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Preparing for the worst

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If you were killed or incapacitated in a car accident, if you had a stroke or heart attack that put you out of commission, would the people who had to take over your affairs know where to start?

Would they know where your bank accounts are? What insurance you have? Where your paycheck is deposited? What bills have to be paid? And if you have minor children, will friends, relatives, or the authorities know where you want the kids to stay?

If the answer to any or all of those questions is either “no” or “I dunno,” now is as good a time as any to start writing down the answers. I’m in the process of compiling a complete record of all the things my son will need to know if anything happens to me. It’s a pretty big job, one that will take several days to complete. The product will be two three-ring binders, one to keep at his house and one to keep at mine.

Here’s what’s going into it:

1. My employer

Healthcare card (whereabouts; ID number, group number)
…..User names and passwords*
…..URL of page to access pay information*
Amount of my salary
Benefits
COBRA and how to get it

2. Community colleges

Salary for adjunct teaching
…..User names and passwords*
…..URL of page to access pay information*

3. Insurance: vendors, policy  numbers, and telephone numbers

Health
Life
…..Including credit union & other groups with membership policies
Homeowner’s
Automobile

4. Credit union

Accounts
…..Direct deposits
…..Automatic transfers
…..Location of statements
…..User name, password, & URL for online access*
Automatic bill payments
Hard-copy bill payment
Credit-card payments

5. Credit cards

List of credit-card vendors and customer service numbers
Photocopies of cards, front & back

6. Social Security

List of necessary documents, and where to find them
Instructions for how to get SS started
Phone number and address of local SS Administration office

7. Medicare

Documents needed to start Medicare; location of originals
Information on how it works
Instructions for what is desired

8. Investments

Whereabouts of statements
Contact and phone number at management firm
Usernames, passwords, and URLs to for online access*

9. Financial records

Personal
…..Quicken
…..Excel
Corporate
…..Excel
…..Quicken
How to generate tax reports in Quicken & Excel

10. Lawyer/tax preparer

Name, phone number, e-mail, & address

11. Taxes

Whereabouts of past income tax returns
Taxes for S-corporation
Property taxes; fund for paying

13. Deed to house

14. Will

15. Living Will

16. Doctor

Name, phone number, and address

17. Dog

Feeding, care, eccentricities
Veterinarian’s name, phone number, and address

18. Downtown house

Loan documents
Homeowner’s insurance policy
Legal documents

19. Blog

Username, password, & URL for dashboard*
Adsense
…..Username, password, URL*
…..Arrangements for pay
Bluehost
…..Username, password, URL*
Name & contact of tech consultant

20. Freelance clients

Names, phone numbers, e-mails
Instructions to advise that deadlines will be missed
Where to find work in progress
Name & e-mail for subcontractor(s)

21. Final arrangements

How to dispose of the remains

* Important: Don’t save any pages with this information to a computer or a flashdrive. As soon as I finish typing a section, I print two copies for the two binders and then close the file without saving. Another strategy: simply delete the sensitive information before saving to disk…but be sure you’ve erased every reference to a Social Security number, user name, password, or any other vulnerable data.

Kids

If you have minor children, you should make arrangements for someone to care for them should both parents be killed or incapacitated—something that could easily happen in a car wreck. Decide who should be the caretakers and discuss it with them. Once they’ve agreed to take responsibility for your children in an emergency, put it in writing. Have them sign it and you sign it in front of a notary public. Give them a copy and keep a copy for your own records. If the person who will take charge of your affairs is different from the person or couple who will care for the kids, be sure that person also has a copy.

You should also name the desired child caretakers in your will. The person who is to take charge of your affairs should be named as your will’s executor, unless your lawyer advises otherwise.

If you have sole custody of children from a divorce and you do not want the child’s other parent to assume custody in an emergency, you should state the specific reason that this is undesirable (abusive? drug user? alcoholic?) in the document that designates the emergency caretaker.

Security

By the time you finish, this binder will contain some very sensitive information. You don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. My son is very responsible, and so I feel comfortable about giving him a binder full of printouts containing my Social Security number, usernames, and passwords; however, my name and address will not appear in the thing. If your adult children can’t be trusted, consider hiring a lawyer to handle your personal affairs and storing the information at her or his office. Alternatively, choose a trustworthy friend or relative, ask him or her to take charge in an emergency, and give that person the information.

Surprising, isn’t it, how much a person needs to know if she or he is to take over your personal affairs in a pinch? My life is quite simple: no minor children, no child custody decrees, no alimony or child support, uncomplicated investments, no special healthcare issues, no homeowner’s association, no mortgage or rent, no employees, no vacation home, or the like. A young or middle-aged couple or a single parent’s data would be considerably more involved.

As circumstances change, you’ll need to remember to update certain pages. If you’ve saved those pages that contain no sensitive information, this task should be fairly easy. If not, you’ll have to retype entire pages…a hassle, but better than having them reside on a computer that could be hacked or stolen.

Plan to spend several days to a week thinking through and compiling the information another party would need to access important accounts, pay your bills, get  your insurance to cover your costs or collect life insurance; deal with doctors, lawyers, and your employer; care for your property; and find accommodations for your children and pets. With any luck, it won’t be needed. But if it ever is needed, someone will thank you.

The perils of adjunct faculty

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Alas, the first-semester freshman comp course I was scheduled to teach at Paradise Valley Community College this fall didn’t make. The other two sections—both second-semester comp courses—will fly, though.

The chair called and offered to substitute a Wednesday evening course. This presented a choice between collecting $2,400 this fall and rejoining the choir, which holds rehearsals on Sunday evenings.

Hmmm…

money – choir
choir – money

Well, I do need the money. We could go so far as to say I need the money a lot. On the other hand, I also  need my sanity.  Singing contributes mightily to sanity, whereas teaching tends to leach sanity from one’s life. Didn’t take much to come up with an answer for the chair: “no, thanks.”

Really, it’s a bit of a relief. I was starting to worry about how I was going to handle three sections, potentially as many as 90 students in two courses, while holding down a putatively full-time job and writing this blog and pursuing freelance editing work. I can teach two sections of the same course with my eyes closed. So this really will be a better arrangement.

How will I get by, after having diddled away seven grand of my back-up savings on the landscaping project? Remains to be seen, eh?

😉

Truth to tell, there’s plenty stashed in the credit union to serve as a cushion…something over 14 grand. As long as I don’t get sick, I should be OK. Obviously, if I thought I’d starve without that third section, I would have foregone the choir and applied my nose to the proverbial grindstone. But really, I think it will all work out.

Editorial work will not go far to replace this bit of the projected community college income: at the new client’s rate, to make up for this one section I would have to copyedit 480 pages of dense scientific writing between now and December 31. Obviously, that’s not going to happen.

However, we just learned that in January we will pick up a contract with a university press that publishes one of our GDU client journals. This press has a large book list, and it puts out a lot of scholarly periodicals, so I’m hoping we’ll soon be working on more than just the journal that has carried us in like so much flotsam on tide.

In the spring semester, no scheduling issues (except for choir) will prevent me from teaching sections that meet two or three times a week. Between the recession (Arizona’s jobless rate is now well over 9 percent) and GDU’s tuition increases and per-credit-hour surcharges, the community colleges are overrun with students. So there should be no problem filling the teaching dance card come next January.

A$K…

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One of the freelance writer’s (and editor’s!) mottoes is “A$k and ye shall re¢eive.” It was coined (as it were) by the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the best of the few truly useful writer’s groups in existence. The gist of this bon mot is that you should not accept just any lowball offer a publisher tries to inflict on you, but instead should insist on being paid fairly for professional work.

Well, I just landed a client that pays a moderate but more or less acceptable rate. Only problem is, this company expects contractors to sign a nondisclosure agreement that contains not one, not two, but three onerous indemnity clauses. In a nutshell, the contract proposes that the penniless freelancer will pay all the legal bills for any claim even vaguely related to her or his work that is brought against this international corporation by any wretch who thinks he or she should feel aggrieved.

I’ve been going back and forth with the company’s rep for the past ten days or two weeks over this, they offering one modification or another and me repeating that I’m not signing any agreement to indemnify.

Amazingly, they sat down and rewrote their contract to delete the offending clauses! The thing arrived in the e-mail this morning. So… I guess we’re on.

This is the second time I’ve stood my ground on indemnity clauses, expected to be told to take a hike, but prevailed.

The take-home message here is that if you own a small enterprise, you should stand firm on negotiating your terms and your price, and never accept a deal that puts you at a disadvantage.

Penny-wise and pound-foolish!

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SwimmingPool

Leslie’s Pools had an in-store special offer of 50 percent off any pool service, including the routine filter cleaning. Naturally, I couldn’t resist that one, and so this morning Bob the Wonderful Leslie’s Guy showed up to do the job.

You may recall that last April, I got peeved at Leslie’s because they’d jacked up their price on DE filter service and tacked on a “trip charge,” a gratuitous insult when gasoline prices were lower than they’d been in the past two years. So I called on Adam, a neighbor who advertises that he’s in the pool servicing business, to come over and clean out the diatomaceous-earth filter. He did the job for Leslie’s pre-hike price, and since he could walk to my house there was no absurd trip charge. Not only that, but he used his own DE instead of dumping mine in there.

Ohhhkayyyy….  That looked, on the surface, like a positive development.

A few weeks later I had to have the pressure gauge replaced. Adam had jammed it back onto the pump cattywampus, and with the action of opening and closing the relief valve during the almost daily debris-cleaning activities, it had cracked. That cost $133.31.

Dumb tax!

And that’s not all. Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner has been sluggish to the point of torpor. He barely crawls around the bottom; normally he zips around like some sort of berserk ferret in there, and often climbs up the walls and tries to get out. The swimming-through-molasses act has been going on for a very long time (like…since last April, maybe?), and no amount of backwashing and trips to the Leslie’s pool-cleaner vet have helped.

Well, so Bob the WLG, having already complained that it wasn’t very long ago that I had the thing cleaned out so he didn’t see why it should need to be cleaned again, hauls the filter innards out to the alley and takes the thing apart.

It was totally clogged. Bob speculated that Adam hadn’t bothered to disassemble and clean the parts individually, but had simply set the whole lash-up in the alley and sprayed it off with the hose. Since it didn’t take Adam long to do the job, that’s probably a fair guess.

Dumb tax surcharge? Hours of physical work for the Happy Homeowner. I’ve been out there for a good hour almost every morning through this godforsaken record-breaking hot summer, just trying to keep the pool from turning green. I’ve had to clean up dust and debris manually, day in and 115-degree day out, because Harvey was effectively nonfunctional.

So that’s what happens when you get cheap and hire an unknown quantity instead of a provider with a known track record, just to save five or ten bucks.

one of these

=

a bunch of these

£££££

Image: Proof-quality Lincoln penny, public domain, Wikipedia Commons

Car upkeep!

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Gawdlmighty! The 90,000-mile service on my aging Toyota Sienna is gunna cost $1,200!

It’s enough to make a strong woman faint. Well, luckily I knew about this and set the money aside. But that doesn’t make me any happier about having to sink 12 C-notes into a nine-year-old vehicle.

For the money, Chuck the Mechanic Par Excellence proposes to do the regular 90,000-mile service, change the timing belt, and replace the water pump, it being an opportune moment to do that—while the front end of the motor is off, anyway. I happen to know, too, that he’ll lubricate the squeaking steering wheel, probably for not much, and that he’ll check the brake pads, rotate the tires, and change all the hoses.

Suspecting that Chuck’s estimate was a little high, I called a couple of Toyota dealers. One proposed to charge me $350 for the basic 90,000 service; another wanted $300 for the same thing, claiming it was a “special” markdown from the usual price of $360. Uh huh. Then it’s another $300 for the water pump plus another $300 for three seals that may or may not need to be changed plus $65 for “outside belts.” Plus $335 for the timing belt. If I’m not mistaken, that would be $1,300 to $1,350, depending on which stalwart Toyota dealer one chooses to do business with.

Makes Chuck’s fee look like a bargain. And I know he’s not going to cheat me. Past experience suggests that is not always a given with automobile dealerships.

{sigh} So I made an appointment for a week from Friday.

Well, it’s a heckuva lot cheaper than buying a new car. Normally, I’d trade in a vehicle at ten years. But now that I’m about to be canned, with no hope (or desire…) of getting another job, this car is going to have to run until it falls apart. Chuck thinks it will easily get 150,000 miles, which should carry it another six years. And it could, in theory, run to 180,000 miles, or another nine years. Barring an accident, of course.

A crash that results in the insurance company totaling it (which right now would probably be a fender-bender) will leave me up the creek, since I do not and will not ever have enough cash to buy another car. Nor will I ever again have enough cash flow to make car payments. Every penny in savings, including the $18,000 I had set aside for the next vehicle, now will have to be rolled into the funds intended to support me in my dotage. If I can get this car to run ten more years, it will be the last car I’ll ever own.

Really, in ten years I’ll only be 74, and so I may still be competent to drive. What’s $18,000 now will likely be $36,000 then…hmmm…  With no steady job, I’d have to set aside $3,600 a year to collect enough extra money to buy a car in 2019. {snark!} Now there’s a realistic goal!

😆  😆  😆  😆  😆  😆  😆  😆  😆  😆

Oh well. Thirty-six hundred bucks would buy 180 twenty-dollar cab rides. That’s a trip to the grocery store about every two days.

Too bad we don’t have decent public transportation here. Thirty-six hundred bucks—just one  year of car savings—would buy 2,057 all-day bus or train tickets. That would be unlimited rides every single day for 5 years and 7 months! Alas, in these parts a single trip to the grocery store and home on the buses would consume a whole day. I could fill the entire remainder of my life with waiting at bus stops and then waiting for buses to get where I want to go.

Image: 2007-2009 Toyota Sienna, public domain