They’ve been on our list for a long, long, long time, and we’ve just kept kicking these particular cans down the road:
Establish an actual budget and track it enough to hold ourselves accountable. (I know, at ages 65 & 71, you’d think we’d have done this years ago. Well, better late than never.)
Create a revokable living trust, which also serves to update our very outdated wills.
Every year about this time we talk about getting them done, so that we can finally, at long last, cross them off of our list. And even though they continue to loom in the back of our minds, every year, we never seem to get around to them.
Now we have.
The budget is done as is an easy tracking system. The proof will be in the pudding whether we actually stick to it or not, but now that the framework is in place, it not only doesn’t sound daunting, it sounds eminently doable. Even, dare I say it, kind of exciting.
The revokable living trust isn’t yet finalized, but we’ve met with our attorney, and as of this past weekend, have read the entire stack of legal documents, which made me want to hit myself in the forehead with a gavel, but I made my way through every one. Tom and I sat down yesterday and talked them through together, noted our questions and corrections, and made our advance health care directive decisions. I anticipated that last step being the most daunting, but once we talked our way through all of the possible scenarios and what we would/wouldn’t want done in each case, it was quite straightforward. We will have another meeting with our attorney to complete the process, but it is essentially done except for signing on the many dotted lines.
Like many things, now that we’ve actually done what we’ve been meaning to do, and the sense of relief and accomplishment is so great, I wonder what took us so long. If it’s looming in the back of your mind, and you’ve been meaning to get around to it, think how good it will feel to just get it done.
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