Have you planned the end of your life? If you're middle aged.

[VillefrancheSurMere]

I'm 42 and my Dad just moved into a care home with Alzheimer's. Mum still at home but elderly. My family was always very unemotional and I went low contact years ago, but have stepped up contact a bit since my fathers illness. No word was ever spoken about how their lives would end, no contingency plan for what care they might put in place. According to my mother they just thought they'd stay in their home! But have never had a conversation together. All very stiff upper lip.

It's been quite stressful looking for care homes and arranging the finances. My mum is refusing to engage in any conversations about the future in terms of her own care needs. I am assuming they don't have funeral plans and that this will fall in me when the time comes. I recall my mother planning her mothers funeral and finding it a burden.

I have a young DD and am determined that I don't want her to have a burden of arranging our care or end of life decisions where at all possible and within reason. Time to look into things and get some plans locked in (myself and my DH).

I've no idea where to start or how to go about doing this. Care homes are awful and I've seen all my grandparents and now my father simply decline and waste away in them, despite the extortionate eye-watering costs involved. But what other choices are there unless you're Richard Branson?

Have you arranged your end of life care options, funeral etc well in advance of when you assume / hope they'll be needed? Are there any one-stop shops for this kind of thing?

I can't help suspecting that other countries do this stuff better and that the stiff upper lip mentality in my family has been deeply unhelpful. But it's time we started to take responsibility.

I think everyone should be made to do something when they are 50 maybe Will and wishes for potential ill health. Then maybe at 65 LPA and a major declutter and downsize at 70.
I will be doing everything possible to prevent some of the burden on my family. Its the loving thing to do.

I'm 46 and don't have any dependents. My extended family is shrinking at an alarming rate, there likely won't be anyone left to make arrangements. I want to sort out a direct cremation funeral plan but most seem to only be available for over 50s.

The paperwork is wretched. I think it was marginally easier when it was possible to go into financial institutions on the high street and speak to someone, instead of the wretched on line ‘help centres’ , but we are where we are.

My only advice is to prioritise the tasks, do the urgent ones like cancelling benefits before you do the , for example , share transfers. I only got round to closing one of DM savings accounts six years after her death, 🫣, but I just told the people at the call centre I had forgotten….anyway, what sanction could they apply it? It was fine .

I wish you fortitude and patience.

Same for me re. dementia

@GettingThereCharleyBear That’s why you need to act earlier and override your own will to live. It’s all well and good not wanting to die but it’s being realistic and offing yourself sooner rather than later knowing what’s to come. It isn’t a pleasant conversation or thought but it’s better than waiting for the awful decline.

@CBAironing i agree. But it’s what my dad always said he’d do and yet when it came to it . . .

When I saw what had to be done with my late mother's health and financial affairs during her last illness, it prompted me to get sorted myself!

I have no spouse or children. My partner is ten years older than me and we don't live together (I'm not Camilla lol). I retired early at 56 so it was time.

So I have an Enduring POA that kicks in when I am gaga and certified so by a doctor, not by anyone else. My attorneys (trusted family members) will have full control over all my affairs, financial, legal, health etc. That gives me great peace of mind.

I have a will made. I have a letter of wishes, I have a DNR, I have a list of all my assets, bank account numbers, passwords for this and that which my attorneys might need.

I have no debts, no mortgage and now I don't think about anything to do with my end of days anymore. It is so liberating.

Like another pp, it's travel and adventure all the way now.

We do have mirror type wills and have specified cremation as our funeral type of choice. We are paying into funeral plans, which should be complete in the next couple of years.

Otherwise, we haven't planned. We are in our late fifties. When retired we want to do some travelling.

We have wills and made POA during lockdown. We also plan to downsize in the next ten years to avoid the age old problem of growing old in an unmanageable property falling about all over the place.
My parents never made it to 70 so this is something often on my mind.
I saw someone collapsed and being given CPR in our local Tesco this morning. Just popped out to do their shopping. How much of us can ever really plan for anything?

We do also have most of the papers for Lasting Power of Attorney complete, but have yet to finally submit them. Must do that.

The practical stuff (Wills, funeral wishes, advance medical directives, POA, home adaptations) is all taken care of.

We have all other plans and intentions mutually agreed. I cared for two terminal parents until they died at home (one mine, one IL) and that experience formed our views on best end-of-life.

LPA's and wills done. Burial plots bought.

Early 50s.

I have a plan and have worked towards having the income in retirement to support the plan. But the closer I get, the more I start thinking that an end of life plan is similar to a birth plan. You can plan all you want, but it only takes one little unexpected bit of bad luck to make the plan useless.

I also don’t care about a funeral so see no need to document wishes for one. Funerals are for the living, so if my DC want to direct cremate me and bury me in a cardboard box under a rose bush, or toss my ashes off a cliff…I’m fine with whatever they want to do. Truth is the burden of doing a funeral is there regardless of whether you are carrying out a funeral plan or just doing what you want for your relative/friend. Having been the executor/organiser of severa, funerals I preferred the ones where no wishes had been made in advance. It’s more stressful when you have to source a certain coffin, get them to a certain burial spot, play the right music in the right order, read the right poem or farewell message in the right way and without crying so much people can’t even hear what you’re saying.

So, I have a plan for end of life, it may go to plan but probably will not. Hasn’t for most people I know & love that have gone before me. So I would beg a bit of empathy and understanding if my plan becomes overcome by circumstance. And as for my earthly remains, I’m leaving it entirely up to my DC. There’s nothing I would need or want at that point.

It's really important, I see patients waiting in hospital for months on end waiting for discharge. Families arguing and never reaching a resolution.

You really aren't. As a plan, that's like saying you're going to get robot carers to look after you - not impossible in principle but not going to be an option any time soon.

Yes as much as we can. We are early 50's with s teenager.
We have wills, LPA's, we know each other's wishes (and will share with DS when he is an adult).
Financially we have everything tied up in lifetime trusts for each other and then all for DS (only child). Money for funerals usually comes out of the deceased estate before anything else so you shouldn't have to pay for that (assuming there is some money)

I was thinking that was extraordinarily early to have bought burial plots, but remembered that we (my family) bought family plots (with space for us) decades ago, in the 1960s and 1970s! My grandmother would have been in her early 30s buying the most recent plots.

I don't think I want to be buried there, so that's a good reminder.

You really aren't. As a plan, that's like saying you're going to get robot carers to look after you - not impossible in principle but not going to be an option any time soon.

You mean laws on assisted suicide? There's something going on at the moment, a consultation, but you're probably right. Not in this country, no.

We bought the burial plots at a relatively young age as DH and I want to be buried together and in a 'woodland' type place and with no children figured we needed to make sure it would happen (will be written into our wills due to be updated soon).

The trouble is apart from sorting a will which husband and I have done how do you sort what you might need when you don't know?

My brother is 70 and still fell runs! At 55 you can meet the eligibility for elderly extracare housing but who is going to do that at 55? I'm 56 and still working. If you need a care home you can't plan your room 5 years in advance!

https://www.samw.ch/en/Ethics/Topics-A-to-Z/Dying-and-death.html

disscusses tighter regulation but mentions nothing about restricting options to Swiss citizens and permanent residents; can you provide a link please?

Nothing planned, my kids are onky just entering their teens. My parents are 25 yrs older than me, still fighting fit and no plans for their old age other than assuming I will look after them so it feels a long way off for me. We do have decent savings and pensions and have nearly paid off the house which should help. I'm fully expecting the retirement age to keep rising so I will probably just drop dead at work....which will be handy because if we will have probably spent all my money on everyone else by then.

Just write a will and specify your funeral arrangements. to be paid for from your assets. Solicitor holds Will; you keep a copy . You give a trusted friend an SAE to the solicitors firm, to post when you die.

My dad is currently in a care home with advanced dementia, he always made reference to ending his life if it got really severe but the reality is this rarely actually happens. People are usually in denial about the disease or it's simply too progressed for them to act on past wishes.

Wills, PoA etc are all really important but sorting out residential homes or care in the home, even with buckets of money is something you simply cannot fully plan for in advance and you're very likely to need some help doing this. The admin and planning around his care has been an enormous strain for many years and there's nothing that could have really been done in advance. You can look round homes and have a list maybe but there might not be space or they might not be able to meet your needs.

My DF is 90 and lives alone, talks about wills but zero idea as to what he wants re funeral etc. Seems bit cruel to ask him now 😕 we'll just have to do our best, I mean funerals like weddings are pretty uniform aren't they.