Don't Forget Your Beneficiaries

Insurance. We all hope to not need it, but wouldn’t want to be without it if we do. Car insurance… health insurance… life insurance… home insurance… you probably have most – if not all – of these policies and pay for them on a regular basis. But paying for them isn’t where your responsibility ends. You also have to make sure your named beneficiaries and policy owners are up-to-date. This step is critical because if they’re not, the wrong people could benefit if something happened to you.

It’s a great idea to set an annual date to review all your accounts with named beneficiaries…this may go beyond insurance, as even some retirement accounts require you to have beneficiaries. Here’s a list of some life events that may signal you to sit down and review what you have and your plans for them:

• Marriage or divorce
• Birth of a child
• Death in the family or inheritance
• Job loss
• New job or significant salary increase
• Financial windfall
• New estate plan documents or trust establishment
• If your job takes you out of the country, leaving for a new assignment or other foreign travel

Any of these triggers should act as a reminder to look at your policies, accounts and beneficiaries and make sure they still correctly reflect your wishes. If you’d like, you can set your beneficiary review date to coincide with our annual account review, and we can do it together. Let’s get together soon.