Bridging The Gaap

As you may have inferred from my last post, November has been a little rough for me. I caught the cold from hell, and along the way I lost one of my best pals: the family pet, our little white dumbo rat, Roo.

My pain is your gain though, because it got me thinking about three very important subjects that go hand in hand: life, death, and money. When you’re recovering, sick, dying, or when you’ve just lost a family member, the last thing anybody wants to think about is money. In times of crisis you want to have less financial stress, not more.

There are three things you absolutely must have in order to give you and your family financial peace of mind in times of crisis:

1. A proper emergency fund
2. A living will
3. A legal will

1) A Proper Emergency Fund

A well-stocked emergency fund can be a great help in times of crisis. Having little money set aside for times when you may not be able to work will help alleviate a great amount of stress on your family. Many people during their lifetimes will need to take a break from work due to illness or other stressful factors, and planning to have a well-stocked emergency fund may allow you to take the time off that you need to get better. If you or a member of your family needs take time off from work your emergency fund will be there to help alleviate some financial burdens. You can also add your emergency fund with a little bit more money to help cover unexpected funeral or medical costs in the future.

Conventional thinking says to have 3 to 6 months total living expenses in an easily accessible bank account at all times, but as you’ll see in BTG Explains: What Is An Emergency Fund? I advocate adding a little bit more money just in case, after all in times of crisis you can never have too much money!

2) A Living Will

As I mentioned before, we recently lost our much beloved pet rat Roo. As happens to many rats as they reach old age (they live for two years, and Roo was two years and four months…) they can suffer from degenerative illnesses, and in poor Roo’s case this meant a degenerative neuralgia, which robbed him of the use of his limbs. The question of whether or not to mercifully euthanized him came up several times in the past few months, and though I believe that we made the right decision at the right time, when we thought he was ready to go, one of the hardest things to deal with was the fact that we could never know for certain what his wishes were.

Would your family know what your wishes were, if something were to happen to you and you couldn’t communicate? One of the best ways to make sure that your wishes are known and that they legally will be carried out is to make sure that you have a living will.

A living will is different from a regular will. Wills deals with how your estate will be taken care of after you die, a living will deals with how you will be taken care of before you die, if you are unable to make those decisions for yourself. Living wills are something that everybody should be thinking at all stages of life. For example, in my case, I am young and have no dependents, and I decided not to create a will just yet (though this will change as my life’s situation does).

But being young and having no dependents doesn’t stop me from being hit by a bus tomorrow, or having a stroke, or having some sort of freak accident that would leave me incapacitated and incapable of making decisions about my own care. A living will is a legal document that makes all of you wishes known, and designates someone to make see that your wishes are granted.

This is a topic that I feel is so important that it will be dedicating an entire article to living wills. Stay tuned for BTG Explains: What Is A Living Will? / How Do I Get A Living Will? in which I’ll discuss the definition of a living will, what kind of information and personal wishes they include, and, most importantly, how to make one.

3) A Legal Will

As stated above, wills differ from legal wills: a legal will deals with personal care decisions before you die, while wills deal with personal financial and estate decisions after you die.

The death of a loved one is hard enough without throwing money and inheritance into the mix, and having your financial and estate wishes known and legally documented by your will can help your loved ones of what a lot of extra stress in an already stressful time for them.

Wills can help alleviate stress by detailing exactly who gets what and when. Wills are complex topic on their own so for now it’s just enough to know that you should have one if your life situation calls for it, and most probably, it does. I’ll be discussing wills and further details in the upcoming BTG Explains: What is a will? / How Do I Make A Legal Will?

Now It’s Your Turn!

Have you ever experienced a time of crisis in which one of these three things has helped alleviate some of the stress? What advice would you give to others in a stressful life/death/illness situation?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.