Here at WillsMalaysia, we work closely with estate planning lawyers who have decades of experience in the field of Will and Power of Attorney. We regard these documents as the most natural thing to do. In our world of WillsMalaysia, writing a will is a natural and sensible thing to do, nothing mysterious or morbid about it.
We realize however not everyone thinks like the folks at WillsMalaysia and there is no wrong or right answer or any blame on anyone. It’s just awareness of the importance and overcoming the procrastination of creating one. How many of you parents tried to talk to your children about writing a will? At the dining table what happens when you start the topic of your will? More often than not you get responses like “C’mon Dad, really?”, “You still have time”, “OMG, why are we talking about dying…”.
A Will is not a once in a lifetime document. It is part of continuous financial planning that should be reviewed on a regular basis, perhaps even annually. When I prepared my will, I am in no way saying my life is coming to an end. Why is it that buying life insurance policy make sense but a will doesn’t? I see no difference. It’s all part of your estate planning. There is more to your legacy than a life insurance policy. And this led me to think about other preparations that should be done to protect my loved ones. One of the most important of these is an expression of your funeral wishes. Why should you document your funeral wishes? Foremost, it is a thoughtful and considerate gesture for your loved ones who would otherwise be faced with a plethora of questions and options at a time when they are least capable of dealing with them.
I’m sure you may have discussed with them in general on how you would like to be treated upon your death. Usually such discussion comes in the wake of another death where your family was closely knit with. It’s human nature to avoid such discussions but we need to. Yes, we need to talk about it. We are but mortal beings. For many people it is also a difficult subject to discuss seriously and openly with their friends and family.
Assuming you had such a conversation with your family, how detail did you go? Did you talk about the overall cost, your views on who should attend, to be buried or cremated, where, what to do with the ashes, if buried what about the tombstone, the inscriptions, how about the announcement and much, much more.
At WillsMalaysia, we have a FREE service called MyLastWish where you can document your funeral wishes and organ donation preference.
It’s just not fair to make anybody have to sit through the many questions that if you can save them the pain by putting in a little effort ahead of time. You also might find it surprising that the average funeral cost is over RM10,000. You are in a position today to say either; this is too much, or explain how you would want that money to be spent.
By putting these plans in place and giving some thought to these issues now, you are simply lifting a burden from your loved ones who will without question, have to deal with these issues in the future without a choice. Nobody is immortal and many of us will definitely leave loved ones behind. You can grant a critical service to your loved ones by helping them ahead of time by giving some thought to these things today. Take a look at the services at WillsMalaysia.my and have everything organized today.
never easy to talk about this stuff but it’s gotta be done, right? better to be smart about it now than leave a mess later.
life insurance is a no-brainer, so why do we drag our feet on wills? makes you think.
free service for funeral wishes? that’s actually pretty thoughtful. don’t want my kids guessing what I would’ve wanted.
man, funerals are expensive. gotta sort that out so my family doesn’t have to worry about the bills.