The forgotten burrows

Today we received a notice from ETrade that an account that Gwohann has at ETrade has been inactive for a few years, therefore, by law the money in the account will be transferred to California state unclaimed property division if he doesn't take action by September 15. That was a surprise.

I was not aware of the existence of the account so I asked Gwohann about it, but he doesn't remember it either. He used to remember everything that is related to numbers and money, but he no longer does, a fact that I am trying to get used to. Now I am handling things that he used to do for our household, such as tax filing and account balance, things that he has been doing since we married with pleasure and self motivation.

The ETrade account was under his name only so I can't do anything with it. His login ID on the file that he gave me doesn't work either. Luckily he can still correspond with the agent on the phone and gives me the authority to handle the matter on his behalf. Evidently, Gwohann has not touched the account that used to be a company stock option account since 2009. There is another account that has only cash in it also has not been touched since 2012.

This is the second institution that I found that Gwohann has accounts with but that he had forgotten after his memory was impacted by cancer and the whole brain radiation. In the past, as a financially responsible man, he always makes sure that we have money for emergency. I knew he would tuck some money away also to make sure that I don't spend it all :-). Maybe there are more hidden money out there. So I teased him that he is hiding money from me and asked where else he hid it. With a mischievous look on his face, he replied '狡兔三窟‘ (A Chinese four words idiom "Jiao Tu San Ku" meaning "A wily hare has three burrows").  We laughed and I poked him as a punishment. However, we both know that he had forgotten where all the burrows are. We will just have to wait when the burrow steward notifies us in its due time.