At What Age Should You Have "the Talk" with Your Kids?

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(Edited)


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I was intrigued when I saw a post pop up in the Silver Bloggers community called At What Age Should You Have the Talk with Your Kids? I had a look, thinking the talk was the "death talk" given the community - the talk you need to have with your kids about when you die.

It wasn't, it was a post for parents (grandparents?) about sex education and preventing teenage pregnancies with some pretty horrific statistics from the World Health Organisation and some helpful suggestions about how parents could support their children to prevent unplanned pregnancies while negotiating the tricky landscape of growing up and learning about adult relationships.

But it did start me thinking about "the death talk" and how that can be just as, if not more, challenging than "the talk" for parents to have with their (usually grown up) children. Leaving aside the practical business of bequests, taxes, end of life care, funeral arrangements and how to access your Hive account, there are the emotional aspects of accepting your own mortality and helping your children to accept that, too.

I'm sorry to say that I still don't have a will, although I have designated beneficiaries for my pension funds. The irony is that I don't intend to have anything in my pension funds when I die: my resources will be carefully managed to ensure I have spent every penny or even better, left a perfectly formed small (or even large) debt, preferably with a bank. You're welcome.

I've become really conscious about time over the past year or so, as I've gone through my existential crisis about aging and that the life that I had known for so many years was no longer the case. For fifty-three years, the mantra has been "you need to go to work and earn a living" and then, very abruptly it seemed to me, that was no longer the case. I didn't need to go to work, not to earn a living anyway.

I started earning at thirteen with several part-time jobs, the proverbial paper-round, mainstay of so many teenage finances, a Saturday job, first in the market at Tooting Broadway (lasted two weeks before I was handed a ten-shilling note and told not to come back next week - they were known for that behaviour and I have a sneaking suspicion that I got a job there just to provoke them and get my marching orders) then with F W Woolworths, also in Tooting Broadway (south west London) and also only lasted two weeks.

Eventually, I found a little home in the dry cleaners and laundry on the corner of Glenburnie Road and one of the main thoroughfares, Trinity Road, in Tooting Bec, which had the added advantage of being literally around the corner from where I lived. The laundry was mainly single chaps bringing their office shirts to be laundered and pressed and put in cellophane packets. We booked in their bits and pieces like prescient ghosts of Dot Cotton in 'Stenders, and sent the packages off twice a week, to arrive back in the next delivery, pristine in their protective bags. We sold shirts, too, but not many.

I loved window dressing and would spend hours dusting and re-arranging the display shirts and various cardboard cutouts of smiling young women handing over packets of clean laundry and dry cleaning or notices urging customers to get their items pressed here. Years later, when I was married, my not-very-well husband deposited my entire wardrobe, apart from the clothes I was standing up in, in the same shop for dry cleaning. Apart from wondering what I was going to wear the next day, I was at a loss as to how we were going to pay for all that dry cleaning, never cheap at the best of times.

I've been earning ever since then, progressing from collecting football pools in the icy rain, to grim holiday jobs and part-time bar work and all the other paraphernalia of low-paid, poorly treated, work that you experience when you are young and working class, to proper jobs. At the time, this meant nine to five, Monday to Friday office jobs with a salary requiring a bank account, terms and conditions and bitterly resented pension contributions (at twenty-four, I was never going to get old).

It has varied ever since, ranging from full time employment, to self employment and running several small businesses to a portfolio income of part-time and contract work, and back to a stable job with a salary, shortly to become, as they say, 'consultancy', but as my Anarchist friend says, and no doubt about it, I can, have been able to, put in a shift.

But now I don't have to work for a living, and the biggest realisation was about what that means in terms of time - how much or how little of it is left. All the time you have to work, your focus is on that, getting by, enjoying what you can, putting some aside, in my case driven by not wanting to be cold when I was old. The future is unknown, unobtainable, you never have to think about it because you're not there yet, your life is mapped out: keep bringing the pennies home, and for that reason, you are immortal.

When you get to that time, when you're in that future where, leaving aside global pandemics, climate change and morally bankrupt governments (nothing big, then), your time is your own, you can no longer be immortal. It's brought home to you that your time, your health, is finite. It may be thirty years (my life expectancy), it may be six months, in the lottery of percentages for the major causes of premature death in the UK: stroke, cardio-vascular disease, cancer.

There's lots to think about with that major life-change from immortality (predictive text decided I meant immorality) to mortality. General wisdom is not to make too many major decisions too quickly, like a bereavement, the loss of a partner. Take time to try things out. Good advice, but lurking underneath are the decisions about death, whether it comes sooner or later. How do you prepare and how do you help your loved ones and family to prepare?

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26 comments
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What a lovely post. I really enjoyed learning more about your life and that I'm not alone in becoming really conscious about time.

How do you prepare

I'm not sure I know. My head seems to be unable to grasp the fact that I'm as old as I am despite my body reminding it on a regular basis.

When it comes to finances I'm not sure that any amount would ever be enough to feel secure. There are so many unknowns. I prefer the idea of continuing regular income.

For a while I was thinking I was going to get a nice little income from Splinterlands but the price of DEC and SPS has plummeted and now I no longer feel comfortable with that. It will be interesting to see where it bottoms out and maybe I can take that as my baseline. But then things are always changing in the game so it's even harder to predict than "normal" crypto.

I have a small amount of BTC and keep adding to that bit by bit, or rather satoshi by satoshi 😂, but how do I decide when is the right time to sell it and use it as income?

I've never been much of a long time planner and I don't see that changing. I'd rather spend my energy on enjoying what I have than worrying about the future. Life just simply isn't predictable and seems to have a way of working out. Easy to say but not so easy to live by as time ticks away. 😱

how do you help your loved ones and family to prepare?

For the most part I feel my family and loved ones are prepared. I bought up my kids to be independent and they seem to be doing a good job at finding their way in the world.

The big elephant in the room though is my crypto stuff. I have nothing documented in such a way that they would know what to do if I died or was incapable of managing it. That plays on my mind but, so far, not enough to make me do something about it.

I still need to get to grips with my taxes as well.

I have massive resistence to sorting out those two things and have already wasted days of my life going round in circles on both. Hoping next year will be the year I get I sorted.

Hoping next year will be the year we get to meet up in person again too. 💙

!LUV !PIZZA !LOLZ

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So lovely to see you 😍

Lots of points in your comment, I may have to write another post 😂.

It would be fabulous to meet up, especially by the sea 🤗

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"left a perfectly formed small (or even large) debt, preferably with a bank"

This gave me the giggles because it's a bloody good idea! 😂😂

I can relate to all those crap jobs. Been there myself cleaning offices with my mum from the age of about 6! It was hard times.

I've been thinking about this work thing a lot lately. We were just suckered into a gigantic lie. Work hard and you'll succeed BS is still the mantra of the blind or deluded.

What to do with all these crypto assets has also been on my mind.

I've taught my daughter how to access everything for when I pop my clogs.

Michael 😂👍

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Glad you enjoyed the post 😁.

Thank you so much for your support, much appreciated 😍.

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I enjoyed reading th. Thanks for sharing your experience and thought process with us. Very thought provoking (putting things in place for when we transition into the afterlife).

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I am a few years older than you, but I think once a body crosses that 50 year old mark, the realization that there is a good chance we are past the game half over point lol. Throw in a global pandemic and increasing violence and yeah, mortality is there staring you in the face. You cant buy more time...

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So sorry I missed this - I was distracted by the season 🙂.
I agree, once past fifty, bodies seem to have a mind of their own. It's good to realise, though, and enjoy what you have. I'm definitely getting happier 😍

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Ho Ho Ho! @shanibeer, one of your Hive friends wishes you a Merry Christmas and asked us to give you a new badge!

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Hi @hivebuzz, good to see you, as always.
I'd actually published a power up post but it hasn't appeared anywhere ... where do lost posts go?

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Yes, I re-posted it, using peaked, instead of leofinance, about half an hour later. I have no idea what happened to the first one 😂. Thank you for coming back to me 🙂

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You're welcome. Glad it finally appeared.

BTW, your support for our previous proposal has been much appreciated but it has expired!
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