Forensic Accounting

At the end of each year, since the BIG clean up of my parent’s financial documents, I gather everything from 10-years ago (mine and my DH’s too), do a quick check, and shred everything. Well, I pay someone to shred. I’ve been saving my parent’s banking records, however, and am starting to go through them. Some things are becoming clear, and others are not… I’m only tracking large numbers as I try to figure out where funds came from. I’m starting to see the flow between accounts, but not initial inputs… Entertaining ideas keep popping into my head. I’ll let you enjoy your own imagination… My dad told stories about making money while working in procurement while in the service. There was a market for everything and not enough supervision, particularly if one was a little higher up the ranks.

This project is slow-going both because of the tedium involved, and all the docs, despite being in cold dark storage for years, still smell like smoke or mildew.

It was good to see that my dad traveled three months before he died. Sad that he kept getting hit with late payment fees on one credit card because, likely, he could no longer read the due date. And interesting to see when mom tried to pay the bills, even while dad was alive, she was double paying her charities. The charity drain was going to happen… Dad gave an incredible amount of money to charity. Mom was just continuing the effort.