4 October - Wills & Cash

A happy shopping event at Libertys. One of those where on the thin premise of offering you a couple of glasses of wine and a 10% discount (which you then discover did not apply to the make up section where you purchased some items you’d been delaying buying in order to get the discount as you were being thrifty). I’m reasonably restrained though really the 10% would come in handy in the real jewellery section or the rugs I love and have proxy shopping joy when girlfriend drops 500 on some Miu Miu boots. Divine but not my style so don’t even have to be jealous. A few Marc Jacobs do leave me panting but, alas, they stay on the shelves. In between catching up we turn to boring matters. If you have older parents and let’s face it, if you’re in my age group you have, pay close attention to their affairs, especially if their health is declining rapidly and especially mental faculties are becoming a loose bundle of thoughts not rooted in reality. Remember especially that your mother, unless she used to run Goldman Sachs or one of its division, is of a generation where she left all that manly business to him: like monitoring bank account, moving stocks and shares, try to avoid paying the taxman and so on.
So start planning and never mind they (parents) will accuse you of burying them before they’re dead, but you could be finding that the next six months to a year after their (or more particularly father’s demise) will be taken up with unravelling a big mess, even if there were financial advisors and other types of accountants in place. It will be a mess for you to untangle, complete with finding cheques for £5k in shares dividends that were not cashed in 2003 and are now invalid. Only talking about people who have assets of some kind of course, and not necessarily referring to myself. My lot are alive and reasonably healthy but any mention of final plans for the last… 20 years of their lives at a push is met with ‘eugh… bad luck to talk about this now’. I really don’t see what the problem is choosing a coffin in advance for example? That would give me the option of pointing them in the direction of eco friendly cardboard boxes and the savings could be donated to the living. Some living, not myself. I have enough. Am I such a bad daughter?