Recently, I discovered that my mom had bought a charging station for her house for guests to use.  What a great thing!  Especially since either I or one of my kids usually have the dreaded low battery flashing on our phones while at her house.

The charging station has cords for all of the different types of phones and tablets, how convenient!   Anyone that has ever had to endure a long car ride with kids who cannot use their phone or tablets because they killed the battery knows how nice it is to have the opportunity to charge it before leaving Grandma’s!

The charging station made me think about estate planning, not surprising since that is my life’s work.  The charging station isn’t for my mom, it doesn’t even work for her flip phone and she doesn’t own a tablet.  It’s for all the people she cares about.  She bought it to make our lives easier.  She wants her home to be a welcoming place and she strives to find ways to make it more accommodating for all of us – from the 40 plus year-old kids, to the teenage grandkids, to the 5-year-old grandkids.  It was incredibly thoughtful of her to use her money to buy something that benefits all of us, and not herself.  She feels she benefits because she is taking a worry away from us, and it makes our time at her house a little less stressful because she has prepared for potential problems we might face.

That is estate planning in a nutshell – planning for those you love in order to take away worries or problems they might face.  My mom has an estate plan in place for us kids.  She has planned for what will happen if she is incapacitated or in the event of her death.  We kids are the ones who will benefit the most from her having things in order in the event she is incapacitated or dies.  Doing her estate plan is another way my mom has made sure that those she loves will know that she was thinking about them and trying her best to make their lives easier.  That is a legacy that will last far longer than the charging station.