#6: Death and Taxes: Sexy, Morbid Things

What it means to plan your posthumous life, wool jumpers, and unhinged food recipe comments.

I actually didn’t know why this (death and taxes, not sexy morbid things — that was a me add-on) was a saying, but then after seeing the entirety of Benjamin Franklin’s quote, I see it’s a nod to the fact that there are two things certain in life: death and taxes. The latter, is unfortunately staring at me in the face with many things currently due to my accountant, but this newsletter is about the former! Death! Death planning, more specifically. I promise, this gets less depressing.

While I wouldn’t say that I grew up in a highly superstitious household, I did get a sharp whack on the arm, paired with some variation of an admonishing tone of my name, whenever I’d talk about death. Around the age of 10, I became fascinated with the concept of death, because I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But after being ushered away from the topic any time I broached it, I began to feel like I couldn’t talk about anything related to death, for it would bring forth bad juju.

I’ve found that this is how most people honestly feel, talking about death and things related to death; more specifically, death planning. “Life planning,” is how I believe the industry is trying to rebrand it, to make it less intimidating for people to talk about. Even though we know that creating a living will, deciding on advanced healthcare directives, and assigning power of attorney are all responsible things that we *should* be doing (especially with kiddos + pets in the mix, and/or significant material assets like houses, retirement accounts), we tend to procrastinate that stuff, because who wants to think about dying??

I’d like to suggest a reframe. It’s a gift from your current self to both your future self and your loved ones, to take care of this stuff now.

The last thing that you want your loved ones doing while grieving, well, you, is to be fumbling around trying to figure out passwords, what accounts exist, and hypothesizing about what you would have wanted. Not only that, finances after death frequently split families up from the intense discord around lack of clarity of a person’s wishes, if it’s not explicitly stated (and sometimes even if it is!).

Call this the people-pleasing part of me, but my nightmare would be, A) my loved ones to argue about what I would have wanted, and B) the life and assets I’ve worked for to be distributed in any other way than I see fit (this includes money that should be going to family going to government, we’ll get to that later).

With life events like losing my dad, welcoming Benny into our lives, merging lives with J, buying a house, and my health, I’m more of an advocate for life planning than ever. I was reminded of this again, when we bought our house, and our realtor (turned very good friend) sent us an email with some post-closing suggestions on things to take care of, one of the line items being creating a will and trust.

And now, especially with a fairly major surgery coming up in a few weeks, I feel even more peace of mind, knowing I’ve worked to get things in order. I acknowledge I’m a pretty pragmatic person that loves having all the information, even around some fear-inducing things like medical stuff, so this may come more easily to me than others— but I hope that by the end of this newsletter, you will feel inspired to get started on life planning (another ⭐️✅ on the adulting list!) for yourself! It’s empowering to know that you have your wishes made clear.

Now, let’s break down a few major things that life planning entails, with the personal addition of this “life binder” I’m working on creating!

**DISCLAIMER: nothing below is considered legal advice. I am not a lawyer, just an anxious individual that seeks information to satisfy my need for control🙃