by
Pradip Chakrabarty
Founder – Advisorkhoj.com
If you thought only ghosts could make horror stories, let me tell you horror stories with humans as protagonists. It is only natural that we feel so safe and secure in our lives and we assume nothing could possibly happen to us. It is good to maintain an optimistic outlook but at the same time we must prepare ourselves for uncertainties for the simple reason that they are uncertain.
It would be extremely ironic if someone selling life insurance to people did not have a life insurance himself. Well that is what happened to someone I knew personally. The man not only sold life insurance for a leading corporation but also held a senior position in a corporation. Although he earned big bucks his savings were virtually nothing. Neither did he have any life cover for himself or family nor a health/ Medical Insurance. He did not save for his child’s education; his car was on loan and he lived in a rented house. He died at a pretty young age leaving his family clueless. When the wife approached the banker and paid off the entire due of the car, she was completely surprised that there was a credit card due too. And unless the credit card due is paid the NOC of the car will not be released. So, she had to pay that too.
Another such incident I came across recently, was that of a young married couple who lived in our complex at Kolkata. The husband worked in a senior position with a leading Consumer durables company and had various bank accounts across the cities he worked in. But the worst part was that the wife did not have access to any of the bank pass books or his investments. The flat they lived in was on EMI and the husband did not have any Life Insurance policy or protection for the Home Loan EMI. One day, while on tour, he died of heart attack leaving the family clueless. When family started accumulating all his investments and savings they found to their amazement that address in most of the bank accounts were not changed to the current address, in some there was no nomination, the accounts opened prior to his marriage had his mother as nominee who is now no more. He only had a small Insurance cover provided by his company. The husband never shared his financial position with his wife and his wife being a home-maker did not have any idea that one day she would have to take a plunge to protect her children and earn her livelihood the hard way. The family had to sell the flat to square off the EMI and now she is staying in rented accommodation, teaching in a private school and somehow managing a square meal and her child’s education. You will be surprised to know they once lived in an air conditioned flat in the city’s best address and drove a Honda City!
The third such incident I came across, is about a techie who died recently in a car accident. He used to maintain all his investment records very neatly in password protected word/excel files in his laptop and sometime verbally discussed his investments with his working chartered accountant wife. During accident the car got damaged badly along with the laptop and other things kept on the back seat. The family never dreamed of this calamity and therefore after his death even his chartered accountant wife did not have any clue as to where to start from as far as recovering his investments were concerned. Even though she knew he has sizable investments she did neither have any copy nor the “password” of the password protected files? The situation was indeed ironic since the wife was a finance expert and yet there was little she could do to help herself.
Friends, there are many examples like this and during my long career as a Financial Adviser I came across many more such incidents. The point is, when we are alive, we are so casual towards life that we don’t think anything bad will ever happen to us. We never stop and wonder what will happen to our families once we’re gone. We all are earning, having a good time and only looking at the good parts of our lives! But those who face reality check and find themselves at the mercy of the God. How can such a situation be overcome? How to know and recover the investments in such situations? I will come up with solutions for all these in the next issue….
Till then, happy reading…!
https://carmaconnect.in/newsletters/2012/09/14/finger-food-3/
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