My 31 Day Financial Challenge- Day 28: Preparing for the Inevitable

The inevitable is not a topic I like very much. Mostly because I know we aren’t that prepared for it. We have enough life insurance to replace my husband’s income in case of his untimely death, at least for a while, and enough insurance for me to replace all the tasks I complete with hired help like childcare. We also have a small insurance policy for our daughter through my husband’s job that would off-set some of the funeral benefits if, God forbid, anything ever happened to her. The other more important thing that we not yet have is a will. We have been discussing this since I got pregnant with our daughter, but we never get around to dealing with the paperwork; partly because we are very unsure of what decision to make and because I have trouble pinning my husband down about it. Trent recommends hiring a lawyer, but this can be expensive. I’ve heard very good things about Legalzoom.com but our financial planner also recommends that we work with a lawyer. But either option is going to cost money, money that will have to come out of our ever dwindling savings.

That being said, I understand the great necessity of this. We have a young child, she needs an appointed guardian. Our will (and possibly a trust as well) needs to be filed in such a way to protect her financial future from unnecessary taxes and court fees if anything should happen to us so that the money can be used to provide for her. My original goal was to get our wills filed before the end of the year. Now I’m probably shooting for January. I probably would have continued to ignore it entirely if not for my desire to finish this Financial Challenge.