Australian Finance Podcast
Sort out your money: financial record keeping tools & systems
08 Sep 2022
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Why is financial record keeping important?
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That means it's not specific to you, your needs, goals, or objectives, so don't act on the information until you've spoken with your financial advisor. You'll find our full disclosure, disclaimer, and link to our financial services guide in the show notes. Kate Campbell, welcome to this episode of the Australian Finance Podcast.
It is good to be back on.
Yes, it is indeed. We are talking about keeping a financial record, how to deal with all of the paperwork that you get and everything that goes on behind the scenes after you buy a share or before you buy a share. Even if you don't do share market investing, how do you keep on top of all of the financial stuff? That's today's episode.
We're going to give you some, I guess, tips and tricks on how you can keep a record of whether it's your will, whether it's all the different bank accounts you have, how you can go about managing that and just keeping on top of it and managing the stress of it all, which is a big one for me at tax time. So, Kate, let's just dive right into it. Why? Why?
Yeah. Why? It's a big question, but why do we actually want to keep on top of our financial records and all of that paperwork and all of those documents? First things first, tax time. I want you to create a system so your life can be a lot easier at tax time. I've learned this the hard way because I've made my life very complicated in previous years when I was trialing lots of different things.
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Chapter 2: What financial records should you keep track of?
Power of attorneys, we don't have any of those at the moment, but I did have one and I took a digital copy of that and I just added it to a Google Drive. Like I was someone else's power of attorney while they were away. So it's a good one, really important document. Yeah.
The next one is insurance documents. So this could be everything from travel insurance while you're away, your life insurance, income protection, your health insurance, pet home and contents, having copies of all these details and those insurance policy numbers stored in a drive.
Because a lot of the times when you actually need the insurance, it's because something has gone wrong and you might not have access to all of the original paperwork. You might not have access to the emails or someone else is having to deal with this on your behalf. Because you might be unwell, which is the reason the insurance is required.
So having this located in a key place or having a list of, it doesn't need to be all the private details, but just having a list of all the different insurance policies you have and the key numbers and which company the policy is with. have the list printed out and give it to a trusted friend or family member that has a copy of this when it comes down to it.
Because if you're in a situation where you can't physically manage all this yourself because something's gone wrong, the loved one can help deal with this on your behalf.
Yeah, and one thing you can do is if you do have your super, your insurance through super, like your income protection, blah, blah, blah, that's the next point, which is the super fund details.
So your login information, your member number, have that somewhere safe because you want to allow them to log in and to be able to make a claim or you want them to be able to access your super and speak to the super fund because super funds... When it comes, there's an extra layer of complexity when you have insurance inside super.
There's a little bit more admin involved because the super fund has to go through all of the rigmarole of verifying who you are, who your executor is, or even who your loved one is. They're not just going to let anyone access that, right? So there's an extra layer of a headache there. So just keep that in mind if you do have insurance inside super like I do.
Yeah, and that's probably another thing, keeping records of where your super fund is held because if it does come, you do pass away and someone has to track down your superannuation. If they don't have access to your emails and they can't find any paperwork, it could be one of a hundred different Australian super funds and they'd have to write to every single one.
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Chapter 3: How can you simplify your record keeping process?
Let them know. Send them one big email to say, you will be able to click this link to go to this Google Drive or you will see this spreadsheet. This is what I'm going to keep updated. Just do something.
You can keep records for your ID, for your wills, for your bank account, super insurance, which is really important, very important for travel insurance and those types of things, your property information, debts. contact information of your advisors and your plumbers and your accountants. Have an investment plan.
For members, you can go into the RASP website and you can access a DIY investment guide. And then some of the tools you can use, Kate outlined them very simply. We've got cloud-based storage, Dropbox, Drive, iCloud, Microsoft, whatever you use. Kate's idea of
segmenting emails and just drag and drop super easy share site is free for up to 10 holdings you can do a monthly check-in with yourself legal docs store it in a safe print off your asset list give it to your family and please please please use your share registry appropriately and send get it all set up for email preferences that's the list yeah that's what we went through that's a lot
It might take a few hours or a few days if you've never done any of this before. But once it's sorted, it's only more of a maintaining thing rather than having to go and sort this all again. Once you've set up your registries, they're set up.
Yep. So if you are a bit stuck and you want some actual cold hard steps to follow, you'll be able to find more information. Kate's done a share registry guide. I think it's available on Rask Media now. There's a lot of information in there on how to deal with a share registry set up at DRP, a dividend reinvestment plan.
If you want your dividends and your distributions reinvested, we've also done podcasts on this in the past, which we'll link to. And if you're just getting off the ground and you're thinking, all of this stuff's a lot to take in, go and take the Rask Road Trip, free courses on Rask education, six modules, all linked together, solving a lot of your questions and problems in your financial life.
It's all free by Kate, myself, Tash, the team here. So much fun putting those courses together. So go and check them out. That's a lot, Kate. I feel tired after all this admin talk.
Yeah, I think it's, if you've got through this, well done. And your next step is to just write one thing that you're going to do after listening to this episode or put an hour in your calendar to deal with this on the weekend.
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