Planning Ahead and Being Prepared with a Will [Willful Giveaway]

ADULTING [informal verb] “the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.”*

Millenials dealing with life often talk about adulting and how hard it can be or how unprepared we are for it. We also celebrate our adulting accomplishments either because we did a thing we didn’t know how to do or didn’t want to do.

Recently, with the help of Willful, Jess and I took a big adulting step and created our wills (and became more prepared than we were before) using willful.co

Through a Twitter conversation with an internet friend (and mommy-to-be) named Jenn about parent blogging, I was contacted by Willful CEO and co-founder Erin Bury who offered me the chance to try the platform and create my will. So I did, and Jess was with me, so we did hers too using the Couples (Mirrored) package, and it was really freaking easy. So now that’s done.

Was creating a will a thing that I’d ever thought about for more than a minute at a time? Not really. When my dad passed away there was no will, but I didn’t think about it much because it wasn’t a big deal in our situation. And we didn’t have Ollie at that time so that wasn’t an inspiration to move forward. In the months and years since then, I never really thought about it still, and I’m sure I kind of actively avoided it.

Let’s be honest, nobody wants to think about dying and leaving their spouse or kids behind. Nobody. It’s not a fun thought. It tightens my chest and makes me sad and anxious and just ugh. And while I hope that I’ve got another 40 years or more left to go, not being prepared with at least some paperwork seemed irresponsible – especially when the opportunity to do something about it was right there in my face.

So yes, I sat at my computer in the little office space in the condo, with Ollie and Jess coming in to help finish things up, and we created wills using the online Willful platform. We adulted hard while our near 17-month-old boy looked at us and shared the space, knowing nothing about what was going on or how important it was.

After we finished up I thanked Erin on Twitter and in an email and we started talking about what we could do to offer the same opportunity to someone else. We landed on a contest to give one (1) winner the chance to create their will using any of the three Willful options – The Essentials [$99], Premium [$149], or Couples (Mirrored)[$149].

Enter using the widget (earning up to 9 entries) for you chance to win. Please pay attention to the entry notes, and please please please keep in mind that the prize can not be claimed by residents of Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Yukon, per willful.co.

Good luck, and thank you again to Erin and Kevin for making this giveaway possible, for offering Jess and I the chance to use Willful, and for creating something that is easy to use and takes care of something unpleasant to thin about, without making it harder than it needs to be.

* definition from Google. See other definitions below.

Merriam-Webster: to behave like an adult : to attend to the ordinary tasks required of a responsible adult.

Dictionary.com: an informal term to describe behavior that is seen as responsible and grown-up. This behavior often involves meeting the mundane demands of independent and professional living, such as paying bills and running errands.

Urban Dictionary: to carry out one or more of the duties and responsibilities expected of fully developed individuals (paying off that credit card debt, settling beef without blasting social media, etc). Exclusively used by those who adult less than 50% of the time.