My friend and fellow writer Rina tagged me in that old-school way to do an exercise in which I list three things that make me grateful, five days in a row. But it was on Facebook, and I still have my love/hate relationship with Facebook dialed too far into the wrong side to want to do something there consistently, so I decided to do it here.
I still can’t quite articulate why I cringe about the Facebook. I had no problem sharing stuff there last week when I was at an event for social media promotion. That was fun, and I liked engaging with my friends about the updates and images I shared. But something feels off to me lately about sharing deeper feelings, like feelings of gratitude. Not always, but more often than not. So, I will wait for the pendulum to swing back around to the love side and then I will act like my old Facebook friendly self again.
I have no problem sharing all kinds of personal feels here on my blog, especially because its 10th birthday is approaching. With that in mind I have slowly but surely been crawling through each post, one at a time from the beginning, recategorizing, tagging, correcting, deleting, and even pulling some posts for my book. That’s 120 months of blog posts – it’s definitely slow going. In the process I feel like I am revisiting my old self, my 10-years-ago self, that woman, that new mother, that new blogger, navigating the world of journaling online just as “online” was becoming a thing that people knew about.
I am SUPER nostalgic for those times now, and for the way I wrote, and for the way I shared. If you want to know what the heck I am talking about, here is a link to the first full-fledged story post that I wrote, back in October of 2004: The Great Flu Shot Caper. Let me know if you agree with me – that shit stands the test of time, in my opinion. I am proud of what I saved here.
Back to gratitude. I’m totally going to cheat on this tagged challenge. I’m going to pick one headliner for the list of three, and then include two others at the bottom, almost like footnotes, but you the reader may intuit that a gratitude footnote is much more than that, and maybe I’m just burying something huge in a footnote. Or maybe it’s just a footnote.
Gratitude List Day 1
1. Estate Planning
Morbid and unsavory as it is, the task of estate planning is absolutely necessary for someone who has children, or a spouse, or even any person on the earth who cares for him or her. And if you don’t have an “estate” (I would not argue that Casa de Prince, with its lack of direction-labeled wings, pool, and butler, is an estate) that doesn’t mean you are not a person who needs a will and/or trust depending on what state you live in. My primary goal with our estate planning was to draw up easily-found instructions about how to care for my children in the event of disaster. And also a will and trust etc. etc.
I tried to do it myself and save money. How hard could it be? It was hard. I was too afraid of making a misstep and mucking the whole thing up. So we finally buckled down and hired a lawyer, the same guy who does our taxes actually. We met with him and his paralegal in a polished wood conference room while the kids were at school. I tried not to but I pretty much wept through the whole thing. It was awful. I had that terrible post-cry headache the rest of the day. But I got through it.
And now we have our official documents, and the people who will care for our children in the event of disaster know who they are, and our healthcare proxies are in place, and our house will transfer easily without the interference of California probate (P.S. I read the code while I went through the drafts of the documents and holy cow is that stuff boring. Great sleep inducer for the insomniac.), and I can rest now knowing that it is all handled. I am grateful to have found a person to handle this for us at a reasonable cost, and I am grateful that it’s done.
Overall, I am, eternally (as they say), grateful for what it protects.
2. Two working cars, even though they both have over 100K miles and almost 10 years on them.
3. The forgiving nature of children.
I harbor no small amount of shame that we have yet to create an estate plan…I realize it’s part denial, part cheapness in not wanting to hire someone to do it, and partly because we feel like there is no one appropriate for us to ask to take our children.
Mostly that last one. Every time we have talked about it, the answer comes back to my parents – who have been retired for more than a decade and have no desire to raise kids again. Mine aren’t even ‘kids’ anymore so much as young adults.
But still. This is something I know we need to do for everyone’s sake.
And for our own peace of mind.
Ugh.
julie gardner recently posted…Provisional
We sat in our lawyers office rolling our eyes at his story of how some people have taken over a year to finish their trusts after they started the ball rolling with him. Who are these people? I thought to myself. Well, three years later, I can look in a mirror and see.
We get bi monthly letters asking if we still want to finish our trust, after all we’ve already shelled out a small fortune. Sigh.
It’s on my list of things to do. This month.
Thanks for sharing your gratitude.
Rina Baraz Nehdar recently posted…The Sand House pt. 3
I am glad to know how important it is to estate plan now. Meeting with a lawyer and setting up an established plan for your family, seems like a good way care for them,when your are not there to do so. I agree that having a plan of where your children will go, if you were to die, is very important to the child’s well-being.
We sat in our legal advisors office feigning exacerbation at his account of how some individuals have assumed control over a year to complete their trusts after they began the ball moving with him.
When it comes to setting up a revocable trust, most people are primarily concerned with avoiding the time and expense associated with the probate process.
To avoid probate, it is crucial that legal title to any real property is transferred to the trustee of the trust.
The importance of funding the trust with real property, many clients want to know whether or not the transfer to the trust will trigger an acceleration of the debt on the property under a “due-on-sale” clause.
Hi,
I find your post very useful and informative because making a plan in advance and naming whom you want to receive the things you own after you die. Good estate planning is much more than that. And it gives you a peace of mind.
Please do more post like this because it helps a lot
Regards
Pearlie S.Gilligan
Hi,
Amazing post..
It is really nice to have this great post..
Real estate planning is a good way to make sure that the wealth you will be leaving your beneficiaries with is not something that will tear them apart but will instead make their lives a lot better. It is an effective way of securing your family’s future.
The other way of purchasing real estate leads is by subscribing to a real estate lead generator website that will send you much smaller lists of leads on a regular basis. This can be nice because the information is likely to be much more current than buying a single very large list of leads.
Thanks for being sharing…
Regards
Ronald K. Roy
Hi buddy,
I read your post and it is very useful. Everybody needs to understands the benefits of estate planning and I would love to share something with you that in case of sudden death, or certain mishap, you won’t have the power to decide who will take care of your children who are small and according to the law, are not eligible to take decisions on their own. However, you can avoid that if you have planned it before; you can appoint a guardian for your children yourself.
So please make an estate plan which give you the peace of mind that your family members are save even after you death and when you will not with them. So make a good estate planning before your death.
And thanks for sharing this post with us and please keep sharing more post.
Warm Regards
David A. Sellers
Hey!
It’s a nice share.
Estate planning should be in place for your financial future and your financial security.
Estate planning lawyer is an attorney who gives legal advice to clients who own assets that need to be managed during their incapacity or death.
This includes the granting or release of these assets to heirs, and the payment of corresponding estate taxes to the state.
Thankyou for sharing this useful post about estate plan. This information is very helpful for people who want start thier estate planning.
Keep doing this great work!
Always trust the professional, in affairs of law as in so many other situations in life. There are things that are DIY and things that a professional can best handle. Even lawyers hire other lawyers.Finding a good attorney is tough but once you find it , you can get rid of all your legal problems.