Way too much worry is making the rounds -- in the wake of Florida's adoption of a gay-marriage ban -- about whether unmarried people, gay or straight, can make health care decisions for each other.

They can. It’s governed by Florida law, says William Bell, general counsel for the Florida Hospital Association. The law says a person can appoint another person to be a health care surrogate. It doesn’t say that person has to be one’s spouse.

If the patient hasn’t executed one of those, then the law spells out who can be assumed to be a person’s health care surrogate. That lists includes spouses, but it also includes “a good friend.”

You don’t have to be married to do this.

Bell noted there’s also no provision in federal law that bans non-spouses from visiting each other in the hospital. “Unless the patient says I do not want certain individuals to visit me, the hospital visitation policies would apply,” he said.

> Discuss this entry

I wanted to remind everyone of the lesson learned during Katrina. Having copies of your records is a good idea, so long as you’re at home. But if you have to hit the road in a very big hurry, you may not bring the right thing with you.

You may, as my cousin did, see the insurance policy on the hall table as you’re climbing up to the attic because the water’s rising.

Here are a couple of solutions: Store your info on a disc and send it to your best friend who lives in another city. Or store it in an online vault. Or put it on a flash drive.

Do you have a favorite site for storing your financial data? I’d like to hear about it.

One free thing I’ve found goes much farther than merely finance. T. Rowe Price offers the Family Records Organizer. You can get it by mail, if you go to www.TrowePrice.com and look under estate planning.

You can also download it here.

> Discuss this entry

Journalists routinely come back to the office, lean over their neighbor’s cubicle and begin a conversation about the news with, “You won't believe what this guy did....," or “She had an idea I'd never thought about before."

These stories we tell each other inside the office are often too informal to be included in what we write. But they're so good, they have to be shared.

My mission in writing this blog is to give you information that's so good, it has to be shared.

You've got the job of managing your money. No one in school taught you how. But you and I, we can teach each other, how to handle it, how to save for retirement, how to make money last, how to educate the kids, how to make a budget work.

The conversations I have with my readers are fun. Money’s important, but discussing it does not have to be boring.

I like the interaction. I welcome the questions. And your ideas. What I can contribute is my years of fascination with this subject. I have lots of experience trying to make the issues clear and the ideas relevant. I have access to timely information that you may not. And there are plenty of experts I can call for help.

Because when it comes to finance, you need plenty of voices. There is very little objective advice. There is no product testing to help us evaluate our options. It’s ridiculous.

It’s also not rocket science. I firmly believe everyone can “get” personal finance, if they devote a little time.

My goal would be that you never again make some of the most important decisions of your life -- getting a mortgage, buying insurance, figuring out how much money to live on -- with little knowledge and no help.

The way I see it, we're all better off if we talk about money.

> Discuss this entry