Preparing For Retirement Means Putting Away The Trappings Of Your Working Life
It feels liberating to get rid of something because you have happily moved onto another stage of your life. Donating the crib from your children’s bedroom to the Goodwill because your youngest child is old enough for a big kid bed feels like a victory, and so does trashing your shower caddy and mesh laundry bag when you move out of the college dorm and into an apartment or house where you have your own bathroom and a washing machine and dryer inside the house. When you retire, you get to keep the bragging rights to your professional accomplishments, but you no longer need the expensive stuff that tied you to the more annoying aspects of your work, or of that stage of your life in general. Decluttering can be the first step to planning for a happy, financially secure retirement, and contacting a Washington DC estate planning lawyer can be the second.
If It’s in Storage Now, You Probably Will Not Need It in Retirement
If you are making plans for retirement this far advance, it probably means that you are in a strong financial position. A lot of people can never truly afford to retire. They simply keep working until their health no longer allows it, and then they live on whatever shoestring budget Social Security income will allow them.
People who have enough money to retire by choice also tend to have more stuff than they will ever have a use for. Getting rid of some of that stuff can give you clarity about retirement planning, even if, and perhaps because, some of the stuff is inherited personal property. It has become a widespread idea in estate planning that personal property, such as family heirloom dinner china sets and old furniture, is more of a burden to the recipients than it is a source of wealth or family pride. If you inherited the contents of your grandmother’s dining room, but it has been in storage since your parents died because you have no desire to polish silver or iron dinner napkins, imagine how your daughter will feel about inheriting her great-grandmother’s old dining room stuff.
If Grandma’s wedding china is in the china hutch in your dining room, and you use it and lovingly hand wash it every year at Christmas dinner, then you should keep it. If the above is true and your retirement plan includes a tiny house that doesn’t have room for Grandma’s dining table, there is a good chance that your daughter or one of her brothers or cousins will want it. If it is sitting in storage, though, it should probably go, once you make sure that no one else wants to take it. All the other clutter in the storage unit, such as VHS tapes and old tax returns, should probably go, too.
Let Us Help You Today
An estate planning lawyer can help you envision and embrace the ways in which your life will be different in retirement. Contact Tobin O’Connor Concino P.C. for more information.
Resource:
moneytalksnews.com/slideshows/things-retirees-should-do-away-with/
