The Inheritance Nobody Wants

My boomer parents are haunting me from the grave. My mom moved on about— it's been about a year or so. My dad was, uh, not long before that. And how they're haunting me is that they did not put their affairs in order. Now, my folks had a lot of possessions, multiple properties, and just like I think A lot of people from that generation, a lot of junk. No preparation was done to prepare for their death. I've talked about this before. They're being married to my wife, who is Swedish. They have a custom called a death cleaning. It's a custom in the— it's a Swedish custom to put your affairs in order Clean out that lifetime of stuff so you don't burden your siblings when you move on. And that's just not something that is done in this generation. It has been a year since my mother has passed, and we are still dealing with all of the baggage left behind. Attics full of equipment— not equipment, junk. Garages full of junk. Finances not in order. No passwords. No access to bank accounts. No preparation whatsoever. Just go to your grave and dump everything on the siblings like that is some sort of a gift, like that is an inheritance worth having. I'll tell you, it is not worth having. What little bit you may get from a garage sale or selling this or selling that is not worth the year to 2 years of aggravation it takes to deal with all of that stuff. Not to mention the heavy obligation that they put upon so many of the things That are family heirlooms. As if— I don't know if I could speak for you, but for me, that these things came with an obligation. Grandma's china, something that was important to them, something that they want to hand down, something that they never used themselves, but they expect you to put it up and to care for it and fuss about it and take care of it just like they did. It's a difficult thing to deal with because when you're going through and doing this death cleaning, when you're going through all of the possessions that your parents have accumulated, all of those obligations that came with it and all of the memories that are attached to it, it's so difficult to know what to do with them. Sometimes you feel like by throwing something out, that belonged to a loved one, that you are throwing them out. It's overwhelming, and I have learned a great deal from this experience, and I've learned exactly what not to do. What I will be leaving for my kids and how Mrs. W. and I will be handling this situation is that we will have things in order So that when the handoff is made, we don't burden our children with this nightmare. I can't tell you the hours and stress that this has caused between my sister, my wife, and myself. Again, like I said, it's been a year and we're still dealing with this. Every single day is an issue or a problem or something coming up. Bills coming in, having difficulty getting to different things, dealing with the junk, and then just the heavy mental burden of the obligation that comes with these things. First off, I want to give you a little advice, and if you are in this situation, or it's going to happen to all of us, you need to sit down and have a very frank discussion with your parents, and they need to get their affairs in order. Now, a lot of people are expecting, a lot of parents are expecting their children to care for them in their final years, and that, and that's fine. You know, every family's got their own policy on that. We took care of our parents, and, um, I wish I would have known this beforehand. My advice to you is you need to sit down with them and have a very frank conversation And you need to give them an ultimatum. They need to get their affairs in order and they need to deal with this lifetime of clutter and this lifetime of junk. I would be willing to go so far. It is such a burden and such a nightmare on the surviving kids. I would give them an ultimatum. I would tell them, if you expect us to come in and to help you in your final years, maybe even take care of you, there's going to be a requirement. You're going to have to get rid of all this stuff. You're going to have to have a will, and you're going to have to make sure you specify exactly what's going on. And another great evil parents can do is to make— if you have multiple children— is to make them co-trustees. Co-trustees cause— can cause so much frustration and so much conflict between family members, where if you have to have a unanimous decision. Do we sell the house? Do we keep the house? Do we sell the business? Do we keep the business? Who gets the painting? Who gets this? Who gets the car? It can drive such a wedge through your siblings that you may never recover. There may be such hurt feelings over this and this lack of clarity and appointing someone to deal with this and to make the hard decisions that you could damage the relationships between the siblings irreparably. Now fortunately for me, my sister and I get along fine, and we're of the same mind, and we are co-trustees, and it hasn't been a problem. But I could see how if you were not close, or you did not have the same opinion, or not— didn't have a meeting of the minds with your siblings, that this could destroy the relationship, and your parents could haunt you from the grave as well. Going through these things I didn't even— I didn't even know where to start. It was beyond overwhelming. And it wasn't just one property. It was multiple properties stacked to the gills of just junk. Things that you remember, things from the past, things that were saved that didn't serve them. And you're handling these things and you What do you do with them? You— if I'm throwing this away, am I throwing my granddad away? Am I throwing my mom away? Am I throwing my dad away? I had to cut through all of that and realize none of these possessions mean anything. There's no memories attached to them. There's no— it doesn't change how you feel and the experiences you have with your parents. Memories are made from personal experiences. They're not contained in Junk. After going through that experience, Mrs. W. and I hired an attorney, and we sat down, and we created a will for our kids. We created clear guidelines, and we appointed our oldest, we appointed Jack to be The co-trustee, or the trustee, not the co-trustee, the only trustee, and it will be his responsibility to make those decisions. He will have passwords to bank accounts, retirement accounts, investment accounts, passwords, everything that could be possibly needed is all going to be kept in the safe in a folder so that if and when something happens to Mrs. W. We don't do what my parents did to us and burden us with this nightmare. Going through this experience and dealing with all of this stuff has completely changed the way that I look at materialism and the collecting of things. I certainly was in a similar position. Not only did I learn the consumerism from my parents, and the more stuff you have, the happier you're going to be, or the better you're going to be, the better off you're going to be, or the more you can flex on someone else— that's what I was raised, that's what I knew. And I found myself doing the same thing, and it only compounded Because I didn't grow up with money. We were solidly middle class, sometimes dipping to middle lower class, but for the most part middle class. And when I started my YouTube channel, for the first time in my life, I had extra money to buy things that I never dreamed I'd be able to buy. And I bought them. It's like, you know, you, when you've never had anything, you're Couldn't really go buy the things that you wanted, and now you're in a position where you can, you can go off the rails and you can get carried away thinking that having that same mindset that my parents left me with is that the more that you have, the more possessions you have, the happier you're going to be. I mean, they even coined the term, the guy who dies with the most toys wins. Well, the guy with the most toys doesn't win. The guy with the most toys has more headaches. than the guy who lives a clean and simple life. After that experience, Mrs. W and I have went scorched earth on our life and how we live and our possessions, and we have gotten rid of— well, I don't know, how do you quantify it? The majority of things that we collected. Because we realized it's more important to have a place that's peaceful And calm and free of clutter. I'll finish with this. I was recently reading a study that stress— living in an environment full of clutter, a disorganized house, when you open up a closet you got boxes of cords, you walk into your shop and you've got stuff piled all over the place, and you've got unfinished projects. Do you realize that being in that environment where your eye is constantly looking and searching and dealing with all of these things drastically raises your cortisol? Cortisol is a stressor, causes you stress. And when you walk into an environment like this that is completely cluttered and full of stuff, it raises your stress level. Now, I felt this instinctively a few years ago. I've talked a lot about this. I've done a lot of talk about minimizing and Paring your life down to only the things that matter. If you're struggling with depression or you're worried about things or you just find you're just constantly anxious or constantly in kind of your fight-or-flight, you know, I'm convinced, gentlemen, that living in that environment, living in a cluttered type of environment, is the root cause of that. You walk into a room, you walk into your closet, you walk into your shop, and all— there's so much going on that it's overwhelming. I find that if I walk into an antique store, for example, trying to process everything that I'm looking at, or even a garage sale, I find that it— I'm overstimulated. It overwhelms me, and I get anxious, and I feel very uncomfortable in that environment. Because there's nothing to settle me. There's nothing for my eyes to settle on, to fixate on. It's just chaos everywhere. So I'll be doing— I want to challenge you this, and I'm going through and redoubling my effort. Fall is coming where we're going to be spending more time inside. I'll do some videos on this, on how to declutter your home, how to let go of those things that no longer serve you. And it's hard to do, especially if you paid a lot of money for them. I sat down, Mrs. W and I had a family meeting just a couple days ago talking about this. We've done a pretty good job of going through and getting rid of all the clutter and getting rid of these things, but there are still many items sitting on cabinets or in cabinets, pushed in the back of closets, in boxes, and it's hard to get rid of them because Maybe we paid a lot for them. And getting rid of them almost feels like you're admitting failure. Maybe you followed a health trend like we did and bought an expensive Angel juicer. We haven't used the Angel juicer for a long time, but that's a $1,000 item. And we move it here and we move it there and we're unable to get rid of it because it's almost an admittance of failure. I set to do something and, and that I don't do that anymore. And then coupled with, I paid a whole bunch of money for it, and therefore it would be a failure to get rid of it. You almost think in your mind, and I think the boomers think this a lot, that these things that they have are like money in the bank because they paid a whole bunch of money for it, whether it be collectibles like Hummels or tools or what have you. But it's not. All it is is a great burden and a drag upon you. And what I've realized is that it's okay to let those things go. Those things that were so important that you invested time and money in served you for a time, and it was well and good for you to have those. It got you to where you're at, but that usefulness of that item is no longer here. It's okay to let those things go. It's okay to let things go that were given to you from family members that come with obligations, because the love and the memories you have are not in those items. They're in your heart. I'll leave you with this: sit down and have that difficult conversation with your parents, and give an ultimatum if you need to. Tell them, "If you don't get your affairs in order, if you don't prep, do the Swedish death cleaning." And give this gift to us, then don't expect us to provide care, and we're not going to take care of you. I would go that far. It's that big of a deal, and it's that big of a burden. One year later, we're still every single day, emails, phone calls, problems, difficulties. I cannot tell you How much stress and aggravation that has caused us and still is. Finally, we're getting on the tail end of it. But I'll tell you what, I learned my lesson from this. I will not be burdening my children with heaps of possessions and not having my affairs in order when I— when it's time for me to go. Thank you for watching. May God bless you and your families. Please keep us in your prayers, and we'll see you guys on the next video.