Smarch

It’s mid-March and the weather has been vacillating between balmy sweater weather and the frozen tundra that need hollowed out tauntauns to stay warm. I’ve chosen to sequester myself indoors until some semblance of summer remains with relative consistency.

Estate

I’ve been using some of that time to review all things financial. With both my kids now in adulthood, I’ve been reviewing my estate plans. Welcome to my life.

My bank, as you might imagine, wants to sell me on trusts and estate management and insurance and all sorts of things they make money on. There is a reason why these things are worthwhile to have and under the right circumstances, I could see that I might agree to those things. Crazy.

As a dual citizen of both the US and Canada, things that work in one country don’t seem to work in the other and I’m inclined to default to the easiest solution—which is, do nothing. That is to say, taxes get paid and whatever is left, if anything, goes to the kids. Easy peasy.

I still have a bunch of items to review and decide upon. The insurance was the only thing that I need to consider sooner rather than later because of the health review. As I get older, it’s only going to become more expensive due to the likelihood of finding myself in worse health. I don’t wanna think about getting older.

Simplifying

After selling off the house, living in an apartment has inspired me to simplify my life in many ways. Seeing whole swaths of items disappear off my expense spreadsheet has me wanting to pare down the expenses even more—although there’s not much more I can shave down. My biggest expenses outside of taxes and living expenses are cars and accounting.

Having a car seems unnecessary at this point considering I drive maybe once or twice a month now, usually to get bulk stuff from the grocery store or to visit friends and family. I haven’t quite committed to having no car at all but it’s a consideration—which is funny given I just bought a new car less than two years ago. We’ll see how I feel about it six months from now.

Not sure I want to do anything about the accounting. I could try to do it myself but the cross-border filings are more than I want to risk trying to figure out. And I receive enough K-1 statements to make the whole thing a hassle. I’m more likely to screw things up and I’ve heard too many horror stories about the IRS to want to deal with that on my own.

I also want to keep things simple for when I’m gone (hopefully way off in the future). I think about how my kids will need to go through all of my stuff and I want it to be as easy as possible for them to do that. I have documentation that I try to keep updated with all the important contacts and processes for things that will need to be dealt with.

Perhaps oddly, I worry about my domain name. Neither of my kids are technical, so maintaining domains and server management isn’t their thing. I’m sure they could figure it out but I imagine that’ll be one of those things that will easily fall into disrepair.

But I’ll be dead. It’ll be up to them to figure out if that’s a problem or not.

Travelling

I’ve also used the time to plan out future travel. I haven’t had much luck with travel agents and it reminds me of every time I’ve used AI: It does an okay job but never a good enough job that I would think of off-loading any of that work unless for very specific purposes.

It’s not necessarily about finding the cheapest price. It’s about finding the right balance between comfort and location and price. That nuance is hard to explain and thus, hard for someone else to get right.

Flights and accommodations and restaurants have been booked. Schedules have been organized. I’ll have that and a bit of jet lag to look forward to.

What’s New, Scooby-doo.

I’ve been working on a new design for this very site. I’d like to get off this archaic system I’ve had for the past (looks at calendar) nearly twenty years. That’s impressive when I think about it. Sometimes it seems like nothing changed over that time but I’ve looked over the original design I had when I launched and hadn’t realized how much I’ve iterated and changed over the years. There used to be a sidebar. There used to be a hedcut. There was no green border. Much of the original design is still around, though, and I’m amazed at how well it holds up after all these years.

For pretty much every other site I run, I’ve switched everything over to 11ty (er, Build Awesome) and will likely turn this one over to that, too. That’ll take some time.

I’ve got some initial designs that I like but they don’t feel like they’re pushing any edges and I was hoping for at least one edge to be pushed. I’ll keep chipping away at it and hopefully an idea will coalesce and solidify into something I’m proud of.

I might switch everything over at a technical level before a new design is ready because I can always iterate on the design. This is my personal playground, after all.

Simple Plans

Other than that, life is pretty simple these days and I am delightedly content with that. Given the state of the world, I feel a bit guilty expressing my personal successes, mental or monetary. I appreciate where I am right now and most days I take a moment of gratitude, slowing down time, and being present in the moment.