In the newspaper industry, one of the saddest realizations is just how many people are completely unprepared for the death of a loved one.
Ask any editor. Odds are, they can’t tell you how many emails they’ve gotten from people begging them to run a story about a GoFundMe to cover someone’s funeral expenses. It’s especially common when young people pass away. Not only are friends and family hit with a tidal wave of immense grief, they also find themselves staring down sudden and immense financial hardships.
Nobody wants to think about dying, especially around the holidays. But with New Year’s right around the corner, now is about a good a time as any to make some resolutions for end-of-life care.
It doesn’t matter how young you are, you should probably have a life insurance policy on file. Practically every employer on the up and up offers some type of plan and even if you’re self-employed or unemployed you can still get an affordable plan on your own. For the cost of two trips to Starbucks, you should have enough in your pocket to make the monthly payments for life insurance. Considering how much pain and heartbreak you can save your loved ones, it very well could be the single most important bill in your list of regular expenses.
Then there are wills. Yes, it will cost you to pay a skilled and knowledgeable attorney to review the fine print for you, but whatever the upfront investment may be is more than worth it in the long haul.
Without a will on the record, when you die it may become impossible for the people you care about most to take over your assets — or even manage your own funeral. Naturally, the more detailed the document is, the better. Nobody wants to put their loved ones through the unnecessary turmoil of battling banks and magistrate courts to divvy up your belongings, And a few hundred dollars on the backend could stave off years of infighting and court costs in the process.
If money truly is a barrier, you can still download pre-fab will templates off the internet. and for no money at all, you can draw up a will by yourself plainly spelling out where you want your assets to go and to who. Keep in mind the legal viability of homemade wills is subject to question, but it’s still better than the alternative. Just some documents letting officials know that so-and-so is permitted access to your bank accounts and other private data around is better than nothing in writing whatsoever.
There are other incredibly important documents you should have on file that don’t cost anything at all or require legal consultation — heck, some of them don’t even have to be notarized. One such example, and something that a lot of people regrettably overlook, is an advance medical care directive. The intent of this document is about as simple as it gets: If you’re ever incapacitated for health reasons, directions and instructions are spelled out for an identified caretaker to make those decisions on your behalf. Not only does it cost zero dollars to obtain an advance medical care directive, you can download a template from aging.georgia.gov and simply fill in the blanks yourself. Just 10 minutes of filling out forms can prevent untold stress for you and the people you care about most. and once again, money isn’t a barrier at all.
It’s a weirdly ironic predicament — and often, a tragic one. As individuals, we spend so much time planning for things that have a remote chance of ever happening (at best) but like to pretend that the only true guarantee in life — that it’s eventually going to end and can unexpectedly in the blink of an eye — isn’t going to happen to us or the people we love more than anyone.
With 2024 on the horizon, there’s no better time to prepare for the unavoidable than the present; because the last thing any of us wants to do is make life more difficult for our friends and family after we’re gone, simply because we never took the time or effort to prepare for the unpreventable.