Not meaning to be morbid, but

"Final Arrangments".  So. I'm older. I'm in decent health, but things happen. I need to sort out what kind of notes to leave the Daughter in case I get hit by an Iron Bru truck while I'm out on my old lady's group walk some morning.

She'll automatically get my 403B, as she's the listed beneficiary. I am not sure if she'll have to take it all at once, and get slammed for the tax bill on that, or if she can even access it prior to hitting 59 without a penalty. Anybody know? I can always contact Fidelity, I guess, to ask. It'd be better if she could just draw it down a little every few months, as she needed the money.

My local bank accounts - I need to sort out how to be sure she gets the balances in them. She knows the passwords, and I've got permission on file with the bank for her to be able to do banking in my name. But if I'm deadski and she tries to withdraw the funds, I'm thinking there'd be trouble. It's not a large amount of money, but it'd pay all her bills (and rent) for a few months until she was able to move into someplace cheaper that she could afford on her own.  There's nothing I can do about the account in the USA, but I only keep a small balance in there anyway - I've only kept it because my pension can't be paid to a foreign bank. So it goes there and then I bring it over here a couple of times a month. So in Scotland does next-of-kin automatically get the contents of a bank account? Or, actually, what counts as next-of-kin? I've got other relatives, but want the Daughter to get it, not them. (That's in my will.)

Planting. So I keep seeing all these adverts about the cost of funerals. I don't want one. I would like to be dehydrated/pulverized and left in a forest in Argyll or be thrown to the winds from the top of Dunadd. The Daughter knows this. (Yes, we both know about legal v not legal.) What does it actually cost to have a bare-bones (bad choice of words?) cremation anyway? Do you just call around to funeral directors, or can you get a better deal by just phoning up the crematoriums? (I assume there is at least one here?) I assume there's extra cost to schlep "the remains" around and pay for required certificates and stuff. Any idea what that costs?

I do worry about how she'll manage if I happen to kick off suddenly. There's the people at her Uni, of course, and some friends here. But I'm thinking she doesn't have anyone to turn to if that all happens, so I would like to smooth the road for her as much as possible just in case. And with the assumption that it's a fallback that she won't hopefully need to avail of for a couple of decades, heaven willing!

Read your post then went to my Facebook to see this.



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Huh. I'll check them out, thanks!

Huh. I'll check them out, thanks!

Lol. Facebook moves fast on their targeted marketing. Lolol.

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That's scary! 

So it looks like the el cheapo is doable for 899 pounds. My uni pension plan will pony up $1,500 death benefit to the Daughter, so that should cover it. Plus the bus fare to Dunadd and back. 

Perhaps some day while she's at work I'll toodle down and visit those people to see what can be set up in advance. I'm leery of doing a pre-paid plan, in case we don't get to stay here. But I'd like to have everything else sorted out so all she'd have to do was phone the number I'd leave for her in the "read this in case of" book.

I can’t recall if your daughter has an IRA with a US brokerage. I made sure our son kept his IRA when he moved back, and he knows to keep it open so he can inherit our IRA’s and withdraw it under the rules of inherited IRAs.

If she doesn’t have an IRA which is probably the case then I would expect that the 403b will have to be liquidated and the tax paid on it. Is there any chance you can start doing rollovers into a Roth IRA so that when it is liquidated it will be tax free at that point. That way you can pay small amounts of tax at your tax rate over a number of years.  (This is what we have been doing with our IRAs)

She did have a small IRA. I knew she was going to pull money for part of her tuition out of it, but she apparently closed the darned thing entirely.

I'm checking with Fidelity - it might be that she can arrange distributions over a longer period of time (if I am reading their literature correctly). If not, yeah, I may do something like that.  If she can take distributions over time, while she is here in the UK, hopefully there would not be much tax for her to pay. It's not a huge account, but it should hold her over for a while, if that becomes necessary.

EDIT - Looks like the money can stay put:  from the plan document - ... a beneficiary may elect to take his or her benefit as a lump sum or in periodic payments over a term that meets the Internal Revenue Code requirements on minimum distributions. If a beneficiary fails to make an election, the benefit will be distributed to the beneficiary in a lump sum by the last day of the calendar year in which the fifth anniversary of the participant’s death occurs.

So now I just have to understand what periodic payments over a term that meets the Internal Revenue Code requirements on minimum distributions means.

What does it actually cost to have a bare-bones (bad choice of words?) cremation anyway?

Google 'direct cremation Scotland'.

I'd be wary of paying in advance for a funeral.  There should be enough money left in your estate to pay for a thousand quid funeral and whoever is left will probably prefer the flexibility to buy that in a way that suits them.   You may still want to move anyway.
What about life insurance? I really don't know if it will work for you, but you could check with a financial advisor.

I've been thinking lately about setting up a password manager for the whole family,like last pass.  When Sirius finally gets my address and murders me in my sleep, at least my wife can get into all the sites I use to manage money.

I'd be wary of paying in advance for a funeral.  There should be enough money left in your estate to pay for a thousand quid funeral and whoever is left will probably prefer the flexibility to buy that in a way that suits them.   You may still want to move anyway.
What about life insurance? I really don't know if it will work for you, but you could check with a financial advisor.

I've been thinking lately about setting up a password manager for the whole family,like last pass.  When Sirius finally gets my address and murders me in my sleep, at least my wife can get into all the sites I use to manage money.

I have done exactly that with Lastpass and had my wife be sure she knows how to use it.

I agree with not paying ahead of time for a funeral. I talked my Dad out of that some while back, assuring him that there would be enough money in his estate to pay for a funeral. I’m sure it was well under £1,000 back in 2009 when he died and he had well over that in his bank account so I didn’t even need to pay for it  while we waited for his house to be sold.

My parents financial adviser has also told them not to prepay for a funeral.

Do you have a will in place Nan?  Otherwise, I believe the estate could get held up with the government, which isn't desirable.

And I do wish my parents would pull their finger out and decide what they want "done" when they pass.  They still aren't sure on burial versus cremation, let alone "where".   

Having dealt with this recently, here's my 2p...

I always had thought wills were a good idea but after my recent experience, I don't think they always are. I do think they're useful if you have a sizable estate. My father didn't and it's been a bit of a mess. He passed away over a month ago and we're just now getting it sorted. 100% please have life insurance. Dad's funeral cost over $10,000 and if he hadn't had life insurance, I don't know what we would've done. His 'estate' is nonexistent.

I'm not sure about the 403B but I can tell you that for us, we had to close out all financial accounts that were in his name. I was told that you can't keep any account open once a party is deceased. My step mother had to close all the accounts (she got to keep the money as she was listed on them too) and open a new account with just her name.

Husband and I have talked over this and he knows I want to be cremated and ashes spread around Edinburgh. Not having any children nor any assets, it'll be straightforward.  I don't find it morbid, it's about being prepared. I've lost people close to me ranging in age from 4-85. Nothing wrong with talking about the inevitable.

But I do hope the Irn Bru truck steers clear of you for a very long time. 

I've been thinking lately about setting up a password manager for the whole family,like last pass. 

You definitely should. I use Lastpass, and while it didn't totally make sense to me prior to trying it out, it got very clear once I started to use it, and my stuff is way more secure now that I'm not using the same password for everything.

I'd be wary of paying in advance for a funeral.  There should be enough money left in your estate to pay for a thousand quid funeral and whoever is left will probably prefer the flexibility to buy that in a way that suits them.   You may still want to move anyway.
What about life insurance? I really don't know if it will work for you, but you could check with a financial advisor.

I've been thinking lately about setting up a password manager for the whole family,like last pass.  When Sirius finally gets my address and murders me in my sleep, at least my wife can get into all the sites I use to manage money.

ooooooooooooooo (tsk tsk)

I have a password manager on my computer through Avast. I also have a book with everything (zillions of them) written down. Not sure that's the safest thing, but if my PC goes down it'd take the passwords with it anyway, so it's in the book.

I think with life insurance, at my age the premiums would be so high that unless I croaked in the next few years it'd be better for me to have just set the money aside in my savings account to cover it. But the $1,500 from the retirement plan should do it - that's about 1,000 pounds, and I assume HMRC would tax that as her income before she had it to spend, which would take it down to potentially 800 pounds. Which is still close enough, with the other cash she'll have access to.

My parents financial adviser has also told them not to prepay for a funeral.

Do you have a will in place Nan?  Otherwise, I believe the estate could get held up with the government, which isn't desirable.

And I do wish my parents would pull their finger out and decide what they want "done" when they pass.  They still aren't sure on burial versus cremation, let alone "where".   

Yeah, I have a will, both in the USA and one here in Scotland. Everything goes to the Daughter. If she passed before I did, all the UK stuff goes to Marie Curie (it seems like a good organization) when I die. In the States it's basically the same.  I have two retirement accounts, both of whom have the Daughter named as beneficiary. If we are both passed away, it all goes to a small animal shelter in San Diego.

So, as I understand it, the retirement accounts would bypass any probate, and they're not huge anyway. My bank accounts only hold a few months' expenses. The pension and the social security will stop when I die. I'm not rich, but at least there will be a bit for the Daughter to tide her over if she's not professionally on her feet yet when I kick the bucket. (Alternately, at some point, I think I might cash it and give it to her to buy a house, but that's down the line. She'd have the house, then, no matter what else. I'm also saving for a downpayment.  I'd rather leave the money in the untaxed account earning money for her for later on.)

I looked online yesterday and winced to see that my 403b & DCP value dropped $3,000 since the end of September. I had tweaked the investments a bit in September. They had been in very secure places, mainly bonds, so I pulled about 25% of that out of the bonds and put it into stocks managed by the University that historically had been getting a much better return. That's the thing about the stock market, though, it's a crap shoot. Long term I think it will have been a good idea, and I think that value will return. (At which point I'll probably just put it back in the bonds.) I am hoping to not have to even think of touching any of this for a few years (when they'll make me start taking distributions), and if the Daughter just leaves it all in place if I die, by the time she's my age it will have grown into something substantial for her to retire on.

And, no, I'd not pre-pay anything. I just want to get some info to have stashed away, with estimates, and phone numbers for her to call to have it all managed when it's time.