We used to be reasonably well-organised – or we tried to be! We kept credit card slips and statements in one drawer and we’ve always had a locked filing cabinet for the really important stuff, like the mortgage and insurances.
But we have to admit that we didn’t quite get round to sorting everything into easily accessible order. If something had happened to one of us, the other might have had difficulty laying their hands on any necessary contact or policy details quickly, which would have made life even more stressful.
And if both of us were to go off the road in the same car, I dread to think what our son would have made of what he’d have found!
So we’ve gone through question by question in our Nutshell and found every policy document, every loan agreement, every bill that we could, and recorded the details in the correct places. There were even some old building society accounts for a few pounds a time that we’d forgotten about altogether. So this exercise has had the added bonus of getting our paperwork files organised as well.
Now we’ve got easily accessed records securely online in one place. Not only are we more organised, but if the house burned down or the filing cabinet jams, we can find everything we need to online in our Nutshell and print it out – we’ve even started scanning the originals and uploading them into the files as well (we got a scanner/printer specially, and it’s been very easy to use.
Our password is safely stored with our Will, and we’ve told our son about it in case anything does happen to us both – he’s thinking of opening his own Nutshell for him and his wife as it sounds such a sensible thing to do.
And on top of all that, once the amounts we pay in and out get filled in, it produces a budget sheet for the next three months, or the next year – and it’s interactive so if we suddenly get invited to a friend’s wedding we can fill in the extra future expenditure in the right month in advance, and see how it will affect the budget for later in the year.
It was a big old project that took us a few days (we told you we weren’t the most organised!) but now it’s all done we feel much happier about having everything in one place. Now we’re thinking of starting other Nutshells such as writing our life stories, we’ve got quite addicted!
It's easy to think you'll live forever when you're young.
But now we have a growing family, we realise it's vital to put our affairs in order; if one of us is taken ill, the other will know where everything is and what to do.
But my grandchildren have been interviewing me on their phones and on video, and now they've recorded my memories in a Nutshell - I can't wait to see it.
Lots of things are hard to talk about - at any age.
But now we've recorded our last wishes we can get on with enjoying retirement together, knowing that those left behind will have greater peace of mind.
