Don't Keep It A Secret

I wrote this first blog somewhere in June 2019, in the interest of my clients as a learning and a lesson we all should learn from a tragedy that happened with one of my friends.

A very dear and old friend of mine left this world in an accident. Survived by a ten-year-old daughter, a three-year-old son and his wife. Yes, the loss to the family was immense and beyond our consolations.

There are a few points I want to highlight here as a Financial Advisor which came to light during a discussion with his wife. What we found was a messed up finances, investments and transactions.

1. In last few months, before this mishappening, he had paid around Rs 10 Lakh to some property dealer to buy a flat, but the real problem is his wife is not having any documents of it and even not having any contact number of that person which whom her husband was making the deal. And now Rs 10 Lakh are gone and untraceable as the transaction was in cash. This is a common problem of households in India that the family is unaware of any assets or investments many times and the end-user in such cases are totally in the dark and helpless. There are crores of rupees lying unclaimed with banks, life insurance companies, stocks and the only reason behind that is the stakeholder kept these assets hidden and secret from his family members. We should discuss our assets with at least one person in our family apart from ourself.
2. The second problem was, many policies were there but either most of them have lapsed or the insured were kids or the wife. Obviously insuring the kids or the wife will not help in this case anyway. We buy the policy in the name of our spouse or kids out of emotion but the whole idea of insurance is to protect the income of the family in case of the loss of the breadwinner and the income. And in this case, you can assume that assets were there but now after the demise, the assets turned liability to continue till maturity.

Hope these two points are enough to bring awareness to lead a better-planned approach toward our assets.

In the closing note, I would like to suggest a solution for the benefit of our readers.

1. Please list all your mobile numbers, mail ids, bank accounts, deposits, loans, insurance policies or any type of investment in a diary.
2. Share these details with at least one confidante of yours be it your family member, friend or anyone you can trust.

Regards

Arvind Sharma