Death and tax­es. The two things the old joke says can’t be avoid­ed (and these days I often think the order of those two should be reversed!). No mat­ter how fit we are, how healthy a life style we live, no mat­ter how great our health­care is, it doesn’t mat­ter. Soon­er or lat­er, as the long run econ­o­mists say, we are all just food for worms.

Yet as I go through life I am con­stant­ly amazed at the num­ber of oth­er­wise intel­li­gent, pur­pose­ful, orga­nized, delib­er­ate peo­ple I meet who sim­ply refuse to pre­pare for their inevitable demise! Not only young peo­ple but peo­ple with careers, fam­i­lies and chil­dren, invest­ments, prop­er­ty and oth­er assets, even own­er­ship in busi­ness­es.

The three main excus­es they give are:

1. “I’m too young to wor­ry about that.” – Par­don me: does death have an age lim­it?! An acci­dent can befall any­one at any­time. And I have known sev­er­al rather young peo­ple who were diag­nosed with severe ill­ness­es includ­ing can­cer faaaaaaar ear­li­er than what would be con­sid­ered “nor­mal” age range to be con­cerned about.
2. “I don’t have a lot of mon­ey so it doesn’t mat­ter.” – That’s a very lame excuse. Whether you have $100 or $1 mil­lion you must pro­vide some direc­tion how you want what you own dis­trib­uted when you die. Do not pre­sume the state will give the mon­ey to the peo­ple you think would get it. In these days it’s like­ly to be tak­en by the state until when/if court direc­tion is pro­vid­ed thus requir­ing your heirs to go to court (more expense). Many just won’t if your estate val­ue is small and you have just made a free gift to the gov­ern­ment!
3. “I just can’t think about that. It’s so depress­ing.” – Get over it!!! We are all going to die some day. Not think­ing about it won’t stop that day for com­ing. You don’t have to dwell on it but ignor­ing it doesn’t make the real­i­ty go away.

And what of any peo­ple who depend on you in life and will like­ly be in a tight spot if/when you demise comes? Espe­cial­ly if it’s an untimely/unexpected demise.

Maybe you have a child with spe­cial needs.
Maybe you have a sib­ling who has spe­cial needs and you help fre­quent­ly.
Maybe you have elder­ly par­ents or oth­er rel­a­tives you are respon­si­ble to car­ing for and see­ing to their dai­ly main­te­nance.

Too many peo­ple just assume that a name­less, face­less “some­body” will just waltz up and take over the care and respon­si­bil­i­ties they do now when they aren’t there. Or worse, a benev­o­lent gov­ern­ment will care about their fam­i­ly and their prop­er­ty as much as they do. Fan­ta­sy!

Life with­out an SHTF event requires just as much thought and prepa­ra­tion for the com­mon events that will hap­pen to all of us soon­er or lat­er. An SHTF event may occur. Or it may not. But we all end up in the same place at the end and that is a cer­tain­ty.

Be pre­pared for the cer­tain­ty.