May 17, 2023

What I Will Leave To My Children

This story about kids who stopped talking to their father over a will made me think about what I will leave to my children. Speaking for me personally, I have very little. Since my wife and I are a unit, we have a lot.

My wife is the one with a job that has a 401k and retirement and stuff. I have an IRA but it’s pretty minimal. I dutifully contribute the maximum every year and it’s probably a few thousand at this point. OK, it’s more than that, but it’s not much. I will almost certainly burn through it when I retire. (An argument could be made that I’m already retired since I don’t have much of an income, but I’m technically still working.) Speaking of retirement, I don’t really want to do that. If I can ever get my acting career going, I would love to keep doing parts well into my later years. On the other hand, maybe I’ll enjoy just hanging out with my wife, assuming she hasn’t gotten sick of me. I would also like to keep writing, but that means finding someone to actually publish one of my novels.

As for what is mine personally, I have way too many computers, including an IBM ThinkPad from many moons ago that I have deep affection for and refuse to get rid of although I really should because it’s just taking up space. I could install Linux on it and use it for… what exactly? I’m perfect happy with my MacBook Pro. I’m not really a programmer, I’m just programmer friendly. My daughter programs, so maybe she’d want a Linux laptop. But really it’s just junk.

I have comic books. Roughly 5 long boxes and 6 short boxes, which is a decent amount, although not as many as I used to have. As I detailed on my podcast, Comics Who Love Comic Books, I had a lot more but I got rid of them in a purge when my wife said I had to downsize our storage space. (See this episode for specifics.)

The problem with the comic books and the laptops? My kids don’t want them. The fact that they don’t want the comic books hurts. My youngest doesn’t read comics anymore but my oldest does, at least somewhat. But she has informed me that she has zero interest in my funny books. This made me sad but I’m pretty much over it. (Pretty much.)

Now, as far as I know, I’m not going to die anytime soon. However, the comics are sitting in the basement or, in the case of the few that are valuable, in my office closet. My daughter said it’s OK for me to keep them because I’m still alive. But I think about what it will be like when I’m gone.

What I don’t want to leave my kids is a pile of crap they don’t want like laptops and comic books. And if I’m just going to get rid of it anyway, why not get rid of it now?

Getting back to the point, I hope we can leave our kids some money and our apartment, which has value. Even if all they do is sell it, that’s OK. But what I REALLY don’t want to do is leave them my junk.

That’s why I’m going to make a pledge here to get rid of some of this stuff before I die. Hopefully I have a lot of years left to do this. But I’m going to try not to acquire too much more stuff to add to the pile.

So what will I leave my children? Money, an apartment, and hopefully, an empty storage bin.

Oh, and lots of anxieties. Sorry kids.


This post was written by Daddy

Tags: , , , ,
Posted under Blog, Featured | No Comments »

Post a Comment