I know many of you read the title of this post and scratched your head. Yes, I know that the majority of us didn’t plop into this world by immaculate conception. Our parents got busy, handled their business, and roughly nine months later we made our debut. Today I want to talk about your parents and something important that I think they would want you to know.

We don’t know fully what our parents lives were like before we entered this world. We can’t fully comprehend how our arrival impacted their lives. We know what we’ve been told but we don’t truly know. We can guess.

Did your parents grow up in a healthy home environment, or was it toxic? Did they dream of having children and raising a family? Or did “life happen” and being a parent became the job they had to accept?

We know that they had dreams and goals, desires and wishes. There were places that they wanted to visit, things they wanted to do, people they wanted to meet. Maybe they fulfilled all of these things before or after you were born, maybe not.

Did they buy that house, car, boat, or motorcycle they wanted? Did they achieve their academic goals they had set? What about their professional pursuits?

What did they have to sacrifice, modify, give up to ensure that your needs were met? In what ways did they prepare for your future? In what ways did they help you to prepare?

Do you have siblings? What values did your parents instill in you and if applicable, your siblings? How were you raised to see the family unit? What were you taught about how to treat your relatives? If you have siblings, what did your parents tell you about that special relationship and what they expected of you as siblings?

Did your parents raise you to work hard for everything you wanted or did you grow up spoiled and entitled, receiving whatever you requested? Did you have chores or did someone else do the work for you? Did you participate in extracurricular activities like sports, music, arts, or various camps? Or was your childhood spent playing outdoors, playing make believe with neighborhood friends? Or was it all of that and more?

What did they teach you about money, budgeting, investing, and having a financial portfolio?

If your parents are still alive, do they have their finances and estate in order? Do they have their living will, living trust, and any other legal instruments prepared? Have they discussed with you and your siblings (if applicable) about their desires for how and where they want to live if they become incapacitated or simply too overwhelmed with managing their home and lifestyle? Have they discussed if they want to live at their home, yours, with your sibling(s), at a senior living community, or other location? Have they discussed how they want their estate is to be handled upon their transition from this life? How are finances and property to be managed?

If they haven’t handled these things and haven’t had multiple conversations with you, now is the time to get those things in order, and have this serious conversation.

If your parents are no longer living, did they handle the matters of their estate before transitioning? Was everything managed properly? How did you and your siblings (if applicable) deal with this huge change?

Was there or has there been drama surrounding the care of your parent(s), their money, property, etc?

I can guarantee you that if your parents have savings, retirement plans, an investment portfolio, and any property, the last thing they want is for you to squander what they worked hard to achieve. The last thing they want is for you to be arguing and fighting over stuff, especially their stuff. The last thing they want is you plotting and planning against them, against your siblings, to gain access to your parents money and property. The last thing they want is to see that ugliness rise out of you and ooze all over, contaminating everything and everyone in your reach. The last thing they want is to regret working so hard to have things, to provide a lifestyle, just to watch it all taken for granted.

Your parents don’t want you acting ugly over money and things you can’t even take with you when you transition from this life.

If your parent(s) are living well and independent, in their home, then the last thing they’re thinking about is you plotting to remove them from that home without their consent, so you can liquidate it or turn it into a investment property. Or worse, you mismanage it and lose it in foreclosure or something. The last thing they’re thinking about is you blowing through their cash and assets, like a reckless maniac. The last thing on their mind is their child, you, destroying their reputation and name. Even if they did it to their parents, it’s highly unlikely that they think you would do it to them. Unless of course they live for cynicism or believe in karma.

Sadly, what your parents don’t expect you to do is exactly what so many of you have done or will do. So much ugliness lurking inside, waiting to explode all over and destroy everything and everyone your parents love. It’s disturbing to see adult children plotting and planning to neglect and abuse their parents through twisted guardianships, forcing them into nursing homes and rarely if ever visiting them. Or finding ways to convince medical professionals that their parents are suffering from Alzheimer’s-Dementia or are impaired in some other way, so they can gain the control they so desperately want over their parents lives and finances.

Some of you aren’t even risking big money. Nope, your plotting for social security checks and maybe a house that needs more in repairs, cost-wise, than you could get from selling it. What are you going to do after you’ve sold all of their cars, antiques, jewelry, and dodads?

You’re going to be miserable, that’s what. And guess what else? If you have children, and they’re anything like you, they will do to you what you have done to your parent(s). Karma baby, it’s real and it’s going to bring you what you put out!

Get your heart, mind, relationships and life right!

~Natasha