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Can you imagine throwing away $800 million? Find out what happened to a systems engineer, later in this email.

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📉 A New Wrinkle To Estate Planning and Wills

We’ve all misplaced our keys, lost a pair of sunglasses or accidentally left a hat in a hotel room.

But how would you feel if you misplaced … $800 million?

James Howells, a 39-year-old systems engineer, can tell you. He mistakenly threw away a hard drive with about 8,000 Bitcoin. (The price of a single Bitcoin was flirting with $100,000 as of this writing.) Now he’s suing for the right to search a landfill for the hard drive.

Clark says Bitcoin is speculation akin to betting in a casino and not investing.

But put aside the “should you or shouldn’t you” of crypto for a second.

If you self-custody your crypto with a hard wallet, you’re holding assets on the blockchain. This means you need to use a thumb drive-like hardware, a “seed phrase” (a long string of words that serves as a password) and some basic knowledge (i.e. how to convert crypto to U.S. dollars).

Howells threw his hard drive away. But what if someone simply dies, and no one else has knowledge of how to access those assets? It’s a new estate-planning wrinkle in a society in which our finances are increasingly more digital and self-driven.

Although they’re not as complicated, online-only bank accounts can present similar issues. If you don’t get a paper statement and your spouse, children or whomever you’d like to be able to access your money has no idea the account exists – much less your usernames and passwords – may never find it.

Clark’s favorites Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard either operate physical branches, offer extensive and professional human customer service or both. But with the rise of robo-advisors and digital apps such as Robinhood – which for years had no phone number you could proactively call – the future of all finances may present more like crypto in terms of estate planning.

When you’re reviewing your will, make sure that your beneficiaries know how to access any digital or online assets you have.

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Note: This episode features content that previously aired and has been thoughtfully edited together to explore a similar topic. During our Thanksgiving week break, we want to give viewers the opportunity to revisit favorite segments or catch one they may have missed.

☎️ Need Money Help?

The Team Clark Consumer Action Center is a free helpline that can help you navigate your money questions. Call 636-492-5275. Visit clark.com/cac for more information.

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