Dear LPG,

I am sorry to bring up this subject again but there is never really a good time.  We are all going to die and even though you don’t have to be an older person to know that fact, it becomes more and more apparent as we get older and find ourselves attending funerals more regularly.

In spite of that fact the statistics show that while we are being urged to make sure that we can afford to die without expecting others to pay for the arrangements that follow, more than half the o the population have not yet made a will. 

I looked on the internet and found out that more than a third of the pensioners in the UK don’t have a will in place. 

I am not sure of what is actually putting me off.  Perhaps we all think that it will happen to people who are older than ourselves and we also make the mistake of putting it off repeatedly and indefinitely while we promise that we will get it sorted next week or next month.   Perhaps it is the amount of money that we think it will cost, or the thinking that ‘I don’t really have much wealth to worry about’.  Often the thought of, actually thinking about what we want to happen when it is all over provokes the procrastination that getting this task sorted forces our national avoidance of the whole thing. I used the word ‘we’ quite a lot in that last paragraph because, according to the statistics I have found on line, I bet similar thoughts are going through the minds of a good third of the people reading this message.

I have to say that I am still in my early seventies and, I suppose, that makes me feel young enough to believe that there will be many years before I bid this world farewell, but the death of my 53-year-old neighbour sobered me up a bit recently.  Yet, after another six months of personal promises, I am still just thinking about it. 

The saddest thing is that I wrote all this down this time last year and LPG was gracious enough to print it yet I am still one of the have nots. 

That realisation has provoked me to make a personal promise that I will do something about it sooner rather than later and while I was owning that decision it occurred to me to look online for some more information about where to get started.  Again I think it worth sharing, especially because the months of March and October are designated as ‘Free will months’ and we have arrived at March again.

I hope to be able to write that I have done this by March next year…

QK, Lewisham. 

QK, has left us a little more information and LPG has made a few related additions…

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