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Making a will means different things to different people in different countries. In the UK, there is still a huge rich/poor divide. At the lower end of the income scale people very rarely concern themselves with making a will, although it is important for everyone to consider. Even if you have no worldly goods to leave, there will still be things to consider such as the care of minors and funeral arrangements. For the rich, there is this constant struggle to help their bequeathed avoid inheritance tax and all the red tape that goes with it. They have many more assets in the way of land, property and business to distribute and this means that making a will can be a lengthy process.

Other countries have their own traditions and some concern themselves with very different things to what we are used to when thinking about what happens to our worldly goods after we’ve gone. Who owns your cow after you’ve died may seem a relatively minor worry but these types of things are sometimes a poor persons only source of income and the only thing they have left to put in a will.

The world’s oldest parents were in the news recently for their efforts in securing an heir. The Indian pensioners, in their seventies with a twin boy and girl recently conceived through IVF, are ecstatic that they now have a son to take over their land when they die. This brings on all sorts of questions. They had a small farm and a few buildings. They had three grown daughters who, under Indian law, could not inherit from them and this is why they decided to embark on the controversial medical treatment in their quest for a son and heir.

They got their son and were disappointed to find they also now have another girl to keep. Female lives do not have the same importance attached as male offspring. But to what cost did the couple get the desired heir. They had to sell off most of their assets to raise the funds for the IVF treatment. This has only left them with a small piece of land to pass on to the boy. The other daughters will raise these two children when the parents die and eventually the son will take over the parents home with a wife and family of his own. He will also inherit the extortionate mortgage on it.

So what was the point in having a son when there is nothing worthwhile to leave him? Villages such as this have very strong ideas on tradition and the way things should be. The elderly man was coming under a great deal of ridicule for not having produced a son. This gossip has now been silenced by the birth of the boy child. It would seem children are as much a commodity as the land itself.

Some countries put so much store in making a will that it is considered a dis-honour to them if they neglect these responsibilities. This also used to be the case in the Western world but is not so strong today. Making a will is still an essential piece of administration for everyone and is a good show that you take your responsibilities seriously. It eases possibly family worries right at the time when they don’t need to be worrying about them. It makes your wishes clear and, in the main, will avoid any family disagreements or feuds that could erupt.

Whatever your culture or wealth, writing a will is always advisable and this can be done quite simply but is always worth good legal advice on.

Legal expert Catherine Harvey looks at what people hold important when it comes to making a will and how this can differ country to country.

Funerals are never cheap. A really basic affair will start at 500 pounds but the average funeral will cost 2,000 pounds upwards. This is not something many of us want to consider but if we don’t, then who will? The burden of funeral arrangements and costs will fall on the next of kin if we shuffle off this mortal coil with no prior arrangements in place through a will and this all comes at a time when our loved ones really don’t have the emotional capabilities for it.

Making a will is one thing that we can do for our nearest and dearest that shows love and consideration for them. While none of us like to consider the fact that we won’t always be here, it is a fact of life and the plans we can make through a will are the last way we have of having our wishes carried out, making it a little easier for our loved ones and possibly leaving a legacy for people to remember us by.

Wills are the last word we have on this earth. Much of the population live frugal lives with little to leave friends and family but it isn’t simply about possessions. Making a will can also cover the care and responsibility of minors or even pets. It dictates who is responsible for carrying out our last wishes and it can also determine the type of funeral we have.

Many people, while making a will, will also choose to pick, plan and pay for a funeral to get the one they want. But the usual over-riding reason for this is to remove the difficult situation for their families. It also removes a huge financial burden also. To have to find the funds for an expensive funeral is a huge problem for some and it’s not always possible to wait for inheritance money or insurance payouts to cover these costs.

Some couples like to do this together. Not your average way to spend a weekend but if it’s going to be our last resting place, then the least we can do is have some say over it. Even healthy people will pick out a casket, songs to be sung or readings to be done. These are all things that mean something to them and as morbid as it sounds, it doesn’t have to be so. Funerals are always a difficult time for all concerned and making sure every aspect of it is covered in your will ensures that the burden is relieved and that your loved ones know you are going the way you wanted to.

Many people choose to see a funeral as a celebration of their life as opposed to the sadness of them passing and this is a positive way to look at something that no-one can ever avoid. This will always be easier if you will states your wishes and even more so if all the expenses are already covered.

To plan your funeral in advance or to make your wishes known in your last will and testament and at the very least to ensure all the expenses are covered is one last way you can show your family how much you cared about them, it is the one least thing you can leave them and they will never have the worry of never being quite sure if you liked the way it was all arranged.

Funeral expert Catherine Harvey looks at the way making a will should cover your funeral too.

The caramel-colored corgi spotted me walking toward the city-run recreation center. Out for a walk with his person, the little dog stopped in his tracks and fixed me in his gaze. The woman on the end of his leash tried to move him along, but he wouldn’t budge.

He stood his ground, waiting for me to approach him. I bent down and opened my palm for him to sniff, talking softly to him. He licked my hand and fingers eagerly, and enjoyed having his head rubbed and ears scratched.

Only then would he consent to being lead away by his owner. Slightly embarrassed and certainly bewildered, she didn’t seem to understand what just transpired, but I did. That sharp little canine intuitively sensed that I could use some affection and comfort, and did his best to offer it to me.

I felt better immediately and will appreciate that compassionate pooch for the rest of my days.

Animals show us all the time how to love. They constantly offer up true love–the unconditional kind so simple that we so-called intelligent beings simply don’t trust it, convinced that love surely must be complex, unfathomable, and scarce.

What a pity we don’t pay more attention to our animal teachers. The few times we do, it’s an even greater tragedy that we generally don’t understand the lesson.

Take the tale of Oscar, a feline supervisor at a Rhode Island hospice care unit. The tabby cat made national headlines when his story was posted on the website of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Then there was Scamp, an adopted canine with similar duties at a Canton, Ohio, nursing home. Like Oscar, Scamp the schnauzer always seemed to know when a resident of his facility was close to death.

We didn’t know what to make of the animals’ abilities to predict and indicate imminent death or their love for the dying person. Idiotic, fear-laden headlines yammered on about “ominous talent” and “first grim cat, now grim dog.”

How tragic that death holds such terror for us, and we are so divorced from our spiritual natures, that we react to the love–the compassion and empathy–shown by animals with fear, distrust, and even a tinge of loathing.

By easing both the dying and their loved ones through the transition erroneously known as death, Scamp and Oscar show us the meaning of love as well as how to love.

The animals’ presence at a resident’s bedside alerts staff to contact the patient’s family in time for them to say their good-byes. Doing so provides a tremendous amount of comfort to the dying person’s loved ones. And for those without family able to arrive in time, Oscar and Scamp make sure that none of those they watch over dies alone.

Science, naturally, provides theories about how animals can sense impending death. These explanations focus on chemical smells, called pheromones, that animals can detect but elude human nostrils.

Pheromones may well be at work, but that does not exclude another interpretation of these events. The dying most often are comatose, unconscious, or too far in mental collapse to be aware of the animals’ presence by what we consider normal methods. They cannot use the physical senses to see them, hear them, or feel the animals’ fur or slight weight next to them.

Even unconscious, however, the dying are still capable of sensing and benefiting from the vibration of love. Detecting love’s presence is a gift of the spirit that precedes physical life and remains once it is over because it is the essence of the energy-spirits that we are. Love does not depend on physical life or physical senses to exist and be given or received.

And surely it is love that Oscar and Scamp are giving those at death’s door, and love that the little corgi offered me. True love that makes no demands, imposes no conditions, sets no restrictions.

All of us long for that kind of love, and we need not wait for it until the end of our physical lives. It’s available to us right now, if only we open our hearts and souls to the animal teachers all around us, willing to show the living as well as the dying the way to love.

Candace (C.L.) Talmadge is the author of the epic fantasy Green Stone of Healing(R) series and a political columnist syndicated by North Star Writers Group. As StoneScribe, she blogs about the intersection of politics and spirituality.

After requesting protection, the healing circle conductor then tells the inquirer to speak the name of the soul in question. The inquirer verbalizes the soul’s full name two times and a pet or nickname the third time.

Thought-Energy Communication

Sometimes, the soul hesitates to enter the circle precisely because there are strangers present. If that’s so, the conductor should ask the inquirer to repeat the same name sequence aloud once more. Other times, the soul is so eager to enter it doesn’t wait until the inquirer has finished speaking the first time. Usually, the soul will pass into the circle over the inquirer’s right shoulder, but occasionally the entry point is different. It doesn’t really matter.

Once the soul is in the circle, the conductor’s job is to keep it there by sending additional love straight from the heart. The task of participants other than the conductor or inquirer is to verbalize what is called evidential material or trivia. Most souls realize they need to assure the inquirer of their true identity. They almost immediately begin sending highly personal and sometimes very specific information about themselves. If the soul in question doesn’t know what to do at this point, participants may ask it for evidential material and explain why the inquirer needs this information.

How does the soul send information? How do participants ask it questions? Simple: via thought-energy. The thought-energy of the soul is received as inner visions, vibrations, words, or an awareness by participants’ own four soul or psychic senses. The way to communicate with the so-called dead is through what we label intuition without understanding its full implications or its spiritual potential.

Trusting what they receive through their soul senses is a real issue for most healing circle participants. There is widespread ignorance about the soul senses in this society, which leads to pervasive and deep-rooted lack of trust in the information that the soul senses
convey. This is why there is a need to teach people how to function as healing circle conductors in the first place. Provided the conductor is comfortable and confident with the process, other participants can be less assured and still be very helpful.

It is vitally important that the conductor emphasize to other participants except the inquirer that they are to verbalize every single piece of information they receive. Do not edit. Again, this is where the inability to trust your soul senses can really hamper your efforts. Time after time, healing circle participants have pulled information seemingly “out of thin air” about people or events that only the inquirer or the soul in question could have known. Yet they just as often hesitate to say anything, which can be counterproductive.

During her session, for example, Clara was finally convinced of her mother’s presence when one of the participants talked about seeing a field of red poppies, waving in the wind. Then another person mentioned a cross; Laura immediately said that she saw a skull.

“I knew it was my mother then,” Clara explains. “Red poppies were my mother’s flower. She had them all over the house when I was growing up. The Skull of Adam forms the base of the Russian Orthodox cross. My daughter wouldn’t know that. She was brought up Presbyterian.”

The point? The information the soul is sending is for the inquirer, not the other participants. That is why it often seems strange to participants and they tend to shift into their left brains to analyze it. Don’t do that. Instead, speak up.

The conductor will have informed the inquirer before the session begins to respond to each piece of information verbalized in one of three ways: “Yes,” “No,” or “I don’t know.”

Sometimes the soul in question provides information that the inquirer isn’t sure of or simply doesn’t know but can check out later with family or friends.

The second part of a healing circle consists simply of giving the inquirer and the soul the chance to talk to each other, assisted by the other session participants. This phase is always very emotional, if for no other reason than the inquirer finally has some evidence that a loved one thought dead and lost forever is, in fact, still living and very much found.

Such evidence is provided partly through the trivia, which is necessary to satisfy the left brain. The heart, however, is much more open to messages from the soul. As the second half progresses, inquirers on their own often begin to pick up thoughts and especially feelings from the loved one in the circle.

The joy of such a reunion is impossible to comprehend except through direct experience. Resolution replaces anguish. Tears flow freely from relief, not grief. The healing spreads from the inquirer and the soul to every member of the circle.

Candace (C.L.) Talmadge is the author of the epic fantasy Green Stone of Healing(R) series and a political columnist syndicated by North Star Writers Group. As StoneScribe, she blogs about the intersection of politics and spirituality.

The number one rule of saving for retirement is to begin saving immediately. Be sure to talk with someone in your company about the pros and cons of borrowing from your retirement funds. Following this simple guideline will hopefully help you reach your retirement goals at a decent age.

Retirement is to be realized some day. With baby boomers reaching retirement age, we may be seeing a larger wave of retirees moving that way. After the official reception was completed we brought the left over cakes, punch, and most of the wedding party to the retirement home.

News: Congress passes a far-reaching retirement savings law. Further, for those born after 1937, Normal Retirement Age is being extended. If you’re dreaming about a secure retirement based on social security and your corporate retirement program, you may be in for a startling awakening.

People are also refinancing their homes at a record pace, eroding the equity that, historically, has been a common source of retirement security. And, as absurd as this may sound until you experience the reality of it all, it is this one and only certainty that makes Mutual Funds in general (and Index Funds in particular) totally unsuitable as investment vehicles for anyone within seven to ten years of retirement. On February 26th, 2004, Peter Costello, Federal Treasurer MP, told ABC Radio that in the future “There’s going to be no such thing as full-time retirement.

Additionally, advancing age is frequently accompanied by loss of key social support systems because of death of spouse or siblings, relocation of residence and/or retirement. A recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive revealed that an entirely new paradigm for retirement is emerging. According to a survey in the Robb Report of potential foreign investment/retirement areas, Costa Rica surpasses all countries, including Mexico, Panama, the Caribbean Islands, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Australia, and Greece.

If you say that, or anything to the effect of, “Everyone is concerned about their retirement” or, “That’s what we hear people tell us every day” or even, “You’ve certainly come to the right place. Not only do non-participants miss an immediate and guaranteed 50% return on their investment, they also lose time and the benefit of compounding on their retirement savings growth. People who retire and then lose contact with the world of work and regular contact with other uman beings often die soon after their retirement.

Making the right decision now will have a huge bearing on your retirement. Even after retirement, his pains continued to torment him and he finally decided to remove all his teeth, to put an end to his knee pain, as advised by the Zambian Doctor. Would you take action and build a fortune that would allow you to pay off the mortgage and create a retirement fund.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines attrition as “a reduction in numbers usually as a result of resignation, retirement, or death. Those that are just getting by and the owner is happy to leave things as they are (perhaps close to retirement. The Service Corps of Retired Executives was created by a group of retired executives from large corporations who wanted to continue using their business skills after retirement to mentor small business owners.

The Section 457 retirement plans basically provide the tax benefits that generally include pre-tax salary-reduction contributions, as well as tax-deferred growth of the investment earnings. Loyalty to the boss faded fast thanks to downsizing and companies dumping their retirement plans.

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of Free Affiliate Programs

For more information and resource links on retirement planning visit: Retirement Planning Software

Funerals are ceremony or procession commonly held for deceased persons. The ceremony may be in the forms of a simple memorial service attended by family and friends while it can also be grand State burial usually for soldiers who died in the battlefield. A funeral consists of an assortment of customs which might be different for people of different religions and culture.

Depending on the wishes of the deceased persons, their religions and the customs of their families, the deceased may be buried or cremated. Burials are a common practice since the pre-historic times, where the body of the deceased is buried into the grave, which has been dug into the ground.

In the modern world, there are no more solitary graves, instead there are cemeteries where many graves share a common ground or area. Cremations are preferred among some culture. Dead body is put into a special furnace called crematory and it will be reduced to ashes, which is collected and handed over to family members for safekeeping. It is also not uncommon in the world for some deceased to be placed in a tomb above ground or be left in the open for the force of nature to disintegrate their bodies.

Most funeral rituals consist of three parts in the following order: visitation, funeral and burial. Before the visitation ceremony begins, the body of the deceased is first embalmed. Embalming involves removal of the dead body’s blood and replacing it with a preservative liquid, usually a mixture of a variety of chemicals and formaldehyde.

Then during visitation, the embalmed body is placed in a coffin for family and friends to view the body. Visitation usually precedes the actual funeral by one or two evenings, attendees are invited to sign a book kept by the deceased’s survivors for memorial. In recent years, it is also not uncommon for the family to display photographs and videos of the deceased during its lifetime at the visitation.

After the visitation ceremony, it is followed by a funeral or memorial service which takes place at church or a funeral home. The funeral service is officiated by a clergyman who will lead the prayers, singing of hymns and words of comfort by the clergy. Some close relatives, friends and spouses will offer to give eulogy regarding the achievements and happy memories of the deceased.

After the attendees view the deceased’s body for the final time, the coffin is closed and the coffin might immediately be brought to the tomb, grave or crematorium for the burial service. Sometimes, a small gathering or meal may be called after the burial service at the deceased’s church, banquet halls or private places.

This is especially evident if the deceased died of old age, family members and close friends gather together for “the celebration of life”, instead of mourning the deceased, they celebrate the life it lived, cherish the memories together with the dead and provide support for each other to get on with their lifes.

A funeral of the loved ones is often one of the most trying time in a person’s life. Young persons who have not experienced death relatives before would have difficulty understanding and accepting the passing away of the loved ones.

Besides, there are many tasks and arrangements which need to be settled following a death. Therefore, it is vital for family members and close friends of the deceased to provide support for each other and help out in whatever way they could before and even after a funeral has ended.

Martin has a store selling cremation urns for humans and Pet Cremation Urns