Are You Ready To Die?

Kind of a bleak title I know but the point is - are you?

Once again in the crazy little world that is my life, we are about to lose another beloved family member.   This time though, he made all his plans and organized his estate well in advance, knowing that this day would come.

When my birth father learned of his Parkinson's diagnosis, and that he was in the early stages of Lewy Body Dementia he made sure to take care of his "business" right away.

He updated his will, assigned his executor (and a backup), ensured that he had his Power of Attorney taken care of.  He even took the time to have developed a Trust to take care of his Estate.   He does not leave behind a fortune but he was very smart with what he had and made sure to protect his hard earned blue collar dollars.

Shortly after diagnosis, he took the entire family away to Lake Nipissing  for one last family vacation.  All his grand children were there and we have great memories of that week away in the glory of Northern Ontario.  We had a chance to celebrate his life while was still well and to celebrate the life of our family.  Dad ensured that he had a final chance to fish and boat with his grand kids and create lasting memories that will hold them for a lifetime.

My Dad even made sure we were all very aware of what his last wishes were for a funeral and whether or not to bury or cremate.  While this my seem incredibly morbid to some, in our family, it is just a fact-of-life discussion. Without a doubt it was painful to listen to, but at the same time, it is  a discussion that needs to be had.

Today, with all the sadness we are feeling as a family, there is also an immense gratitude that we do not have to; guess at what his wishes were, that we do not have to feel regret for time not spent together, and that the stress of the closing out his estate and belongings will ultimately be,  as stress-free as he could possibly make for his children.

So, are you ready?

EMERGENCY - DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR INFORMATION IS?

One of the things I have been working on over the past few years is keeping a running log of important family information (I actually started writing this blog entry months ago and put it on the back-burner until I had accomplish more of this task myself) .  

If you disappeared tomorrow - would someone be able to walk in and know how to manage your affairs and your family?

A binder, a pretty photo album with pockets to slide 4x 6 cards into, a school notebook, whatever works best for your style would work.  The key is to choose a system and begin compiling all your information into one simple to access area.

I recently began using a new tool called My Life Locker and it is available in book form or in electronic version for both Canadian and US   http://www.mylifelocker.com/About_My_Life_Locker.html .   For me, having a ready made tool saves me brain power and helps me to "just get on with it" and... the good part is, it was developed in my home town - a lucky happenstance!!!

When building your binder, here are a few things you could consider adding

•  a list of phone numbers...doctors, who sees them and what they specialize in.
• a page with banking information - account numbers, what the bank is and the address,
•  investment accounts and contact information
• a page with a running summary of each of the kids medical information - we have some complicated issues in our family so we have surgeries listed, hospitals, specialists and the dates.   Immunizations are also listed*
• a page that lists family members, 
• where the wills can be found 
• life insurance information (Policy #'s Companies, beneficiaries and the value)
• a page with the pets information
• a page with your most important friends - who to call if something tragic were to happen
• your mortgage information
• passwords to all your online accounts
• anything that would be relevant to anyone trying to manage your affairs if you were incapacitated or worse.

Start planning what you will want to leave for your family and loved ones to help them piece together your life.  If you have ever had to manage someones estate, you already know how helpful it would have been to have all the information in one handy document - if you have never had this difficult job, trust me on this....it helps enormously saving both stress and time.

Try taking 10 minutes each day over the next few weeks to start building your Family / Life  information binder.

Organize Your Life comes to LVS Online!

It has been a fun,  busy year for me and a new term of teaching has just begun at at LVSonline.com

Check out the Organize Your Life class coming up in June.   Registration opens on May 7th for this fast paced organization class and you cannot beat the price at only $30.00 for new students and $24.00 for returning students. Below is a clip from the LVS blog about the course.

Organize Your Life Online Course

December 13th, 2010 lvs

Can you find anything in your home or office in 5 minutes or less? If you can, you are definitely on the organized track and likely are taking this course to fine tune your skills and get some new ideas to make your life more streamlined. Many others, however, struggle to find papers, bills, glasses, keys and a myriad of other items. Many of us have things in our homes, in our closets, on our desks that have not been used in the past 12 months. Of all our belongings, we use 20% of them 80% of the time! Can we consider during this course to let go of some of the 80% of the stuff that we seldom if ever use? This 80% adds substantially to the disorganization in our lives. This 20/80 formula can be applied to the papers in our homes, the files in our drawers, the gadgets in our kitchens, and the clothes in our closets. If we follow this line of thinking further, then we can extrapolate from that that approximately 50% of the items we are storing in our homes are merely clutter!

So many of us are like the majority of the people in North America over run with stuff and struggling to find enough time in our days to manage our schedules and get our tasks completed!
Organize Your Life online class is for anyone interested in finding tools to assist in organizing their homes, their paperwork and their lives.

Organize Your Life by being freed from wasted minutes. Enjoy more time with the tasks in life that give you meaning.  More time with your family, your friends, to take courses, to golf, to read, or to do nothing at all! We will work together to find the necessary minutes in the day to have some fun, rest and relaxation, and yes – fun is a necessity!

 Adventures in Organizing has a new website coming soon.   Check back for some great new new tips, tricks and tools to celebrate life.

CAR STUFF - MY RECIPE CHAOS TAKES A TURN

While on my way to clearing up my cookbooks and recipe collection....and I was making fine progress - thank you very much...  I got a phone call and one of my kiddies decided it would be an adventure to crash our car into a telephone post.   Now please understand that I am completely grateful to God that she is fine, that her friends are fine.  In a weird way I am grateful that she crashed the new car rather than the older, smaller and with not so many safety features car.  

We bought the new car in red since we had a new driver and wanted her to be seen and safe.  We ensured it had extra reinforcements down the sides in-case of a side impact, it had front and side airbags - we bought it specifically as a "just in case" car.   Well, "just in case" happened and while it was upsetting for me as a Mum to know "my baby" had been in a crash, she had left home armed with her insurance papers, her license, ownership and her auto club card.  She had all the tools at hand to help her deal with the crash which - was out of province and 3 hours away from me at the time.

The other great thing was, when she got home, she had written down all the information from the police and insurance -  so follow up was easy.

We pulled the insurance file, which thankfully was in order and got that set up - we did need to find the original purchase agreement for the car since it is a total write off and while my heart stopped for a moment thinking that I did not know where it was...when I opened the Mazda file, there it was...phew! 

All the small organizational steps that I have taken to keep paperwork in order, all the small checks and balances when my daughter was leaving for her trip, made a bad and stressful situation much easier for all of us.  

Check your insurance files and make sure they are in order.   Do you have home, auto and life insurance?  Are your files labelled and papers in the correct folders?    In a crisis, your brain will be sluggish, check these things now - the calm before the storm is when your emergency planning should occur.   Take time this week to ensure your papers are in order and that your wallet contains everything you would need to provide to the police or a paramedic in case of an accident.   Even if you think your insurance files are in order - check them again.   This should not take you more than 15 minutes.  

If you need to get insurance - make that all today!

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