I don’t know about you, but I tend to fall into the trap of Procrastinating (with a capital “P”). I made it through college by last-minute late nights, I prepared for job interviews in the car on the way there, and I’m often scrambling for ingredients that I haven’t purchased when I decide to make dinner. Even with my procrastinating personality, I couldn’t imagine making a large investment without pre-planning. Every car purchase, wedding, birth, and move has been researched, saved for, and meticulously planned.
But what if I didn’t pre-plan?
If I didn’t pre-plan my wedding, the in-laws would have flown in on the wrong day and found there was nowhere to stay because there was a convention in town I hadn’t heard about. If I didn’t pre-plan my wedding I would have walked down the aisle in my mother’s wedding dress, which was so small I couldn’t zip it up the back and was a curdled-milk shade of yellow. If I didn’t pre-plan my wedding, I would not have been able to pay for those big things that made the day magical: the cake, the venue, the band, the dress. The average wedding costs $33,391, which is much more than my credit card limit and savings account combined—and that’s not even including the honeymoon! If I didn’t pre-plan my wedding, it wouldn’t have happened the way I always imagined.
If I didn’t pre-plan for the birth of my first child, I would have been in a seriously tight situation. The hospital took care of the more…emergent parts of the actual birth, but without a car seat sized for a newborn I wouldn’t have made it home with my progeny prize. If I hadn’t bought diapers, wipes, bottles or blankets, I would have to take my screaming newborn to a store at midnight with a car seat I had maybe stolen the day after I gave birth to her. If I didn’t pre-plan for the birth of my first child, I would have saved nothing for the slew of medical bills that came weeks later, stuffing my mailbox to ultimate capacity. The stress of this financial burden would have really killed my new-baby buzz and put a big strain on my marriage that was already adjusting to adding a member of our family.
Saving important purchases for the last minute leads to stress, disappointment, and strained relationships. We pre-plan for so many big events in our lives, why would we procrastinate planning our funerals? The unexpected expenses, the unpredictable roadblocks, all the little details no one thinks about in the moment: there are so many reasons to solidify and pay for as much as possible ahead of time.
Don’t let your funeral be one of these scenarios where what you always imagined is not possible because you procrastinated. Pre-planning for end of life is a smart way to budget, reserve, and solidify every aspect of your memorial, funeral, and burial.
