This step is to review your life insurance policies, annuities, and investment accounts (especially retirement). When you first started these items, you were asked to identify a beneficiary. If you are like most of us, it has been many years since you did this. Since the beneficiary receives the proceeds in the event of your death. you want to verify that the defined beneficiaries are, in fact, who you want to receive these benefits.

You may not think this is important, since you have a will (or will create one in the next step), but these assets are handled outside the confines of your will; in other words, you cannot control the distribution of these items in your will. Therefore, it is imperative that you review all of your accounts and policies and ensure that you have identified the correct beneficiaries and allocations.