“One thing that you can do is make it easier on your heirs and close family to find your financial information if you become disabled mentally or upon your death. This could be the log-in credentials to access your computer and (in my case), a spreadsheet of all my accounts, usernames, passwords, etc. Nobody knows for sure when their time is up. And in addition to a will, this is a worthwhile thing to have.”

 “Before you shred any old tax records, make sure the Social Security people are in sync with your earnings data. When I checked my retirement information with them, they had me listed as having no income for three years, although I had clearly worked those years. I’m talking about salary from past jobs over 13 years ago. Of course, they wouldn’t contact the IRS for that data. I had to fish out my old W2s. I still had to prove to them that I did have income for those years. I asked them why they don’t coordinate with each other, and they just looked at me like I was an idiot. Thank goodness I still had those old files.”