investments is bonkers and he can be difficult. So if she turned to him, it might not go so well.

I'm thinking of making a general overview to put in a folder and save on Google Drive/Dropbox/USB stick. My wife knows about this forum so maybe one bit of advice would be to sign up here and keep a journal and solicit feedback.

This question did make me ponder if one of us might become an ERE adviser. I can't exactly see the phone ringing off the hook as we're all probably too frugal however I would gladly have a reference to such a person as backup in event of my death (with the caveat to post to the forum too in case they go rogue and/or requiring them to be a fee-only advisor).

My wife is smart though so I think if I do a good job of outlining the basics, she can make appropriate decisions. Most difficult is probably properly adjusting the portfolio and/or investing the life insurance money conservatively. She is by nature conservative with money so it would be making sure she didn't go too conservative (at least part of it should be in the stock market with such a long horizon).

Maybe such a document would be useful for others to tweak. I make no promises but I would like to make one sometime in the next 6 months and would be happy to share it. Or adapt another person's manual if someone else made one?