"We're Almost Adults!"

Those were the words (half-jokingly) uttered by my husband when I finished filling out our wills this morning. And you know what? It took me about twenty minutes, and that was with a headache, a baby pulling at my pant leg, and a preschooler whining to watch "Dora Snow Princess" on the laptop. But despite having to pause for a time-out (not for me!), I got it done.

Monday morning I'll call to make an appointment with a notary at our bank and it'll be all legal and official, and I can forget about it until we move or have an addition to the family.

I don't like to think about wills, because it's almost like I feel like I'm putting a sign on my back saying, "I'm all squared away, I can die now." As if that is somehow going to make it more likely for me to die early.

But even worse than that (irrational) thought is the (much more likely) possibility that Jon or I might leave behind a mess that could tear our families apart. We've both seen it happen to other families, even when there weren't young children involved. I hate even contemplating someone else raising my children, but without a will, a court of law will decide for me and that is completely unacceptable.

Now we have the peace of having a plan in place should the worst happen. It doesn't make the worst any more likely to happen, but it sure prevents a tangled mess of relationships and stress in the midst of grief.

If you don't have one in place, please, for the sake of everyone you love and care about, make a deadline for yourself NOW to remedy that.

Bee in my bonnet

So why did I suddenly get a bee in my bonnet to get this "responsibility stuff" taken care of? No, I'm not ill and don't expect to be ill...I haven't received any death threats over having the cutest children in the world...and I'm not headed to Libya to become a freedom fighter. The fact is, everything I'm planning on doing this month falls in the category of "very important but never urgent until it is too late". And that kind of stuff tends to get superseded by "not important but urgent" needs like laundry and dishes and watching the season premiere of America's Next Top Model to find out what the weird bubble-walking scene is all about.

Hence the arbitrary deadline.

I think the bee, however, is actually an offshoot of teaching/coordinating Financial Peace University at our church. We've been working our "Total Money Makeover" for three years, but there's a new energy to our efforts. We have our starter emergency fund in place (yet again) and this month we're completely paying off four debts. Instead of just running in place to keep it from going backwards, our "snowball" is finally gaining momentum and rolling down the other side of the hill. So now I'm looking at the other areas of our lives that have been neglected and I finally have the energy to deal with them -- and I'm making the time to do so.

Act Like an Adult: Week 1 Goals

It's here. March 1. Time to "Act Like an Adult".

Fortunately that doesn't mean that I can't spend the morning drawing castles and troll bridges on our chalkboard table with Aurelia. Or make funny faces at Baby Blaise until his belly jiggles to rival the likes of Ol' Saint Nick.

It does mean that I have three Big Girl goals this week:

1) Buy a waterproof fire safe for our important documents, a small cash emergency fund, and our back-up external hard drive.

2) Make a hard-copy list of ALL of our accounts, including account number, username, and password (if applicable). Place in said safe.

3) Sit down with Jon and actually fill out the will we purchased over three months ago from USLegalForms.com.

*Phew*...now my goals are out there and you can hold me accountable. :)

I'll update with progress later this week, and discuss why I think these steps are so important.