How to help our children/loved ones in the future when we’re old and hopefully lovely and manageable

My grandmother had hard back copies of every Chalet School book which she had promised to me as I would read them voraciously when I went to stay with her. Unfortunately she didn't tell my aunts who tipped them.

It was slightly satisfying to point out how much second hand value they'd missed out on - but granny really should have said clearly in her will!

It is a lesson not just to do the basics - at the moment DH and I have wills which divide everything straight down the middle between our two DC but as we get older and have more things that do have some value or some sentiment attached (mostly jewellery or pictures) we probably need to specify what should happen to them and that everything else can be cleared.

Getting rid of your assets is the last thing you should do if you want to make your DC lives easier when you are old. How else are you going to pay for a cleaner/gardener/house maintenance/ someone to get you to appointments/docial activities, because the local authorities won't. If you can't pay who do you think will get lumbered with this stuff? Yep, your kids or it won't happen.

@Sittingontheporch thank you for sharing - I need to hold onto that ‘wtf did DF keep this for’ and apply to my own stuff so my DC don’t have the same to deal with that we did. Exactly like you and @I8toys we had to just make a lot of decisions to move forward.

Totally agree 💯 👍

I'm planning a Granny Weatherwax.

I want my house swept clean, my affairs all in order before I head out the door to play cards with death.

It probably won't happen that way but I can hope.

Same - we pretty much chucked everything out, to the extent that the book guy who'd come round kept ringing me up to tell me what the house clearance guy was doing and were we sure. My mother was obsessed with possessions as she got a lot of sense of status from having inherited so many of them. As a consequence they spent tens of thousands on a storage unit when they downsized (to a four-bedroomed, very spacious house).

My brother and I got sort of giddy when trying to make decisions about what to save, egging each other on to greater heights of ruthlessness. Sometimes I feel a cold sweat when I think about how incredibly careless and cavalier we were. But every time I dithered, I just imagined my children coming across endless musty boxes as we were and going 'wtf is this? Why did they keep this?' and then I found it easier. As for the antiques, oh my goodness, they sold for buttons.

It's really changed my attitude towards stuff. I really think you want to give as much away, money and valuables, in your lifetime and then let house clearers do the rest. Oh and acquire less to begin with.

In this context though I mean, an item was left by the deceased to A (who did want it) but B had unknowingly already done something else with it. Sometimes in a not reversible situation.

So many people I know a well meaning relative has done the wrong thing with precious sentimental items.
Then they were not precious sentimental items to the remaining family. In that case isn’t it best they’re bought by someone who likes them rather than stuffed away in a cupboard by someone who feels obliged to keep them?

So many people I know a well meaning relative has done the wrong thing with precious sentimental items.

My mum and aunt did this and I know my mum still feels bad about it. They helped Grandma to clear many of her possessions so she could sell her home and move into residential care (she had dementia).

DM and Auntie had no idea that a couple of items were handmade by a lovely relative who had died decades earlier, and that Grandma wanted them passed down as family heirlooms. Grandma never told them and they only found out after her death, from her will.

Unfortunately, the items had been sold years earlier at a car boot sale, so were untraceable.

I’m going to say not just do your wills as in ‘make sure you have a will’, make sure there is full transparency with everyone who stands to inherit especially if you have a blended family or there’s any kind of room for tension. Have that conversation with them all and in your lifetime deal with any of the issues that your will choices create- don’t leave it for people to be upset about after you’re dead.

Ditto in your house. Have that conversation, put anything that people want to have of yours listed in a spreadsheet and put stickers on the object itself so they know it’s for whoever. Make the list known so that it’s easy to separate things out. So many people I know a well meaning relative has done the wrong thing with precious sentimental items.

Granted it’s a basic cremation but that’s what a lot of these funeral plans are touting.. A council funeral can also be a burial. The one I attended had a celebrant and a half hour ceremony which mourners attended.

Agree, the inference (as they are savvy enough not to outright lie) that this will somehow save your next of kin money shouldn’t be allowed in my view. It’s just scaremongering. What do people think happens to those who have no family, they just don’t get buried, bodies piling up in the street? Granted it’s a basic cremation but that’s what a lot of these funeral plans are touting.

@I8toys you have my sympathy!

Good luck, especially with the chosing where to retire to. Rent before you buy if you can - I did and think I've made the right decision.

As for scattered friends, me too. The real problem is that so many of my younger friends have died, compared to the much-older-than-me ones. How can that happen?

Not especially.

I've watched my father and my mother die in the care of an NHS hospital and an expensive care home, respectively. I'm one of four children. We did our best. I wouldn't want either of their deaths.

Is that because you don't feel you will get good care without children to watch out for you? That is my fear.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the "watching and waiting". My DH is that age group, but the only watching and waiting we do is the three monthly PSA test to see if the cancer has produced the inevitable mutation to allow it to feed on something other than testosterone. No quick radiotherapy when you already have secondaries in spine and lymph glands.

Though I understand doing all this while still the mother of young rather than adult DC is a whole different ball game.

Do you have a Maggies centre near you?

Such a good question.

As a childfree retired woman, spending my last £15,000 on a one way ticket to Dignitas is currently part of my plan. It would be nice if the UK made some progress in this area, but hey. Some other European countries seem to be moving in that direction too, albeit slowly.

I wish!

I was thrilled to read this, went to the website, typed in my postcode and was told they didn't do it in my area. (South Oxfordshire).

@AuntieMarys so sorry for your loss. What an awful thing to happen.

It is awful. DH is now retired at 54 so we are setting up a peer support group for younger men affected by prostate cancer as he was getting fed up with all the groups being for older men who are retired and whose children have flown the nest. Their main concern was it affecting their golf swing. It is something positive to come out of this rubbish situation.

That is bad luck. No amount of insisting on precautionary PSA tests could have seen that coming. Do you get fed up of all the well-meaning people who say “my father/uncle/neighbour had prostate cancer, one set of treatment and it has gone completely “?