We Mexicans are not afraid of death. We welcome her home, we decorate her with flowers and candles, we dress her in colors. We talk to her every November, we turn her into art, into an altar, into memory. We know how to celebrate like few people in the world, but we don’t know how to prepare to die.
That contradiction has always been with us. We say death is a part of life and we feel comfortable celebrating those who are gone. We like to imagine that after our departure there will be offerings and photographs, bread of the dead and papel picado. But we avoid imagining who will review our accounts, who will look for our passwords, who will try to understand our papers. We would rather light a candle than write a will. We prefer to buy flowers than organize our finances.
That denial costs us more than we think. Dying without leaving your financial life in order is a silent blow to our loved ones. It is not only an administrative oversight; It is, in many ways, a form of involuntary selfishness. Because when someone dies, their family members not only face the emotional loss, they also face a tangle of paperwork. In the midst of pain they have to become researchers, accountants, lawyers. They must decipher passwords, discover bank accounts and debts, locate insurance, and confront institutions that seem designed to ignore grief.
We live in a time where our financial lives have become almost as complex as our emotional lives. We have credit and debit cards in different banks, investment funds, life insurance, mortgage loans, digital platforms where we save or invest, subscriptions that are automatically charged each month, and a tangle of passwords that only we know. We save everything on our phones, in the cloud, in emails, in apps that no one else will know how to open the day we’re gone. Our financial identity is fragmented and dispersed, and if we do not leave it in order, what is left for our family members is a labyrinth.
Searches
I have seen cases in which the children or partners of a deceased person spend months trying to find out if there was life insurance, if the cards were up to date, if there was a loan to pay or a forgotten savings or investment account. Sometimes banks don’t even inform relatives, because confidentiality is maintained until someone can legally prove they are heirs, and that can take years.
Death does not erase debts or financial responsibilities; he transfers them, entangles them, leaves them suspended until someone else solves them. And almost always that someone is also going through the pain of grief.
Therefore, talking about financial preparation for death is not a gloomy act. It is, on the contrary, an act of love. It is a gesture of care towards those who will stay, a way of saying: “I don’t want my absence to be a burden too.”
Leaving an organized list of our finances does not mean anticipating death, but rather assuming that one day it will come, and that until then we have the opportunity to do it well.
Forecast
Let’s imagine for a moment what it would mean to leave a document, a file, a physical or digital folder containing our basic data: bank accounts, credit and debit card numbers, contracted insurance, active debts, assets, credits, investments, passwords, key contacts, the will. An inventory of who we are in financial terms.
There is no need to fear that list; What should scare us is that no one else knows how to sustain what we build. How many times have we heard stories of families discovering late that there was an unpaid life policy, or losing property because a payment was not renewed, or facing liens on credits that no one knew existed? Each story like this is a reminder that, no matter how modern our lives are, we continue to avoid the conversation about death, and especially about what happens after it.
Preparing that list is not just about filling out an inventory, but about making important decisions. Who should have access to this information? Who will be able to access my accounts when I am gone? Who do I trust with the keys to my digital and financial life?
The simple exercise of answering these questions forces us to put things in perspective, to recognize that money, in the end, does not belong to us entirely, but is a resource that we manage temporarily.
Preparing our financial lives for death also confronts us with our own relationship with money. It forces us to review what we have done with it, how we use it, what meaning we gave it. It is an exercise in self-knowledge.
Reviewing debts, accounts, insurance, investments and wills is also reviewing our history, our decisions, our fears, our postponed dreams. And perhaps it is an opportunity to correct, to simplify, to be grateful.
Preparing the financial closure of our life forces us to ask ourselves what we are really leaving behind. Not only goods, but order, meaning, coherence. It invites us to look at life from finitude, not as a threat, but as an opportunity. Because knowing that one day we will be gone helps us decide how we want to live today, how we want to be remembered, and what we want to remain.
Perhaps in Mexico we should learn to expand the meaning of the word “offering.”
The true offering is not only placed on the altar with flowers and bread, but is built in life, with responsibility and love. The most noble offering we can leave is an ordered legacy, that our loved ones can mourn us without having to decipher our financial life, without anguish or burdens. Because in a country where we honor the dead so much, we should start taking better care of the living.
—Merida, Yucatan
marisol.cen@kookayfinanzas.com
@kookayfinanzas
University Professor and Financial Consultant